Market Update

As usual, Todd Buckley and I have compiled some numbers from the April Real Estate Market here in Livingston County. He then puts together a summary and sends it to each of our sellers. Here are the numbers and some excerpts.

In the last month we have seen an increase in activity for the majority of our listings. Right now, we have 14 pending sales that are scheduled to close in the next month. Increased activity and sales are good news for all of our seller clients. Homes are seeing more activity than condos, but we expect that to change soon.

Buyers we are working with are excited about the values and are seeing the number of available homes drop. This combination has led some buyers to move off the fence and into a new home. We all welcome this increase in urgency in the marketplace. Relatively speaking, this urgency is still much lower than a few years ago, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Here is a summary of sales for Livingston County for the month of April:

I have color-coded the numbers above indicating good news for sellers in GREEN and challenging news for sellers in RED. Foreclosure sales are up again, traditional sales are down, average sale price is down, while total sales are up, on market listings are down and the time supply of inventory is still decreasing.

There is one more topic that I’d like to mention…low appraisals. This past week we were scrambling to save two sales. The sellers listed the homes at today’s values, the buyer and seller agreed to price and terms, but the bank’s appraiser gave a value that was less than the purchase price. Recent comparables make hitting the right price a difficult task. This is an issue we work diligently to resolve. One seller was able to stay at the purchase price, while another had to drop the price a bit more. One is closing tomorrow and the other in a couple weeks.

Basically, we need to sell your home multiple times:

1. To the buyer online or in other marketing
2. To the buyer in person for showings
3. To the buyer during negotiations of the purchase agreement
4. To the buyer during inspections
5. To the appraiser
6. To the buyer again if the appraisal comes back low

If you would like to interview us to be your REALTORS or just want to chat about the market, please give us a call at 810.229.7000.

Chris Jolley