The party keeps getting louder for the Leelanau County housing market.
Home sales last month reached new highs for total volume, average price and median price — and the records weren’t even close to previous marks.
When will the party end? “I’m very optimistic for the spring and summer in Leelanau,” said Tom Alflen, a real estate agent with Exit Realty Paramount who maintains a boutique office in downtown Leland. “Beyond that, I’m as confused as the next person. But I’m very upbeat on spring and summer.”
One reason may be the number of sales Alflen has closed this year, with several others in the waiting. He listed a home on north Lake Leelanau on Feb. 19 for $3.8 million, and this week secured an offer.
“I can’t tell you what the offer was, but it was a good number. Give me a couple more months, and you’ll see two back-to-back sales with big numbers,” Alflen said.
January home sales busted out of the gate. Some 23 units sold with an average price of $888,838 — 73 percent higher than the January 2023 figure of $514,866, according to figures provided by the Aspire multilisting organization of Realtors.
The median price of those sales came to $561,280, compared to the $456,000 figure from one year earlier. And the total volume ballooned to $20.4 million from a slow start in January 2023 of $7.7 million.
In a sign that the housing market remains tight, the average days on the market (ADM) before a sale decreased in all five counties served by Aspire. In Leelanau, the ADM moved from 110 in January 2023 to 85 last month.
Leelanau was not alone in having surprisingly strong year-over-year home sales in January. The dollar volume for homes sold in Grand Traverse County for the month nearly doubled, moving from $21.6 million to $40.6 million. Dollar volume decreased for the month in Benzie and Antrim counties.
Home sales in January decreased nationally by 1.7 percent when compared to January 2023, according to the National Association of Realtors. Still, when compared to December, home sales grew 3.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4 million.
The January figures for Leelanau represent a bit of a rebound from 2023, which placed third in annual volume sales compared to the record year of 2020 and 2022.
Alflen has been dealing with buyers from Hawaii, Chicago, Grand Rapids and southeast Michigan who are raising the bar for the worth of property in Leelanau. He recently oversaw the sales of 10 acres of open meadow near Northport for $179,000 and 4.5 acres with a 1,200 square foot pole barn near Lake Leelanau for $375,000.
“It’s bittersweet. Today it’s exponentially more difficult for the average income earner of all ages to come here or come back home,” said Alflen, who has been selling property in Leelanau County since 2001.
Of the record home sales in January, he said: “Here again, we are off to a scary good start in 2024. People from throughout the country are asking where they can sign because the price for that big house on Lake Tahoe is knocking everybody out of the saddle. Sales are booming in Wyoming, Montana and Leelanau County makes the list because of our natural resources, our water, vistas, quiet farmland and our villages.”
