Guys,
Thanks a lot for spending some time answering my question.All of you gave me some good pointers to think.

Rani,

Ultimately you are noticing the trend that while values have been hit in Lakeville they are not falling out the bottom like in some other areas. If you are looking for bargain basement prices I might recommend that you focus on areas where foreclosures are a bit more prevalent and banks are thusly more desperate.

A bank has the ability to take a $10K, $50K or even $100K hit and not even blink. It is my theory that most of the sellers in Lakeville are not banks but rather homeowners who may have some equity to play with but simply can't part with the house for less that $X. In these cases prices won't fall as fast since there is a floor at which the sale cannot take place. This mode of operation doesn't hold for a bank and thus they will continue to drop the price until a sale comes through.

In the end, my theory is that sellers are simply coming to their bottom line and thus houses simply are going any lower because of it.

Good Luck in your purchase.

Cameron Piper

Much of Lakeville's housing is newer and larger, which makes the "value" end of the segment smaller simply because its housing stock is more 2nd and 3rd homes. Activity in the October-January period is always the slower time of year so the apparent sluggish sales are largely seasonal in nature. Lakeville's location as an outer ring suburb means that there is less demand today when buyers can find comparable homes closer into the cities yet Lakeville's schools and reputation are strong and will always keep it's value higher, even in down markets.

If we take a look at the trend over the last 180 days, we find the following:

- Median Price from $371,000 to $346,000
- Avg Days on Market from 140 to 171
- Inventory of Single Family Homes has dropped from 362 to 320
- Median Amount of New Listings from 21 to 12
- Listings Absorbed from 21 to 17.5
- Avg Price per square foot $146 to $138

Looking at these and other key statistics, we can conjecture that prices are falling and homes are staying on the market longer over the past 6 months in Lakeville. Some of this is probably due to the seasonality of the market that we see in Minnesota. The one bright spot in the Lakeville market right now is that inventory and the number of new listings coming on the market are decreasing. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Rani5907,
There are some incredible values in Lakeville (check out 20857 Iran Ave S, Lakeville, MN). Prices have been hit very hard in Lakeville:

2008- Closed sales are down - 12.3%
2008- Avg sales price is down -6.9%
2008- Supply is down -15.1%
2008- Avg sales price $285,018.

There have been 41 single family homes that have an "off market" date of 11/15/2008-present.