August 2018 Real Estate Update – Macomb County, Michigan

We have your Macomb County August 2018 Real Estate Market update. Let’s jump right into this. I preface every single Market Update we do with two things and it’s we do the month in arrears, people always ask, “Brandon, why are you doing the month previous?” Because we have all the data now. We’ve got all the data, everything’s done, finalized. We have all of it, it’s hot-off-the-press. Most up-to-date information. We always get “Why are you doing three years of data?” It’s because we want to see the patterns. We want to see the numbers telling a story. If I just gave you one year of data and only showed you that, nothing would make sense, right? You wouldn’t get a sense of what’s going on the market. By giving you three years of data, you then get to see. You start to understand why we’re seeing the patterns we’re seeing and why the market is doing what it’s doing. So let’s jump right into this.

Days on Market

Days on market is just the average time a home sits on the market before it’s sold. So this is again telling. We’ve had some interesting stats so far in Metro Detroit this month of August, so 37, 28, 30, went up. I don’t think we’ve had an uptick in Days on Market in months in any county. So that’s pretty amazing. Again, Macomb county doesn’t have tons and tons of data like Wayne and Oakland have tons of data, bigger sample size. Genesee County, kind of like Macomb County. They don’t have tons and tons of data. What I mean is they don’t have tons and tons of homes selling a lot compared to Oakland and Wayne for instance. So the data sometimes can get a little bit skewed, but something to note – we’ve seen this pattern now over every county and is the first uptick we’ve seen in days on market year over year in a while for any county.

Active Homes in the Market

This is a snapshot in time. It’s a day and time that we take this data. Usually toward the end of every month, so it’s not something you can take total, you can’t take it totally the bank, but it gives you an idea of what’s going on in the market at that time at the end of every month. So it’s one day in time.

Months of Inventory

That is at the rate homes are selling, how long will it take every last home to sell if no new homes came in the market? That’s months of inventory. We’re steadily at one here the last few years. A balanced market is four to six months. We are at one here. Right, and then you have one to three is a seller’s market. We’re obviously in a steep seller’s market because we are at one. It’s insane, right? No inventory and then seven-plus is a buyer’s market. So that gives you an idea of where we’re at. We see seven-plus months, eight, 10, 12, 15 when we have recession, depression and things like that. We saw that in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. So it gives me an idea of what’s going on and as a quick ratio to look at the market and say, “Oh yeah, that’s where we’re at.”

New Homes in the Market

This again is risen a little bit over the last couple of years. So this has risen almost in every county in August. More homes coming on the market in August. Our team has seen a ton of sellers come and want to sell in the fall now and again, take that photo’s worth. But in Michigan we see a lot of that timing between May and Jun, May and June and July in a lifeboat, moving and selling. We see September, October, and then November before Thanksgiving. A huge time of sale as well.

Price per square foot

This is steadily increased, a good steady increase over the last few years of appreciating houses. Again, this gives you the ability to take countywide. So it’s not, you know, you still need to get a CMA, a Comparative Market Analysis from an agent or you need to get an appraiser to come out and do evaluation in your property because what you can do here, if you could take your square footage, you multiply it by that, that countywide average and you’re gonna get an idea of where your home is priced, where it’s valued at. But again, you have to do, your home might be $90 or maybe $120 a square foot. So this gives you a rule of thumb, you know, in a ballpark of where it is. But again, we want to see that pattern of that pattern rising over time, countywide.

Sold Homes

this has decreased a little bit and again, there haven’t been many homes in the market and these are pending homes that were on pending in the last month or two. So now they’re getting closed in this month of August. So you know what’s happening in the month previous, right? There’s wasn’t as many homes in the market, so there was just not as many closing because there are not as many homes, right? So that’s why we’re seeing a little bit of that. Buyer pool doesn’t change too, too much. This is one of the buyers’ stats. We don’t see the buyer pool change too much unless there are huge inventory problems or there were recession or depression or huge interest rate changes. Right. So let me know what questions you guys have on this. This is the Macomb County update. Like I said, August 2018.

Let me know what questions you have on the updates and we can get those answered for you. We really appreciate your time and your attention and energy and bringing these to you. It takes a lot of time for us to put these together and gather all the stats and actually put the videos together and then get them out to you, etc. So we appreciate your feedback and we look forward to seeing you on the other updates.