Highland does the double dip...

Real Estate in Highland, Michigan has been hammered by the recession and now appears to be going into a second swoon - a double dip.



Both Median sold home prices and the Inventory level are back on their way down, after a brief run-up in the 4th quarter of last year. The huge spike in new inventory can probably be attributed to the a burst of listings by sellers who have been like a little boy holding his breath and needing to take a deep breath. In this case the brief run-up in sold prices spurred and over-response by would be sellers to get in on that market - a market that turned out not to really be there.

So far this year, 41 homes priced above $20K (my arbitrary cut-off price) have sold. The average SEV multiplier so far in 2011 is 1.5079, which means that house that the assessor says is worth $200,000 would have actually sold for $150,790 or about 75% of the value that the tax man thinks it is worth. Obviously the local assessors are playing catch-up with the market. That house would have sold for an average of $72/Sq Ft, compared to all of last year at $74/Sq Ft. Of course last year homes sold for an average of only 1.3949 times their SEV, so I guess the assessors are getting closer to market value.

Foreclosures and short sales continue to make up a significant portion of overall sales, but they are running at under 50% for March, which is good and the first time that they've been below 50% in some time.