With a shrinking number of foreclosure sales last year, the price of foreclosed homes in metro Detroit showed an increase compared with 2009.
Meanwhile, the price of nonforeclosure sales dropped 10 percent during 2010, according to the MLS Realcomp II Ltd., driven by double the volume of short sales.
The numbers show overall home prices going up, foreclosures going down and the time required for listings to sell going down — all healthy signs, said Realcomp CEO Karen Kage.
“Through the year, we’ve seen the number of nonforeclosure sales gaining on the foreclosure sales,” she said. “As of right now, there are 32,000 units on the market, with 27,000 of them nonforeclosure listings.”
But those nonforeclosure listings showed a 10 percent decrease to a median price of $106,600 in 2010, compared with $119,000 in 2009.
Kage attributes the drop to a significant increase in short sales, which are considered nonforeclosure sales. In 2009, there were 3,900 short sales in metro Detroit, compared with 7,200 in 2010.
Overall prices increased, however, driven by a 24 percent rise in foreclosure sale prices, from $28,400 in 2009 to $35,200 in 2010.
For all sales in metro Detroit, the number of units sold decreased from 55,000 to 50,400 in 2010, and the overall median sale price increased from $54,500 to $67,900.
Listings were on the market for a shorter amount of time — 103 days compared with 95 in 2009.
Sale prices in 2011 remain hard to predict, Kage said.
“It’s going to be all about the confidence of consumers in the market to list their homes,” she said. “If they see those prices coming up, they’re going to put their home on the market. But before they do that, they’ll be looking to price it accurately, and right now they can’t.”
