February 2019 Real Estate Market Update – Wayne County, Michigan
What's going on, guys? Brandon here. We have your Wayne County Real Estate Market Update for February 2019. So let's jump right into this.
I always preface these videos with a couple of things that way you guys know exactly what's going on. We do the month in arrears because we have all the data now and the month has completed. All the numbers are in, just like jobs report. They do the first Friday after the end of the month. We do the first Thursday after the end of the month. So we always do three years of data as well. We have 2017, 2018 2019 year for you. That way you can see a pattern. If we just gave you one year of data, that won't make any sense. So we have three years of data for you. That way you can see exactly what is going on and you can make the best decisions for you and your family that's why we do three years of data so you can see those patterns. So let's jump right into this.
Days On Market
Days on market is the first one deal on. Anytime you see DOM as days on market or ADOM or CDOM on that just means days on market basically 52 years ago, 53 last year, at 55 this year. So going up a little bit actually in the number of days on the market. We're going to see if the numbers play out here over the rest of this. Sometimes there are abnormalities in the numbers. We have 18 numbers for you here in these different categories, three years plus six different stack categories. So there's 18 total. We want to see if there are abnormalities and we want to see what patterns are generally there's gonna be 15 or 16 numbers telling us the same thing. One or two outliers, that's fine. We leave them to be.
Number of Homes in the Market
We had 4,559 two years ago, 4,221 last year and then 4,732 this February. So again, a market improvement of the number of homes that are active. This is just a one day snapshot. This is why we give you three years of data. So one day snapshot to show you what is going on in the market on a given day when we take the data. What I mean the thing if it was just one number one month, that's why we showed you three years. Give you an idea of that trend. The trend is your friend, right? Whether it's stocks or real estate, doesn't matter when investing, they always say the trend is your friend. So use it.
Month of Inventories
What that means is at the rate homes are selling, how long would it take to sell every last home with no new homes entering the market? Well, we have 3, 3 and 3 right across the board. It hasn't changed much and it means we're still in a pretty heavy a seller's market. Just to give you guys some context, we have 1-3 is a seller's market. Four to six months is a balanced market and then seven up is a buyer's market. That gives you an idea of where we're at and it really hasn't changed much even though some of these numbers might be kind of all over the place and kind of confusing. That gives you a quick snapshot to say "Boom, I know exactly what kind of market we're in." And like I said, if it's a solid market that means there's not as much inventory and sellers getting top dollar, if it's balanced, both sides are kind of making out. It's a buyer's market. That means there's a lot of inventory. Buyers have a lot to choose from and buyers are making out.
New Homes in the Market
This is the number of new listings that were put on the market in that month of February. Two years ago there were 2,488. Last year there was 2,123. This past February there were 2,304. So just over 2300. Again down from 2017 but up from last year, which is good. Some of the counties in Southeast Michigan had been all over the place. It was good to see Wayne County has a little bit of an influx in homes that are actively on the market. We had such a low inventory the last year and it's such a shortage that it was really affecting everyone quite honestly because even seller, a lot of sellers, they had to sell and go buy something so then they had to jump in the market. So it's just causing all kinds of vicious circles if you will.
Price per square foot
Price per square foot with $67 two years ago, $77 last year and $84 this February. Again, an increase every single month when there's low supply and there is the same demand or high demand, prices go up. This is another reason we give you three years of data because this is just a general rule of thumb. It's countywide, so you can't take this yet. You got to take with a grain of salt. You can't take this as gospel. If you truly want an analysis of your home, your actual value, you have to contact an appraiser, a real estate team, our team, a real estate professional, someone that can give you actual data, come to your property, see what you've done to it, talk to you, walk the property, walk the neighborhood and give you an actual report on what's going on.
So again, this just gives you the trend and shows you that numbers and the prices have gone up. Basically, a quick example, if you took this $84 a square foot for this past month of February and you multiplied it by your square footage, you would get the approximate value of your home.
Sold
The last one here is sold. This is the buyer category that we have and it shows us you basically how many buyers in the market and what's going on, how many homes actually close. We usually don't see this number change all that much unless there's something crazy going like the recession or depression or something like that. Something catastrophic. Two years ago there were 1,549 closings, 1,483 last year and 1,358 this past February. We have to go back and see the last month or two, but I do know the inventory has been down so it doesn't surprise me that closings are now a little bit. It'll be interesting to see now that we've got more listings going, what the data is like over the next month or two compared to the years previous. But just something to keep an eye on. It hasn't changed too much in the Sold category. Not surprising me all that much, but it's going to be an interesting year I think to see what is going on with interest rates, the Fed doing what they're doing, the Chinese trade wars, there's just so many things going on everywhere. It's going to be very interesting. The volatile nature of what's going on in the world around us, the geopolitical climate we're in and just the domestic climate can be very interesting.
So keep your eye out, stay tuned to us. We weren't really doing a ton of market updates, obviously every single month. We're going to do an Insider's Updates where we talk about the macro-economics and how they affect our cities here and our counties here in southeast Michigan and give you that data in our Insiders' Reports and we look forward to sharing it with you guys.
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