Case-Schiller - Schmiller we don't need no double dip

The recent Case-Schiller report on the national real estate market showed real evidence that the market has indeed entered a double dip- a second decline in home values, after a short "recovery" earlier in the year.

Of course all real estate is local, so the national trend may not apply in your area. In fact, in my home market of Milford, Michigan, we appear to be defying the odds - see chart below from Altos Research:



Milford home values turned around earlier in the year and continue to rise and the inventory in the local market is going up, too. Inventory is still low, compared to historic levels, but more people are apparently feeling good about listing their homes (or maybe they just gave up waiting out this mess).

Such is not the case right next door in Highland. There the home value decline turned around in April, but inventory continues to decline.



And if one looks at the White Lake market it is hard to see more than a tiny blip that even looked like things were getting better. The malaise continues in that market.



Finally, there is the Commerce Township Market, which has taken off so fast that the inventory can't keep up with the demand. Since April the Commerce market has come roaring back, in terms of median sold home prices and the inventory has struggled to keep up.



Both White Lake and Highland also continue to top the 50% mark in terms of the percentage of home sales that are foreclosures or short sales - not an encouraging sign of things getting better.

I certainly hope that our market is a leading indicator of a robust recovery (at least in some of the sub-markets) and not just lagging the national scene. I've listed five houses since the turn of the year, which is good; however, I still have all five on the market, which is not so good. We still need more buyers in the mid-price range ($200-$400K), which is where most of my listings are priced.

So Mr. Case and Mr. Schiller can report all they wish about a double dip in housing. We seem to have been happy with our Single, prolonged dip - thank you very much. We're off to a new, better market without them.

Looking west into Livingston County

I'm tracking three Livingston County markets this year - Green Oak Township, Brighton (City and township) and Hartland Township, which includes the Village of Hartland. All three sort of border the Oakland County Townships that I had already been tracking (actually I've tracked Brighton for a couple of years now).

The Green Oak market is subsumed into the Brighton Market in the Altos Research statistics, which is OK since Green Oak is more or less a bedroom community that feels a lot like a suburb of Brighton. So the chart below has both the Brighton and Green Oak sales included in the data.



As you can see, this area experienced that same double-dip bounce as the ones that I reported on last week. There was a big apparently rise in the median prices of sold homes near the end of the year, followed by an equally dramatic fall again at the end of the year and into 2011. That was caused mainly by the pause that the big banks went through on foreclosures after the legal brouhaha last fall. When the banks stopped foreclosing and dumping those homes on the market, more and more normal home sales took place, which drove the median sold price up. As soon as they resumed normal foreclosure activity the median sold price dropped again. The decline in inventory continued a downward slide thorough out the year.

It turns out that Hartland is invisible to Altos Research, or at least there is now way that I can find to designate Hartland as an area to be charted. so, no chart for Hartland. I would be surprised if it showed any difference anyway. Most of the Hartland market has been in distressed homes, so it would have had the same issues with the foreclosure moratorium at the end of last year. So far this year Hartland is running about 60% distressed homes sales.