April 2019 Real Estate Market Update – Livingston County, Michigan

What's going on guys? Brandon here. Legacy Group Real Estate Team. We have your Livingston County Real Estate Market Update for April 2019. So let's jump right into this thing.

We always preface every single one of these videos with a couple of things. We get a lot of questions asking why do we do the month previous? And then also why do we have three years of data? There is a very simple reason for that, it's because we need to see the pattern. Number one, we need to see the three years of data that way we can see the pattern. That's what this is really all about, seeing the trend. And then also, we have the month previous' data there. That way we can get everything. It's hot-off-the-press basically, right? So just like the government does their data, on the first week of the new month. The same thing we do here. We have the data finally and we can give you all the freshest data. So let's jump right in.

Days on market

DOM, that's average days on the market. This has actually gone up a ton. Livingston County. Fifty-one in 2017, 51 days, 56 days last year and 69 days this year. Sometimes these numbers, you will have one or two anomalies in the 18 numbers we're going to show you. So you can kind of take that into account. However, um, it looks like in April these numbers are starting to kind of trend backward a balanced market because we've been in a really steep seller's market.

Active homes in the market

Next one here, active homes in the market. We had 644 in 2017, at 579 last year and then back up now to six 35, so not as many as 2017. However, this is a one day stat basically. So when the stats are taken, it's a one day snapshot into what's going on. That's why the trend is important. That's why seeing different years is important here.

Months of inventory

Months of inventories, MOI, what that means is that the rate that homes are selling, how long it's going to take to sell every last home if no new homes came on the market. And again, this is a very quick way to understand what kind of market we are in. Because basically, we had two in 2017, two months of inventory. We had two last year and we had just under three. I think it's like 2.7 this year. So we basically round up to three years. All these are rounded. So just to give you an idea- one to three is a seller's market, four to six is a balanced market basically. And then seven-plus is a buyer's market. So it gives you an idea as to where the markets are going. Again, trending up towards the balanced market a little bit, which is good for everybody. Overall, it's good for the market, the health of the overall economy.

New homes in the market

So that's the number of new homes ever actively listed on the market this month in Livingston County. There's 455 two years ago, 468 last year at 482 this year. So we've gone up every year actually. So again, very interesting. We've actually had more listings coming on the market than we have, so it's can be very fascinating to see what transpires in the next few months. But again, we are moving towards more of a balanced market.

Price per square foot

This is a general number. You gotta take it as a general rule of thumb. If you want the actual market value of your home, you have to have someone in our team, you've got an appraiser comes, a professional come and look at your home, take everything into consideration because this takes countywide data. But what it will do is at least give you somewhat of a value. More or less, it will tell you the trend of where the way things are going in your county. Two years ago, at $132 a square foot, $142 a square foot last year, 144 this year. So prices are still rising overall in the county. And again, if you take that number and multiply it by your square footage, it gives you, like I said, approximately about what your home will be worth.

Sold

So this is the number of sold, this is kind of our buyers' statistic if you will. It really doesn't change that much unless there's a catastrophic event, like a depression recession or something like that. So we had 283 a couple of years ago, 253 last year and 237 this past year. So again, the numbers in the previous months have been down a little bit. That's why we've had a little bit depressed closings most likely here. Overall though, every number basically telling us moving back towards a balanced market. So we'll see the next few months, it's gonna be very interesting as we getting as a hot selling season and see what happens.

So keep your eyes on this. We do this every single month obviously to give you guys a data so you know exactly what's going on and it's really amazing. Truth be told, it's more for me probably than anything because I now have the market data and the knowledge and I'll give to my team and you give to all of our clients when we talk to them and we do things when we negotiate, etc. Sometimes it might not mean everything in the world to you. We tried to explain obviously as much as we can, however many of you that have been watching this over the years have said to me now, "Wow, I really start to understand now what the market's mean because I'm seeing the trends now because I watch these over and over again. I have seen that and it takes a while. Seeing this one time, it doesn't make sense necessarily all the time. So seeing that trend over time is what helps.

So I appreciate you guys, your time, your energy more than anything. I appreciate you guys listening on the podcast, the new podcast we have up, the Metro Detroit Millennial Business and Real Estate podcast. And if you want to go comment or question, just go to our YouTube or Facebook, @legacygroupmi, comment there so that way we can answer questions for everybody and help everyone at once. I appreciate your time and your energy, it's the most important asset that we have. So I appreciate that more than anything, guys, and we look forward to seeing you soon.