GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Hunting for housing can be stressful and the past few years have been more ideal for sellers as opposed to buyers.
FOX 17 talked with Maria Hamell Wednesday who is currently looking to buy her first home.
“I’m open to really any area as long as the house has good bones and it’s in a safe neighborhood,” she said. “The price point I’m looking at, it’s very competitive amongst other people who are also looking for homes.”
Hamell says her range is around $200,000 or lower.
Data from Housing Next shows an ongoing need for homes throughout West Michigan.
Specifically, Housing Next’s website shows Kent County needs around 35,000 new homes by the year 2027— with Grand Rapids needing 14,000.
“I would say January 2, it was like the sticker shock was gone. Buyers realized they don’t want to be in their mom and dad’s basements, they don’t want to be renting that crummy apartment, they want to get out there and back on the market,” Scott West with GreenSquare Properties in Kent County explained to FOX 17. “Hopefully, rates trickle down in the next couple years.”
The United States Census Bureau shows that first-time home buyers are looking at older homes— the majority built in the 1940s.
“People say, ‘well, we need affordable homes.’ We need all homes. We need million-dollar homes, we need half a million-dollar homes,” West added.
Hamell started her search for a home back in 2021.
“The beginning of my process of looking, I had a list of things that I was like, ‘Oh…I want X, Y and Z in my first home.’ All of those went out the window,” she said. “Last year, my price range was higher because the interest rates were lower and so now I feel like I’m kind of getting stuck in certain areas or certain price points that I could have reached out of last year.”
While West can’t predict the future, he says it does not appear that the West Michigan housing market is slowing down any time soon.
