Minot Housing Market | Video

Rene Thibault | 3/22/2013

The U.S. is slowly recovering from a housing market slump. In February, home sales across the country were the highest they`ve been in three years. But how does Minot compare?

U.S. sales of homes have risen to their fastest pace in more than three years. While the rest of the country saw high amounts of lending and bad credit lead to a fall in the housing market, Minot never had those problems.

“Minot being kind of conservative part of the country, we never went there, people never went there. We never had a ton of buyers saying we can do that, now I`m going to go out and get a loan. I guess we were smarter than that up here,” said Dale Lawson, a realtor for Preferred Minot Real Estate.

Thanks to a growing population, in part due to North Dakota`s booming oil industry, the Minot housing market never took a hit. The 2012 average cost for a Minot home was $20,000 over the national average, but that didn`t turn away buyers.

“You had people standing in line for house, a house would hit the market and the house was gone, the house would hit the market and the house was gone. It was as simple as that,” said Darrel Strube, realtor for Broker’s 12.

When the 2011 flood knocked out homes throughout Minot, housing demand sky-rocketed. But as time went on, more flood damaged homes were fixed and put back up for sale, buyers and sellers found a happy medium.

“It`s really opened up and gotten so much easier. It was so difficult for a buyer and now that`s opened up and it’s still good for sellers too,” stated Lawson.

Strube added, “I`m not worried about this market at all in terms of us having a housing slump. We`re not going too. It`s going to continue to grow, and continue to get better as time goes on”.

As the country continues to recover from its housing slump, the Magic City will continue to build new homes for eager buyers, and maintain a quality housing market. Right now, there are about 200 homes up for sale in the Minot area, but both Broker`s 12 and Preferred Minot Real Estate believe that number will decrease as we get further into spring.

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