I’ve shown many homes in Sterling Heights (Macomb County MI) over the last 2 months and while many of them have been your typical on the market homes (not a foreclosure or a short sale) I have been surprised to see that it is the foreclosure sales that have overwhelmingly been the homes that have sold.
This past March there were a total of 43 homes that sold in Sterling Heights. (I’m not including condos in this article, just the single family residential homes.)
Of these 43 homes 28 of them have been foreclosures (bank owned) and 4 have them have sold via short sales.
Surprisingly only 11 homes in Sterling Heights sold that were your typical non-distressed sales.
(Non-distressed: Normal owner to buyer sales transfers without having to get bank approval for either a short sale or a full foreclosure sale.)
I was also surprised that 4 short sales closed. I think the banks (mortgage holders) are starting to see that negotiating with the home owners who need help in this manner is much better than taking the home back in foreclosure.
Pricing, as always, is the key. If you want to sell your home and don’t wish to wait until this downturn is over with in Macomb County then you have to price it competitively. Whether we like it or not the foreclosure & short sales data is going to be used to determine market value by a buyers mortgage lender.
~Kris Wales~ A partner for your real estate needs in Macomb County MI
Homes for Sale search site with MLS provided data.
*Data used for this report gathered from Mirealsource™ and its participating brokers and real estate agents. The usual deemed to be reliable but not guaranteed clause applies.
Have a real estate question? RSS Feed
2 responses so far ↓
1 Rita Bradley // Apr 17, 2009 at 8:39 pm
A lot of sellers assume that foreclosure “comparables ” in their neighborhood are in inferior condition to their home and price their home accordingly. The thing is, REOs aren’t always in inferior condition and non-reo sellers end up not being able to sell their home until they drop their price to competitive levels.
2 Kris Wales // Apr 18, 2009 at 5:05 am
Hi Rita,
You’re absolutely correct. Not all foreclosures are in poor condition. Also, when most of the sales of homes are distressed sales an appraiser has no choice but to use those as comparable sales. Gone are the days of them being an anomaly and tossed out of the mix…
Kris Wales
Leave a Comment