Novi fifth hottest housing market, says Realtor.com
The city of Novi is getting attention as one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, according to a new survey by Realtor.com.
The survey, which looked at data from the first six month of the year, also found that Detroit is the ninth-hottest market across the nation when it comes to interest and home purchases.
“You can see the economic recovery is finally sinking in. The Midwest is largely represented on this list,” said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for Realtor.com.
“That part of the country went through pain from a manufacturing decline. Now, you suddenly see there’s new kinds of companies opening up, you see the fingerprints of tech center in most of the hot areas of the country and now the advantages of affordability become apparent.”
According to Smoke, homes in Novi are on the market for 25 days on average, which is 20 days fewer than the rest of Metro Detroit. But in the Detroit market itself, homes sell an average of 48 days faster than the rest of the country.
In order for Detroit to rank so high, it means three-quarters of the ZIP codes in the region have homes selling faster than the rest of the country, he said. It has a lot to do with jobs.
“There’s a clear jobs story here. Detroit as a market has one of the fastest declining unemployment numbers in the country,” he said. “With households doing well and more confidence to buy, that often matters more than the actual unemployment numbers.”
Novi, which had a population of 57,960 in 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is a relatively short distance from the General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. headquarters and Detroit Metropolitan Airport and near major hospitals and highways. Its good schools also have attracted buyers, Smoke said.
On average, homes in Novi were selling for 22 percent more than the rest of the Metro area in June, according to Realtor.com. The average median income for households led by 25-34 year-olds is $80,000, 50 percent higher than the average millennial household in the U.S.
Novi was beaten by Melrose, Massachusetts; Columbus, Ohio; Littleton, Colorado; and Plano Texas.
Ann Arbor ranked 34th and Grand Rapids 44th on the list.
The survey includes the top 50 cities for major metropolitan regions across the country. Smoke said more Metro Detroit cities would have been on the list, but they limited it to one top city from each region surveyed.
The survey involved looking at pageview data on Realtor.com for the first six months of the year. Smoke said they took into account supply and demand, but recorded how long it took homes to sell and how many page views the listings got.
On average, Metro Detroit home listings are getting twice as many page views as the national average.
“I think it presents an environment that is sustainable and very good for businesses and consumers,” said Smoke.
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