Transcription
Two cities, 5 miles apart. One just saw sales explode 337%, and the other one, sales dropped 76%. I just pulled all of the April 2026 numbers from the Detroit suburbs. Every city, every price point, all the data. And what I found is that the market isn't moving in one direction anymore. It's splitting into two.
This is your April 2026 Detroit area market update. Let me break it all down for you.
Real quick, before we jump in, as always, I put together a full report with all the data from every single city I cover in this video. The median prices, the days on market, the inventory levels, the year-over-year changes, everything. You can grab it for free. The link's going to be in the description below, or just scan the QR code on your screen right here.
All right, let's get into these numbers. So, three counties really make up the Detroit suburbs: Oakland County, Wayne County, and Macomb County. If you just looked at the county numbers, you'd think that you knew the whole story, but the county numbers hide what's actually happening here.
So, here's the snapshot. Oakland County is actually the only one where homes are actually selling faster than they did last year. The days on market actually dropped, even with more inventory hitting the market. Oakland County, homes took 29% longer to sell in April, from 27 days last year to 35 days now. Wayne County is even worse, 19% longer. Closed sales are down almost 9%. So, at the county level, the story here is that Oakland County is heating, and Macomb and Wayne are cooling.
But here's the trap. If you just stop there at the county level, you miss everything, because inside each one of those counties, there are cities that are going in the exact opposite direction of the county that they're in. I've been doing this for over a decade in the Detroit suburbs, and I can count on one hand the amount of times where I've seen a market that's this uneven. Two cities right next to each other are doing the exact opposite thing. Their zip code matters more in your county right now. And I'm about to show you exactly what I mean.
I've been having this conversation with every single one of my clients right now. You have to pay attention to the city-by-city scenarios. If you are looking in the Detroit suburbs right now, again, you can always contact me. My contact information is below, too.
All right, so let me show you the wildest one. There are two Bloomfields in the Detroit area: Bloomfield Hills and Bloomfield Township. They sit right next to each other, same schools, same kind of buyer, similar price points. In April, they did opposite things.
So, Bloomfield Hills first. Last April, only eight homes sold there. This April, 35 homes sold. That's a 337% increase. And this isn't a 1-month fluke. I've been tracking this all year. If you've watched my other videos, you know what's been happening. In February, Bloomfield Hills was already surging, actively up 800% year-over-year. By the end of Q1, closed sales were up 278%, with homes selling in 19 days. And now, in April, it accelerated, 337%. New listings up 771%. Pending sales up 600%.
What happened? Well, it's simple. For the last year, I've been telling you that the high end of the Detroit market was stuck. Sellers wanted 2022 pricing, but buyers weren't paying it, so nothing was moving. What happened in Bloomfield Hills is that sellers finally came off their number. They met the market, and once they did, the buyers who were sitting on the sidelines, they showed up in force. The logjam broke.
Now, 5 minutes over in Bloomfield Township, closed sales are down 76%. Last April, 42 homes sold in Bloomfield Township. This April, 10. But, the median price jumped from $737,000 to over $1.25 million. That's up over 70%. And here's the thing, this is the same story I covered in my spring video. Q1 closed sales in the Township were down 76%. Now it's April, and nothing has changed. The standoff hasn't budged in 4 months. Same name, opposite stories, and the reason is simple. In the Hills, the sellers came off their number and the volume exploded. In the Township, the sellers are holding firm, so only the absolute top of the market moved, and nothing else.
If you're a buyer right now, the Hills is where you have the leverage. There are options for the first time there in years. If you're a seller in the Township, you need to look honestly at what's selling around you. The standoff isn't working anymore. The Hills have proved what happens when the sellers meet the market. The buyers are there, they're just waiting for a realistic number.
Now real quick, if you are not subscribed to this channel, please go ahead and do that now. I have a lot of people who watch this channel and they watch these updates and they don't subscribe. So, how would you know when I do these videos? They do every single month, along with a lot of other content. So, check that out, too.
So, after everything I just told you about the Bloomfields, you might think that the luxury market is just chaos right now. But Birmingham says not so fast. Birmingham did almost nothing dramatic in April, and that's kind of the story. 31 homes sold, and it's almost identical to last year. Days on market, 26. Exactly the same. Sellers got 100% of their asking price almost every single time. And the median sales price, $897,500. That's up just 1%.
Now in my spring video, Birmingham was on a tear. The Q1 median crossed $1.14 million for the first time ever, up 27% year-over-year. That number was being pulled up by a big March where 24 homes had sold, and they crossed over the $1.24 million median. April, it came back to Earth, $897,500. Not because Birmingham is cooling, because that huge March number was the outlier and not the norm. Year-to-date, the median is still $927,000, and Birmingham is firmly in the $900,000s, and it's not going anywhere.
If you want predictable, if you want a market where prices don't swing wildly, where homes are selling at asking, where there's demand that's steady year after year, Birmingham is the anchor of the Detroit luxury market. Now, if you're a buyer in Birmingham, don't expect a deal. Birmingham doesn't give discounts. You're paying for a market that holds its value through every single cycle. If you're a seller, price it right, and it'll sell. Don't push it. The data says that the buyers will pay your asking price, but they will not pay 5% over.
I talked to a lot of people about the Birmingham market, and people love it because it's the total package. It's walkable, extremely walkable. You've got just about everything nearby. You can drive to downtown Detroit. You can get to the airport, get to all of the other cities along the Woodward Corridor, and the schools are great there, too. Yeah, it's the total package. If you think you know of a city in Metro Detroit that's better than Birmingham in every way, I would love to hear about it in the comments. Please, let me know. I get a lot of people saying things like, "I'm not going to tell you where I live, but it's better." That's not true. I don't know that it's true.
All right, so now let's swing over to Wayne County, the county that I told you was cooling. Except in two cities, it's not. Plymouth, the city of Plymouth, not the township. This has been the hottest market in the Detroit suburbs all year. In February, it was selling at 103% of asking price in 13 days. In Q1, closed sales were up 192%, and it's still going. Year-to-date through April, 52 homes have sold. That's up 136%. Days on market cut almost in half, and the sellers are still getting over 101% of their asking price.
Right next door, Canton Township, closed sales up 54% in April. Median price is up 12%, and it's now at about $475,000. Those are two cities inside the same county where I told you that homes are taking 19% longer to sell on average. This is the lesson. When you hear things like Wayne County is cooling, that's true for most of Wayne County, but Plymouth and Canton are two of the hottest pockets in the entire Detroit suburbs right now.
If you're a buyer in either of these cities, you better be ready. Multiple offers, fast decisions, that's just the reality. If you've been waiting to sell because you've read some headlines saying that the market is slow, you are leaving money on the table because the buyers are there. They're paying over asking. That's been true since February, and it hasn't slowed down. Honestly, in just about every market in the Metro Detroit area, if you price a house correctly, you'll sell it fast. And if you have a strong marketing plan behind it, you're going to sell it fast and crazy hot. Want to talk about any of that? Again, contact information is below. And again, I know I keep reminding you, but the entire market report is going to be linked in the description below. So, you can go ahead and click that, download this whole thing, follow along with me. If you don't like listening to my voice, you can just read the thing. The QR code will get you there, too.
Now, let me show you a city that's doing something subtle but very important. Novi, Michigan. On the surface, Novi looks great. Closed sales up 40%. Days on market cut in half from 27 to 13. Sellers are getting 101% of their asking price, and that sounds like a hot market, right? But look at the median sales price. April 2025 in Novi, $670,000. But in April 2026, $556,000. That's down 17%. And this isn't new. In February, Novi's median was down 13%. In Q1, almost 10%. Now in April, down 17%. Same pattern all year long.
Here's what's happening. Novi isn't getting cheaper, the mix of what's selling has just shifted. A year ago, buyers in Novi were stretching for the higher-end homes. This year, buyers are flooding in at lower price points and snatching them up fast. That is why the days on market dropped so hard. The demand is there, it's just looking for value, not top-of-the-market stuff.
If you're a Novi buyer in the $500,000 to $600,000 price range, you are competing with everyone right now. So, you need to be aggressive. If you're a Novi seller above $700,000, you need to be patient and price honestly. The volume is happening below you. I swear, every time somebody comes to me with a budget right in that $500,000 price range, I just tell them, be prepared, because everybody is hunting in that zone. So, if you're looking a little bit above that, you have a little more flexibility. We can get houses a little faster. Just like with everything, there's tiers to things. So, you've got pockets where there's just a ton of competition, and there's pockets where there's just not. So, you just need to be prepared for it.
Let me give you one that's bothering me. Royal Oak, Michigan. The data here says something I didn't expect. Closed sales were down 5% in April. Days on market jumped from 17 to 29, a 70% increase, and inventory is up almost 50%. This didn't happen overnight. In February, the median was already down about 2%. Inventory was up 41%, and days on market had crept from 34 to 43. By Q1, Royal Oak was showing a clear pattern: more homes on the market, taking longer to sell, and sellers getting 98.8% of list price instead of over 100. And April confirmed it. This is the shift, not a blip.
Now, I've been watching this closely, and I don't think it's a crash. The median sold price is still up about 6% year-over-year. So, the homes that are selling are still strong, but they're just taking a little bit longer. And there's more of them to choose from. This is inside the county that I just told you was the strongest of all three. Oakland County is heating up overall, but Royal Oak's just sort of bucking that trend. If this is the market shifting, it tells you that the rules are changing.
Now, if you're a Royal Oak buyer, you have more leverage than you've had in the past 3 years. Negotiate, take your time, ask for repairs. 2 months ago, you couldn't do any of that. Now, if you're a Royal Oak seller, you need to price it right the first time. Listings that linger do not get the best offers anymore. I cannot even tell you the number of houses that I see just sitting on the market because the seller priced them too high to start. They priced it at numbers that they thought were good, but they're clearly not. They're refusing to do anything with them. If you're a seller, and that's you, I'm sorry. But, if you are a buyer, now's your chance.
All right, last one here. It's small, but it tells you everything. Franklin is one of the smallest luxury enclaves in all of Oakland County. It's tucked between Birmingham and Bloomfield, and most people drive right through without even realizing it. In April, only five homes sold there, and that's normal for Franklin. It's a small village and it's small inventory. But, look at how they sold. Last April, homes in Franklin took over 38 days to sell, and this April, 14 days. The median sold price last April was $879,000. This April, $1,387,500. That's up almost 58%.
Franklin is doing what Bloomfield Hills started doing months ago. Sellers met the market, inventory cleared, and some of the homes that were selling this April were bigger, higher-end properties that finally found their buyer. And this is what a luxury logjam looks like when it breaks. If you're a buyer in the $1 million plus level in Oakland County, this is your signal. The standoff is starting to crack. Properties are actually moving again. So, don't wait until the inventory's gone. Franklin's a great place to be. This is where billionaire Dan Gilbert lives. Rubbing elbows with Dan. Invest in all this money in Detroit, but he owns the Cleveland Cavaliers, but Pistons. Or maybe he shouldn't. I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it. Let me know how you feel about it.
All right, so that's where we are. The Detroit suburbs, it's not one market right now. There are dozens of markets stitched together, and most of them are doing the opposite of what the headlines and the numbers say. If you live in Bloomfield Hills, the floor just opened. If you live in Plymouth or Canton, you're sitting on something hotter than your neighbors probably realize. And if you live in Novi, the value buyers are running the show.
Again, I cover just about every single one of the Detroit suburbs in this report, not just the ones I talked about on the screen. So, if you want to see that data, link's going to be in the description, or just scan this QR code on your screen.
So, here's what I would do with all of this information once you've got it. If you're a seller, the days of just throwing a price up and hoping are over. You need to know what your specific city is doing, and price for that, not what you heard it at a dinner party. Wrong price by 5% in this market will make you sit for 60 days.
Now, if you're a buyer, your leverage depends entirely on which city you're shopping. Some cities, you're going to need to fight. Other ones, you can negotiate. Knowing the difference is the entire ball game right now.
Now, if you are still looking for a place to live in Metro Detroit, and you're undecided, you should check out some of the other videos and playlists on my channel here, and I'll see you there.