GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — Grand Rapids is once again topping housing market prediction lists for 2024, recently making Realtor.com's top 10.
However, the demand is so high that houses are coming off the market quicker than they can be replaced.
"Two weekends ago ahead, I wrote five offers none of them got accepted," Grand Rapids realtor Garrett Kirby said. "The lowest one was 15 grand over asking. Highest one was 50 grand over asking. We're talking in the Grand Rapids market here in under $400,000 price point."
13 ON YOUR SIDE last interviewed Kirby in mid-January. In just a month and a half, he said the shortage is even worse than he anticipated.
"So at the end of January of this year, inventory was down another 25%. From our last conversation a couple months back," Kirby said.
Amidst this housing shortage, the latest data shows the median sale price of homes has increased 99.2% in Grand Rapids since 2016. To meet demand, the city would need 14,000 more units by 2027.
"Really, what we need is for builders to truthfully build more houses, because that's the only way we're going to have more inventory," said Kirby.
High interest rates mean less people are moving out of Grand Rapids if they don't have to, despite the increase in people moving to the city.
"It makes our job a lot harder, because there's so few houses that are for sale, and there's such a high demand for Grand Rapids specifically that when that house does come up, you have multiple offers multiple people coming through that house," Kirby said. "There was a house I showed to some clients that ended up writing an offer on it that had over 80 showings in two days."
Kirby says people are choosing to move to nearby suburbs outside the city instead, including Sparta and Allendale.
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