Market Update for Our Sellers

Karen & Todd send our sellers an update on market conditions every two weeks. Here is an excerpt of that e-mail.

“Optimistic and realistic.” That was my answer to a recent question from a friend asking about my opinion of the real estate market in Livingston County. As I anticipated in my last update, there were more sales in April ’07 vs. ’06. How many? 10 more in the county for a total of 165, a 6.5% increase. This was the first positive number in some time, but it was accompanied by another number 93. That’s how many more homes were listed in April ’07 vs. April ’06 (a 13.7% increase – and this increase isn’t a wonderful one). So, year-to-date the number of sales in Livingston County are down 11.7% and the number of listings are up 5.6%. All of this information is available in the attached document.

So how has our company stacked up so far this year? Buckley Jolley had sold 27% more homes through April of ’07 than we had in ’06 through April. We have listed the same amount of properties YTD in ’07 vs. ’06.

I wanted to touch on one other item in this update…Bank owned homes (AKA REO’s, foreclosures, etc.). This is growing competition within our market. In fact, 21% of all April ’07 sales in Livingston County were bank owned! This is a HUGE percentage. While there aren’t any official stats available on foreclosures, I would guess that foreclosures would have only made up 5% of Livingston County sales last spring. Traditionally, these properties had been in distressed condition; however, today’s average bank owned property is not a “fixer-upper.” Michigan’s economic woes have led to many of our well respected neighbors, with beautiful homes, to lose those properties. What does this mean to you? Banks are selling nice properties for less money than traditional re-sale homes. This too is a contributor to sliding values throughout our area. Again, this is a price driven market. -Todd Buckley