What do an iPhone 14 and the local real estate market have in common?

Looking for the latest data on the Northern Michigan real estate market? Never fear, the Winslow Group local market report is here.

We continue to see a normalization in our market but fair better than national trends with sold prices remaining above same period 2021. In November, Emmet County saw a very healthy 11% appreciation rate while Charlevoix County was much higher at 41%. Charlevoix’s numbers were skewed by a number of Weathervane condo units which listed in 2021, making the baseline comparison number smaller and the resulting percentage increase higher.

New listings in both markets were up ever so slightly in both counties. Emmet listed 3% more units while Charlevoix listed 4% more homes, but recent increases in new listings aren’t meaningful and inventory remains low. Year over year unit sales continue to be sluggish with 37% fewer unit sold in both Emmet and Charlevoix Counties (same number, strange but true!).

Probably the most interesting statistic this month was a sharp decline across every market in days on the market. We suspect the decline is due to a sell down of older listings last year as we dipped into existing inventory when demand peeked and outpaced a skinny supply.

Here is a good Christmas analogy to demonstrate this:

Let’s pretend Apple ran out of iPhone 13s last year at Christmas time and Santa had to deliver a bunch of iPhone 11s to satisfy demand. Those iPhone 11s had been on the shelves for a long time, increasing the iPhone’s days on the market metric when they sold. This year both the iPhone 11 and 13s are all gone and the elves at Apple produced almost enough iPhone 14s to make all the nice techies on Santa’s list happy. Now when Santa runs out of iPhone 14s there are no old phones left so you will either get an iPhone 14 or a piece of coal (AKA android phone instead), all the while significantly lowering iPhone’s days on the market.

So, while we usually think about days on the market as an important way to demonstrate how competitive or “hot” a market is, we can’t get overly excited about what appears to be unusually strong trend data. We can still feel pretty good it is an indication demand remains solid in the face of rising interest rates and increasing unemployment.

Speaking of the economy, the consumer price index trended down again for the second month in a row which means we would expect interest rates to continue to decline. After extensive research (ummmmm…playing laser tag with some banker friends at the realtor Christmas party) we learned interest rates are predicted to return to at or below 5% next year. As always, we believe this will reawaken some sleeping demand and strengthen the market, although unlikely at levels seen over the last two years or so.

And that leads us to one final metric, percent of deals which were cash versus loan based. As you might expect those numbers trended a little higher as cash buyers are naturally less interest rate sensitive (Emmet 52%, Charlevoix 67%). We expect this to remain about the same until interest rates retreat next year.

As always, while market data is fun for impressing people at parties (especially when your laser tag skills are lacking), the best time to buy or sell a home is when you are ready to live somewhere else. At Winslow Group real estate, we work to know and understand your goals and advise you accordingly, always looking out for your best interest over our potential commission. That’s the Winslow Group way. Give us a jingle or drop a message into our DMs today to set up time to chat about what all this means for your unique situation.