Fresh Eyes on The Birmingham Bloomfield Luxury Home Market

I’ve just finished up a whirlwind two days with clients in from Miami who were looking at luxury homes in Birmingham and Bloomfield. Their comments gave me a fresh perspective about our area and about our housing market. It was good to hear how we look from the eyes of those seeing the area for the first time.

Michigan Living

• Snow is a photo opportunity if you are live in Florida. They were excited to see flakes falling from the skiy in the evening as they returned to their hotel. Just as we Michiganders are feeling really frustrated with the white stuff. I am betting that they rarely take pictures of palm trees at home, like Dmitry did the first time he went to Florida.
• Men playing golf in the snow at Forest Lake Country club are amusing. Well, I found them amusing too, out there in their shirt-sleeves enjoying a sunny afternoon.
• They delighted in seeing 4 deer along the side of Woodward Avenue as we passed through the City of Bloomfield Hills.
• They noticed nobody speaks Spanish on the streets in Birmingham or Bloomfield. That is a change from Miami for sure.
• Where are our good South American restaurants? I confess I was stumped by that question. They really liked the Middle Eastern food restaurant where we had lunch though. Metro Detroit does Middle Eastern food like nobody’s business!

Our Houses

• Michiganders like their basements. Floridians don’t have them, but after they see ours they think that basements are a very good thing. Especially finished basements.
• Our luxury spec homes are almost all have white kitchen cabinets. Not so common in Florida where cherry is a popular choice.
• Florida offers more gated communities. Could our demand be more limited? Right now a buyer who wants a gated community is going to be in Turtle Lake, Hills of Lone Pine and potentially Barrington Park, where a gate is under discussion with the City of Bloomfield Hills.
• Seems like even individual houses in South Florida might have more gates and privacy fences than we have here.

Another reminder for Birmingham Bloomfield Luxury Home Realtors

• These buyers, like most I work with, were making their choices about what to see and what not to see, in part, based on the pictures and the virtual tours I sent them from the MLS. They tend to skip over the houses with only one photo and no tour because they only had no time to waste.