Is Santa Bringing A Year End Gift to the Michigan Real Estate Market?

Overheard in my office more than once in the last two weeks, “Ever since the elections, it’s been like a Spring market.” The elections they are referring to are our Michigan gubernatorial elections in which the incumbent, Jennifer “She Can’t Run For President Because She Was Born in Canada” Granholm, easily defeated her Republican challenger, Dick “George Bush’s Amway Rep” Devos. We had an idea of how Dick could occupy his time for the next few years, but he has not called us to let us know if he is taking us up on it.

Back to that Spring market thing…

By Spring market, these agents mean that buyers are doing what they are supposed to do: BUY HOUSES!! Now that certainly got my attention.

After all, I can be a skeptic. OK, I am a skeptic.
I needed proof that we didn’t have a case of Realtor hyperbole spreading through the office faster than gossip the day after the office Christmas party. I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t a PR campaign by local Realtors to prop up the market.

Admittedly, my research was kind of superficial. I did limited sampling. In fact, all I did was take a look back at our own business since the elections. Here is what I can report:

• Web site traffic is up on Oakland-County-Homes by about 20%. I presume this is buyers because they are looking at homes for sale.
• The traffic to miOaklandCounty.com, our Michigan real estate blog, is up by similar margins.
• We’ve seen VERY short market times on a few of our listings. You gotta like that!
• The buyers we are working with are spending less time looking than they were a few months ago. You gotta like that too.
• We’ve heard of more than one home recently receiving multiple offers. Buyers who are attempting to “lowball” cream puff homes are sometimes finding that they end up losing out all together while they try to swing the best deal. Hopefully it wasn’t their dream house…
• We did more listing presentations and market analysis than ever at the end of this year. And we are at a personal record for the number of listings we have been entrusted with by Oakland County home sellers. (By the way, there are some great homes, there. Take a look and call us fore details.) Many of these sellers are moving with in the metro Detroit area.
• We are seeing buyers who will snap up a deal right now, even if their current home isn’t on the market. They are asking for contingent sales, but are accepting deals without them.
• We had one listing that had a deal fall apart. Don’t get me started about the lender and why what she did was illegal. But fortunately, we had another buyer in the wings, just waiting for the original deal to fall apart. A very nice first time buyer got the a great house, and our sellers were able to move on.

So, whether it is Post Election Fever or a gift from Santa, there is anecdotal evidence that a shift is occurring. Either way, we’ll take it.

Our best wishes to all for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The photo is of Boston’s Speedo Santa Run for Charity. It was taken by Presley and is used under Creative Common License.

[tags]birmingham michigan real estate, oakland county real estate, michigan real estate, politics and real estate[/tags]

Written by Maureen Francis
SKBK Sotheby's International Realty, 248.430.4450
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