Kris Wales - Macomb County MI real estate blog & homes for sale search site

Recently in Macomb County MI our Multilist service, Mirealsource™,
added the capability for real estate agents to include up to 12 photos of a home that has been placed on the market for sale.

Realtor.com also allows now for many more photos than they have
in the past, as well as the other Multilist in the Metro Detroit area, Realcomp™.

Please know that when you hire me to market your home and work for you and with you to I will sometimes make decisions that are contrary to the popular opinion of others.


I place photos of your home online for all the world to see that do your home justice and show it in the best possible light. I will not use 12 photos of your home if in my opinion 4 or 5 show areas that a potential buyer perhaps wouldn't like, and upon seeing those areas the buyer would could possibly make a decision to not even view your home.

When I use less photos or delete some photos from my preliminary marketing work up, I will talk to you about it and explain to you why I decided to do this. As always, you will be informed of this and your input is appreciated.

My job when you hire me to market your home is to show it in the best possible light and draw a potential buyer into your home.

We will work together to make sure this is done. Less may be better for your home, and I will not harm your home sale by doing something that can be done just because it is the popular opinion of others.



©Kris Wales RE/MAX Advantage 1, Inc. Macomb County real estate http://macombhomes.com

One of the areas that I have been following is how 2007 shaped up in our real
estate market in comparison to 2006.

I have been pleasantly surprised by what I have discovered in compiling these
numbers for you. Macomb County actually fared very well in the housing market, and
the number of homes sold during 2007 closely rivaled the sales of 2006. The average
total days on market lowered for 2007, showing me once again the home owners in our
area are being better educated by the professionals they choose to represent them.

Sales prices did go down once again, but on an average of 9.2% which is much less than
other areas of our country have witnessed.

The report that I compiled consists of residential home sales in Macomb County MI and
does not include condominium sales. I will provide those sales figures in a separate
report soon.




As always, if you have any questions about the values of your home, or the neighborhood
in which you reside, please don't hesitate to contact me for a non-pressured evaluation.

© Kris Wales Macomb County real estate Search for homes in Metro Detroit http://www.macombhomes.com

Over the next few days I will be posting several real estate market reports, the first of which
is this comparison between sales taking place in December of 2006 and December of 2007.

The following graph represents single family homes selling in Macomb County during this
time frame. One of the areas that I was excited about is the "homes sold". There is only
a difference of 2 homes - yes, that's right, 2. December of 2007 was a strong month for
home sales in Macomb County.

Another area that showed some outstanding signs of improvement was the average total
days on the market. Those totals plummeted for this past month and I believe the reason
is two-fold: Home sellers are pricing their homes aggressively and wisely, and bank owners
of the foreclosures are becoming more realistic as to the value of the homes they now own.



Data compiled by Kris Wales of RE/MAX Advantage 1, Inc. Information on the residential
sales is provided courtesy of Mirealsource™ and its participating brokers and real estate
agents.

If you would like particular information regarding your area in Macomb County MI
and the real estate sales please feel free to contact me at any time. I would be happy
to do the research for you.

© Kris Wales Macomb County real estate - Search for your new home in Macomb County

A few days ago I wrote an article about an offer that a buyer client placed on
a foreclosed upon home and how quickly we received a response from
the bank/owner.

Karen Moorhead and I have been in contact with each over this past week, as she also has an offer in on a home and has yet to receive a signed purchase agreement back from them. I thought I would update all of you on this progress of my clients offer and pass along the news that all is still well and moving along much quicker than I could have anticipated.

On Wednesday (one business day after receiving the counter offer from the bank) we received the bank addendums to the offer and the formal counter offer. Those were signed within hours by my client and forwarded off to the bank.

Friday evening we received the fully executed contracts back via email. This worked out to be a 4 business day turn around on the whole "offer-counter offer-signed acceptance" process.

I'm hoping this isn't an anomaly and is a sign of progress in Michigan in regards to
the glut of foreclosures on the real estate market. As I write this, I have another offer
that I wrote Thursday for a bank owned home that I haven't received a first response
from yet, and one other that will be faxed over to the listing office tomorrow morning.

For those of those who are interested, the 3 bank owned homes that have offers in on them
are being purchased by buyers who are different in their needs: One is a gentleman who
will be occupying the home as his primary residence, one is an investor who is taking advantage
of the wonderful buyers market to purchase another rental property, and the other is a buyer
who is purchasing the home for college students to live in.

As an aside: All of this activity occurred in just 12 days. Where is the media to report this flurry
of home buying?


If you would like a list of bank owned properties emailed to you please don't hesitate to
contact me. I would be happy to provide that information to you.

© Kris Wales Macomb County real estate Search for homes in Metro Detroit

This past Friday I wrote an offer on a bank owned property for a buyer client.

We got together for lunch near his workplace and I came back to my home office to fax it over to the listing agent.

I had cautioned my buyer that we probably would not hear anything until at least the end of this week because of New Years Eve and New Years Day, at the earliest. Truly I was not expecting to hear back until the week of the 7th.

Yesterday morning while preparing a dessert for a New Years Eve party I received a phone call. It was the listing agent of the home informing me that she had a response from the bank and that they had counter offered. You could have knocked me over with a feather, I was that stunned.


Anyone who has put in offers for a foreclosed upon home in Metro Detroit has experienced the typical 5-7 business day response time, if not longer. We've also experienced "accept or reject" and not a counter offer.

This bank, JP Morgan Chase, proved me wrong on both counts. We literally had less than a 24
hour business time response. I've never had that happen before with a foreclosure and am
thrilled to be proven wrong in my clients eyes.

I wish the person who made the quick decision at the bank could have heard the excitement in
my buyers voice when I placed the phone call to him yesterday.

Paraphrasing my clients words: "Happy New Year to me!".

I hope this a good sign of things to come in Michigan. Not only is a well qualified buyer going
to be moving into a new home shortly after the first of the year, but a bank is going to have
one less home in their inventory. This also means one less home on the market adding to the
"supply and demand" saturation.

Sometimes I love to be proved wrong. This is surely one of those times!


©Kris Wales Macomb County real estate Search for homes in Metro Detroit