Seventeen houses selling for more than $1 million were recorded since last month, at prices ranging from $1,035,000 up to $2.5 million. As of mid-May, twenty-four homes had hit the million-dollar mark this year, compared to just seven in the same period in 2019 and 2020. In all of 2020, there were just thirty-eight, and thirty-two in 2019.
Most of this month’s high-end sales are in and around Ann Arbor Hills, but four were in Ann Arbor Township, all but one of them in Barton Hills; the fourth was on a small cul-de-sac off of Dixboro Rd. between Plymouth Rd. and M-14. Two were downtown condos, and Burns Park, Newport Creek, and Scio Township each recorded one.
After barely changing last year, the average selling price of these homes is up 11 percent year to date, to $1,477,000. What does that kind of money buy? On average, 3,874 square feet of living space, with five bedrooms and five bathrooms. The average price per square foot rose three percent from 2019 to 2020, to $341, and another 7.6 percent from the beginning of the year to mid-May 2021, to $367.
The average price of a single-family home in the Ann Arbor school district rose 5.8 percent last year, to $480,782; it’s up almost 11 percent so far in 2021, to $533,116. Adjusted per square foot of living space, the increase last year was 2.5 percent, to $245, and 6.5 percent year to date, to $261.
Condominiums showed an increase of 4 percent from 2019 to 2020, to an average of $278,375, and 6 percent so far this year, to $295,406. Square foot pricing rose 1.4 percent year over year, to $212, and 4.7 percent year-to-date, to $222.
Even with all of the auction-like fervor, half a dozen single-family homes managed to sell for $250,000 or less. One of those broke a record for its neighborhood: 2095 Stratton Ct. in the Stoneybrook neighborhood, off Stone School and Ellsworth, sold for $208,100—the first recorded sale there to break $200,000. This attractive three-bedroom, 1.5 bath, 900-square-foot home sold for a little less than half as much ($100,000) just eleven years ago—and just as quickly, spending just four days on the market. It is one of the very few Stoneybrook homes to have a basement, and may be the only one with a basement and an attached garage.
Most of the other homes selling for $250,000 or less also had less than 1,000 square feet, and the exceptions neared the quarter-million-dollar mark: 4445 Packard, a 1960s four-bedroom with 1.5 baths and 1,026 square feet sold for $250,000. And 3358 Beaumont, a 1,344-square-foot three-bedroom with one and a half baths in the Dixboro subdivision in Superior Township went for $240,000. It’s less than a mile from the $1.4 million home on the cul-de-sac off Dixboro Rd. in Ann Arbor Township.
