"It's either been very difficult to get insurance, or the insurance they are able to get has reduced coverages and increased costs."
That's Lynn Boergerhoff, founder of the Twin Cities-based HOA Leadership Network, describing what happens right now when a Minnesota condo or townhome association tries to renew its property insurance. It's not a Bloomington-specific quote. But it explains something Bloomington's own city hall just put in writing about Bloomington's market, and it matters before you write an offer on anything with shared walls.
If you're comparing Bloomington against Apple Valley, Rosemount, or Lakeville right now, you've probably already looked up one number: the median home price. That's a reasonable place to start. But in Bloomington, that single figure is quietly averaging together two markets moving in opposite directions, and the gap between them is wide enough to change how you shop.
The friction that shows up at the closing table
Here's the practical version first, because it's the part that catches buyers off guard mid-transaction. If you're under contract on a Bloomington condo or townhome in 2026, the resale disclosure paperwork your association is required to provide isn't boilerplate anymore. It has to identify which shared building components the association is on the hook to replace and how much money is actually sitting in reserve for that work. A year or two ago, most buyers skimmed that page. Right now, it's worth reading twice, because the number behind it is moving fast, and not in the direction anyone budgeted for.
What the city's own numbers show
Every year, the City of Bloomington's Assessing Division publishes a report that walks through how home values changed across every property type in the city, based on sales from roughly the last quarter of 2024 through September 2025. The 2026 Assessing Report is public, and it tells a story that doesn't match a single blended median.
Single-family homes had a strong year. The median single-family value for the 2026 assessment came in at $376,000, up from $365,300 the year before. The report notes that 2024 was the only year in the last thirteen where that number fell year over year, which makes this rebound notable in context. The biggest gains weren't at the top of the market. They showed up in homes valued under $350,000, where the report describes entry-level demand as strong enough to drive a real premium. There was also an above-average bump in the $500,000 to $800,000 range, the classic move-up bracket.
Townhomes grew too, up 2.1% for the year excluding new construction.
Condos didn't. The city's own report puts condo values down 4.2%, and attributes that decline in part to rising insurance premiums and HOA fees.
That's the split in one sentence: entry-level houses are having one of their best years in over a decade, and condos in the same city, assessed with the same methodology in the same window, are losing value. A citywide median can't hold both of those stories at once, so it just papers over them.
For scale, Bloomington's housing stock breaks down like this, per the same report:
- 21,221 single-family homes
- 14,517 multifamily rental units
- 3,247 condos
- 2,266 townhomes
- 850 co-op units
Condos are a comparatively small slice of the city's roughly 42,671 taxable housing units, which is part of why their softness doesn't move the blended median much even as it hits owners hard.
Why insurance is the mechanism, not a footnote
It would be easy to read "rising HOA fees" as a generic line item and move on. It's worth understanding the actual math, because it's the same math playing out in condo and townhome communities well beyond Bloomington.
At Windwood Condominiums in Edina, a 12-acre, three-building community built in 1972, the association's property insurance rate jumped 400% when its policy came up for renewal at the end of 2023, according to reporting in the Star Tribune. Board members said they found out just two days before the old policy expired at midnight on December 31st, and the higher dues took effect in 2024. Monthly dues rose by an average of $262 for a two-bedroom unit around 1,250 square feet, essentially overnight.
This isn't an Edina-only story, or a luxury-building story. Mark Foster, vice president of the HOA Leadership Network, lives in an 84-unit townhouse community in Lakeville where property insurance had also climbed 400% in the five years leading up to that reporting in early 2025, per the same article. The HOA Leadership Network estimates roughly 3,860 townhouse, condo, and co-op associations across the seven-county Twin Cities metro, covering about 197,000 units, are dealing with some version of this.
The underlying reason is a straightforward insurer math problem. According to the Insurance Federation of Minnesota, carriers paid out $1.92 for every $1 they collected in premiums at the 2022 high-water mark, and only returned to profitability statewide in 2024 after five straight years of losses. When an entire line of business loses money for that long, insurers don't just raise prices. Some stop writing new HOA and condo policies altogether, which shrinks the pool of carriers willing to compete and pushes remaining premiums higher still. That's the incentive structure behind the 4.2% condo decline in Bloomington's assessment. It isn't about buyer taste shifting away from condos. It's about the cost of keeping the building insured rising faster than the building's value.
The 2027 deadline that suggests this isn't temporary
Minnesota's Common Interest Ownership Act already requires associations to budget adequate replacement reserves and reevaluate whether those reserves are sufficient at least every three years, a standard recently touched by an amendment in 2026 Minn. Laws chapter 61. Separately, a broader legislative rewrite of that same law, tracked as HF1268/SF1750, is moving through the 2026 session after stalling in 2025. Attorneys following the bill expect most of its provisions to take effect January 1, 2027, giving associations only about seven months to come into compliance once it passes, according to one law firm's analysis of the pending changes.
Put together, that means the cost pressure showing up in this year's condo numbers is layered on top of a regulatory tightening still working its way through. Associations that haven't fully funded reserves are going to feel both the insurance market and the statute at the same time in 2027. That's a reason to expect the gap between attached and detached housing to persist for a while, not a one-year blip that corrects itself at the next assessment.
How to actually shop the split
If you're comparing neighborhoods with an entry-level budget under $350,000, know you're shopping the segment the city's own data says is the strongest performer in years. Expect competition and be ready to move fast on well-priced single-family listings.
If a condo or townhome is genuinely the better fit for your lifestyle or budget, that's still a reasonable choice. Just do the homework a median price can't do for you. Ask for the association's insurance renewal date and premium history before you write an offer. Ask for the reserve fund statement, not just the monthly dues number. A building with lower dues and thin reserves is often a worse deal than one with higher dues and a fully funded plan, because the thin-reserve building is more likely to hit you with a special assessment right after you've spent your closing costs.
If you're a move-up buyer with more room in the budget, the $500,000 to $800,000 single-family range also outperformed this year, which is worth widening your search to include.
A short FAQ
Is this a Bloomington-only problem? No. The insurance dynamic behind the condo decline is playing out across Twin Cities HOA and condo communities, including in Lakeville, based on the accounts of HOA leaders quoted in the Star Tribune reporting. Bloomington's Assessing Report just happens to be a clean, public window into how it's showing up in one city's numbers.
If entry-level houses are already the hottest segment, is there room for a first-time buyer to compete? There is, but it takes a plan going in. Strong demand under $350,000 means preapproval, a realistic sense of what the current inventory actually looks like, and an offer strategy decided before you're standing in a bidding situation, not during one.
Where this leaves you
A single median price is a fine headline number, but it isn't a strategy. Bloomington's 2026 assessment data makes the case plainly: entry-level houses are up, mid-range move-up homes are up, townhomes are up modestly, and condos are down, for a specific and traceable reason. Shopping the city well means treating those as separate markets rather than one number.
If you want a clearer read on where a specific Bloomington property, or a specific building's association financials, actually sits inside this split, The Kent Group can walk through it with you. Get Home Value and let's talk about what your budget actually buys on each side of this market before you write an offer.
