January 2019 Real Estate Market Update – Livingston County, Michigan
We are bringing you your Livingston County, January 2019 Real Estate Market Update. Let's jump right into this. We are back on the board, back in the whiteboard. Hopefully, you guys are having a wonderful year so far. We have a couple of things that I always preface every video with. We have three years of data. It's because we need to see a pattern. I want you to see a pattern and see what's going on here. That way we can see exactly what's going on with the trend of the market. The trend is your friend as they say in the stock investing world. Same thing as real estate. Every where you invest the trend is your friend, right? So we do that and we also do the month previous because we have all the data. The data is fresh off the press, we have it all, just like getting jobs report. It comes the first Friday after the month ends. The same thing as this.T his come at first Thursday after the month ends, now you get your data. So let's jump right into this - Livingston County.
Days on market
We had a little bit of a drop over the last two years and then we've had a significant increase actually this past year. We're seeing this trend a little bit through the different major counties here in Metro Detroit and I really think this is because of a number of things. We're seeing interest rates going up, we're seeing market volatility, we're seeing a lot of different bubbles popping up everywhere, credit, student loans, bonds, you name it, a lot of stuff going on. So I think that's why there's this balance. Trade wars, terrorists, there's a lot of stuff going on. That's why. People don't like volatility, markets don't like volatility. So that's what happens. Now we have an increase in days on the market and homes sitting on the market longer than people would like and longer than they expect. Especially when we have these trends been going down so much over the last couple of years.
Active homes in the market
This is just a cross section from the month and it's one day at the end of each month that we take this data so it gives you a good idea of what's going on. How many homes are active at that time at the end of the month? Again, there was a big drop last year. It was more homes in the market this January and there was last January, more like 2017, which is a good thing. It's why things are sitting a little bit more though.
Month of inventory
Just the rate that things are selling. This is the rate at the rate at which things are selling, if no new homes come on the market, how long would it take to sell every last home? So you can still see that we're still in the three's. It's still a pretty good rate of homes. Again, this is a good ratio, so it laid off to look into all the numbers. You can just see it. Boom. Where are we at and again - one, two, three months, hat's a seller's market, or zero to three, I should say. Zero to three is a seller's market, four to seven, six or seven - that's balanced and then basically seven plus is a buyer's market. That means there's a ton of inventory, there's a ton of choose from. And then we saw that in the catastrophic events like the recession in 2008.
New homes in the market
This is the number of new active listings that came up on the market in January. Again, pretty similar here in 2017, 2018, a little bit of a jump again in 2019 and we're seeing more homes being listed. That's why we're seeing things a little bit longer if people aren't really used to that yet, especially we've had some cold days in January. Some really interesting stuff going on in market volatility, weather. So it's interesting to see playing out what happens in the next few months.
Price per Square foot
128-135-140. Still again, the price is trending upward. But this does go to the fact that there were a number of homes that were closed in months previous. And that's getting that data. Same thing with Sold. This is county-wide. So you still need an appraisal. You still need someone to come in, a real estate agent come in and give you an assessment on your home if you want your value. But this gives you an idea countywide. Remember it gives you an idea of when you multiply that by your square footage about where your home will be. It gives you a good general rule of thumb right now.
Sold
Sold is the buyer statistic that we have. The only buyer statistics that we have. This shows any amount of buyers that are out there and again we've got it pretty good. It was bouncing up and down a little bit, but it's staying pretty steady, which means there's a lot of buyers out there. This means we just have a lot more homes out there, which is why the days on market is going up, which is good. That's again, it's a good thing is we need a little more balanced in the market. I would expect this to maybe be up towards for a little bit and moving soon.
This is a good sign. Still a lot of the same buyers out there. Buyer pool doesn't get affected that much unless there's a recession or depression or something like that. Usually, that's what freaks people out. Again, interest rates will do that and stuff like that. So it will be interesting to see what happens over the coming months because we really haven't had any of that volatility in the last quarter too. We've had talks about it, but now things have been starting to happen the last couple of months will be interesting to see how that plays out going forward.
So I appreciate you guys more thing. Hopefully, you got something out of this, the Livingston County Market Update for 2019 in January. I really appreciate you guys and all the feedback you give us. If there's questions, comments, concerns, please put them in the feed here. That way we can benefit the most amount of people possible. We get a ton of people that are emailing us, text messaging, put stuff in the DM or whatever, and we love that. We just want to keep the conversation on the feed here. So please do that if you can. If you know someone in these areas, please send this to them. Share them, tag it, like it, love it, hate it, whatever. Please give us some feedback. That way we can change our direction and course correct as necessary. So appreciate you guys more than anything. Appreciate your time, your energy spending with us. It's an honor. The most important thing we have, the most valuable asset we have is time. So thank you so much and we'll talk to you soon.