High-interest rates coupled with a lack of home listings have made for an interesting year in real estate. The Northern Express - sister publication of The Ticker - caught up with Carly Petrucci and Heather Robinson, two born-and-raised northern Michigan realtors, to find out if the intense grab-it-before-it’s-gone housing market is still holding strong, what rising interest rates mean for sellers, and if we can expect home prices to drop anytime soon.

Though mortgage interest rates have nearly doubled since 2022, demand hasn’t waned much, says Petrucci, who serves the greater Grand Traverse area with The Shawn Schmidt Group, part of her family’s brokerage, Coldwell Banker Schmidt. That’s great news for sellers. “It’s not nearly the frenzy that it was in 2021 when rates were at 3 percent,” says Petrucci. “But it’s still by and large a seller’s market.”

Even though buyers aren’t exiting the northern Michigan market, that “frenzy” Petrucci mentions has been tempered by rising mortgage interest rates and fewer housing options. Buyers seem to have toned down their willingness to spend, leading to a decline in certain buyer demographics, especially second-home buyers. “A lot of them have dropped out of the market,” says Petrucci. “When rates were at 3 percent, everybody wanted to buy a second home up here because it was so cheap to borrow.” Once those rates hit a fever-pitch of over 6 percent, the majority of her second-home buyers were reduced to cash-only buyers who could avoid interest rates altogether.

Read more in this week’s Northern Express, available to read online or on newsstands at nearly 700 spots in 14 counties across northern Michigan.