Market Updates

Gary Keller, one of the country’s top brokers and author of best-selling book “Shift:  How Top Real Estate Agents Tackle Tough Times” was on ABC’s “Good Morning America” last week.   Mr. Keller gave his opinion on how to increase your chances of selling in this market. Selling Your House in a Down Real Estate Market [...]

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As I head to Florida for a much-needed vacation and annual Spring Training game (Go Tigers!!!), I leave you with an excellent Q & A reblogged with permission from my staging colleague Cindy Bryant of Redesign Etc, Inc. in Houston, TX.  Her post on Active Rain is spot-on and truly reflects the most common questions [...]

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Realty Times recently published an article titled “What’s In, What’s Out With Home Buyers in 2009?” . Author Mark Nash gives a rundown of how the real estate market may look this year and what he feels buyers are looking for. While Mr. Nash makes some very valid observations, I must take issue with a [...]

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From the doom and gloom we are hearing around town these days, I bet most Michiganders would be surprised to know that RealtyTrac said we were 5th in foreclosures in November.  1 in 309 Michigan homes is in foreclosure, compared to the nation’s leader, Nevada, where 1 in 76 homes is in foreclosure. A few [...]

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Image via Wikipedia Would you be surprised to know that a house in Metro Detroit sold for nearly $10,000,000 this summer?  That’s a whole lotta cash, by just about anyone’s standards.  According to information from Realcomp II, 21000 Turnberry Lane in Novi, sold for $9,800,000 in August.  It wasn’t even officially on the market when [...]

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This GOOD REAL ESTATE NEWS just in from Metropolitan Consolidated Association of Realtors. Note the great numbers in Bloomfield Township: Home sales again increased in both Oakland and Macomb counties compared to figures from last year. In Oakland, sales rose 23 percent; in Macomb, they rose 26 percent. Affordability helped make Southfield Oakland’s top-selling municipality: [...]

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I just ran a complete search of home sales in Birmingham MI for the first three quarters of 2008. There were 243 home sales (225 sold, 18 pending sales) between January 1st and September 30th, 2008. I decided to create a pdf file so that readers could take a look at these sales themselves. Statistics [...]

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The Metropolitan Consolidated Association of Realtors released third quarter 2008 home sales statistics for Oakland County today, compiled from information they received from Realcomp, our mls. We’ve highlighted the report for markets that we serve, like Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Royal Oak and Troy. In the county as a whole, sales were up by 21.12% year [...]

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In a historic move yesterday, Treasury Secretary Carlson announced the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two financial giants have been struggling over the past year due to an unprecedented increase in foreclosures which relate to falling home values and the subprime loan meltdown. If the two were allowed to fail the [...]

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A recent client wanted a completed NEW home in Birmingham.  With a budget of $2,000,000, one would have thought we would have had plenty to chose from.  We did not. Spec building in Birmingham, and throughout Oakland County, has almost come to a stop.  We are still seeing a few spec homes going up around [...]

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The last few months have been whirlwind for Dmitry and me.  In spite of all that you hear about the crummy housing market, we, through hard work, good fortune and a bit of creative thinking, find ourselves square in the middle of our best year in real estate-EVER.  Yes, you read that right.  Our best [...]

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