[billyellieot]

Just how bad is the real estate market in Michigan.
I have seen how many people are trying to sell and can not. I have friends in North Michigan and they can not sell. To be fair, they do not seem to want to bring down the price. I see some people selling at prices that are not very realistic. Are people not seeing that the market is one of the worst in the nation, or at least among the worst. And not taking down the price?

[Bydand]

Market is doing fine where I am. Houses selling, some very quickly I might add. We just bought a place 6 weeks ago and a house that went up for sale a few doors down is gone already and a new family has already moved in. Home in this section of the state are moving in good shape and prices are very stable.

If this is the worst or one of the worst housing markets in the country, I can't see what the problem is then. In all honesty there are problem areas, but that is all over the Country and I don't think anybody can pick an entire state and say the market stinks. Here in MI there are good, strong markets as well as weak markets.

[ImaMichigander]

My house was for sale by owner, after having talked with 2 realtors and the prospect of paying them $25,000 to sell my house just didn't sit well with me. We initially were asking $25,000 less than we owed. The one offer we got was for $100,000 less than we owed, $75,000 less than we were asking. That's just plain wrong. I should add that my house is less than 3 years old and the builder is still building homes in the sub...

Now were with a realtor,whom I am not pleased with and we're asking almost $40,000 less than we owe. It sucks.

Did I mention that I now live in Ohio?

Intrestingly, a couple stopped by to pull an info sheet and talked with my neighbor. The interested couple were commenting on what a pity it is that we "had to walk away from our home." My neighbor politely told them that we were not walking away because we couldn't afford our home, it was because my husband got a much better paying job in Ohio. People just assume that you have to give your house away and that they'll get it for a steal. It's not right.

[Bhaalspawn]

Originally Posted by billyellieot

Just how bad is the real estate market in Michigan.
I have seen how many people are trying to sell and can not. I have friends in North Michigan and they can not sell. To be fair, they do not seem to want to bring down the price. I see some people selling at prices that are not very realistic. Are people not seeing that the market is one of the worst in the nation, or at least among the worst. And not taking down the price?

Many people are just having a hard time accepting the fact that houses have been severely overpriced for years and that most Americans just can't afford outrageously overpriced houses, especially during a time when people's spending power is under attack from rampant inflation in other areas and when the nation's economy and job market are in the ****ter. Eventually they'll have to face reality and sell their houses for lower prices.

[gr8pyrz]

I live Downriver which encompasses many small cities SE of Detroit. As an average, during 'regular' economic times, the housing prices are typically 115k - 160k on average.

We dropped the price 3x on our house in 6mo and at our lowest price (114k$) there were still 176 properties, just in our city that were below our price. 3 bedroom brick homes are easily going for 80k, which is a heck of a lot more loss than just 'adjustment for overpricing' !! Our house is worth right around or less than what we paid 10yrs ago.

So yes, it's horrid. On average, just about every street has at least 2 for sale and 1 foreclosed no matter what city you travel in down here. And these are older, affordable homes. These are not McMansions in new subs.

[MIEng]

I do not agree that houses in SE were overpriced. Between 2003 and 2004 (before prices started to slide) you could still buy a very nice house (not a Mc Mansion but a nice comfortable house) for around 180,000 in many areas of Oakland County and pretty much anywhere in Macomb county. Compared to the prices in many other suburban areas the size of Metro Detroit that was hardly overpriced.

We bought our house over two years ago for 350,000 (brand new 3,000 sqf, 4 br, 2.5 bath, 3 car garage, with all the trimmings) and even at that time I did not think that was overpriced (at least when I compared to what my friends were paying in Florida and California). However there are still houses that the builder are trying to sell in my subdivision and there is already one forclosure that sold for 210,000 (my exact same house!!) last month, ouuch!!

We also own a second home in north west Oakland County that we were considering selling and the realtor told us if we were lucky we would be able to sell it for 130,000. That is 5,000 less of what we paid for 10 years ago!!!

We are relatively young and still have many years of productive life to make up for our losses here in MI. But I feel bad for those people that are retiring now and had planned selling their homes and downsize to economize.

The problem is the crappy Michigan economy and from Detroit to Birmingham it is affecting everybody

[Coldjensens]

The market in S.E. Michigan is terrible because there are far more houses for sale than there are buyers. Further, with prices dropping regularly, people are afraid to buy. You cannot sell a house for what it costs to build it. Comparing what we paid to the current appriased value, we lost the equivalent of three years worth of our entire income in the past three years. (Thus I effectively earned nothing during these three years.) That frigtens potential buyers away.

[sikes0000]

I recently bought a house in SE Michigan. We paid less then what buyers paid 10 years ago for a similar home in the same neighborhood. But the way things are going I could end up owing more then I could sell it for. But I plan on being there 10-15 years so I am not worried. Probably pay it off in 15 anyways.

As we were shopping around at homes it amazed me how little previous owners cared for them. There were lots of people looking at the same houses as us which means there are buyers out there. But after they saw how much work had to be done they couldn't get out of the house fast enough. Some of the newer homes we looked at were built in the early 90's but looked as though they had been lived in for 20 years. Dirty walls, landscaping that had not been taken care of and damaged floors etc.

Some homes I did not know what year they were built and thought to myself early 70's but it turns out they were late 80's. They just extremely looked lived in by owners who did not care. I can't imagine living in a house for more then a few years without updating at least something.

With some homes the buyers risks not only having prices continue to drop for a few more years but now has to spend lots of cash fixing it up.

But houses are still selling although extremely slowly and pre-2000 prices.

[Frankawitz]

The thing with Real Estate is it was out of control, the prices where going through the roof, Mortgage companies where playing the numbers game, and they put folks into houses they couldn't afford in the first place, It's called keeping up with the Jones mentally. that's what happened, have you ever heard the saying, "Champagne taste with a Beer barrel budget" how do you think you can live like this for that long. I would say that if people would have taken a real hard look at their finances and seen they really couldn't afford it, things would have been diffrent. That's like all the big SUV's people were driving, and what we didn't think back to the 1970's or the 1980's when auto industry took beatings back then. Nope we were Americans and no one could tell us. So now here we are. so in the years to come it will go back up but People think they can keep their houses at a high price and sell it, I would count on that for at least two maybe three more years. I have seen my own home go from $150,000 down to $78,000 just because of the area I live in, The thing is I only paid $47,500 for my place in 1993, I doubled it's size and made major improvements, which I did 90% of the work. so I didn't really loss anything on my house other then the dream it was worth 150k
The market had to adjust it's self and it did, the thing is it took allot of people down. then the jobs started leaving more and more people laid off or bought out or forced into retirement. I think if GM wouldn't have Killed the Electric car the first time we would be seeing different times, but instead here we go playing catch up with china and japan in the auto industry. Then you have so many people with Matual Funds and allot of these rae tied to Oil. So there you have the high prices for Oil, cause we all know people want their Nest Egg. so all these things play on each other. So like John F. Kennedy said "Don't ask what your Country can do for you, But what you can do for Your Country" We have lost that insight in this Country.

[MIEng]

Originally Posted by sikes0000

As we were shopping around at homes it amazed me how little previous owners cared for them. There were lots of people looking at the same houses as us which means there are buyers out there. But after they saw how much work had to be done they couldn't get out of the house fast enough. Some of the newer homes we looked at were built in the early 90's but looked as though they had been lived in for 20 years. Dirty walls, landscaping that had not been taken care of and damaged floors etc.

Some homes I did not know what year they were built and thought to myself early 70's but it turns out they were late 80's. They just extremely looked lived in by owners who did not care. I can't imagine living in a house for more then a few years without updating at least something.

With some homes the buyers risks not only having prices continue to drop for a few more years but now has to spend lots of cash fixing it up.

But houses are still selling although extremely slowly and pre-2000 prices.

In my area about 80% of the houses that are currently for sale are forclosures or distressed sales. Most of them are currently vacant and the inside may not be in the best shape (If you can't even pay the mortgage the last thing you are going to care is if the walls are dirty). That absolutely sucks because everybody esle maintain their homes inside and out. But I can see how buyers can get frustated but on the other hand who in their right mind is going to put their house for sale in this market after spending thousands of $$ updating and upgrading their homes. The people selling now are desperate because they either need to move to another state for a job or cannot afford their homes anymore and that may be why there are so many houses in poor condition in this market.