Question: Are you finding any significant reductions in price on lakes such as Rennie or Spider? I own a home on Rennie… Last year when I looked, it did not appear that the lakefront homes in the $250,000 to $350,000 range had softened much and still seemed pretty highly priced based on the rapid appreciation over the past 5 or 6 years. Your opinion? Thanks, Terry

Hello everyone,

Generally speaking “Yes,” there have been significant reductions between the initial asking prices of homes with frontage on Spider and Rennie Lakes, and what those homes actually sell for, if they sell at all, over the last couple of years. What has been occurring on Rennie and Spider Lakes has been mirrored on other inland lakes in the Grand Traverse area as well.

Property values were increasing rapidly every year through the first half of this decade. 2005 brought a sudden leveling off of the usual stead ...

Hello Record-Eagle readers,

If you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on your real estate purchase until (fill in the blank), you’ve waited too long.

Once the birds start singing and those tough, gorgeous, first little flowers push their way up into the bright spring sunshine, it’s already too late.

Pray for the snow to hang in there for just another few days, maybe a week if we’re lucky.

Hope for some really crappy weather to round out this month.

You cannot imagine how powerful the effect of the long, dark, cold winter has on sellers of Traverse City real estate. Those first, puffy little snowflakes drifting down towards Earth have a dreadful, demoralizing affect on seller’s psyches that doesn’t abate until… Spring!!

Springtime promises more than ice-free sidewalks and snowdrift-free views ...

Hello everyone,

TEAM MIKE has had a difficult few weeks in discussions with an unsettlingly large number of clients who are all struggling to keep their homes.

Please, if you are overburdened with your house payments and seriously struggling to keep up, or you owe considerably more than what you think your home is actually worth, contact us. Please. Or contact whomever you feel comfortable talking to about what is obviously not a very pleasant subject.

There are things that can be done to help, or even solve, the difficult situations way too many of us are facing right now.

Please, listening to the media for your advice and direction on what is for most of us our largest financial asset is ludicrous!! I fully realize the irony of reading that sentence on an online newspaper blog, but there are far too many people losing their homes that don’t need to put themselves, thei ...