Jenison Housing Market Report

This is the Jenison housing market on paper. No tour, no scenery, just the numbers as of July twenty twenty-six. If you want the full tour of the area, watch the Living In Jenison video. Here I'm going to show you what a home actually costs, how fast it moves, and where the leverage sits. Start with value. The typical Jenison home is worth about three hundred seventy-two thousand five hundred dollars, up roughly three and a half percent over the past year. That runs above the Kent County median of three hundred thirty-five thousand. Jenison actually sits in Ottawa County, but Kent County is the metro benchmark I hold every West Michigan market against. Now what actually closed. In June the median Jenison sale printed at four hundred sixty-four thousand five hundred dollars, on ninety-five closings, up from sixty-six a year earlier. Do not read that as appreciation. In a market this thin, the closed-sale median moves with whatever happened to sell, and June skewed newer and larger. Sale-to-list came in at one hundred point two percent, and buyers paid about two hundred five dollars a square foot. Supply and speed. As of early July there were twenty-five active listings in Jenison, with thirty-two new ones hitting in the prior month. Homes still go pending in about fourteen days, but the average listing now takes twenty-seven days to sell, fifteen days longer than a year ago. Inventory is up roughly thirty-two percent. That is the loosening signal. Fourteen days to pending is still fast. Next door in Hudsonville it is thirteen. So the pending clock has not broken. What changed is everything behind it, because the homes that do not sell in the first two weeks are now sitting materially longer than they did last summer. Against its neighbors, Jenison sits mid-pack. Allendale and Hudsonville both carry higher typical values, and Grandville sits just underneath. At three hundred seventy-two thousand five hundred, Jenison is the median-priced door into the Grand River corridor: cheaper than Hudsonville, pricier than Grandville. Price band matters more than the town average. Metro-wide, and these are county-level figures rather than Jenison-specific ones, anything under two hundred fifty thousand is brutally tight, with a pending-to-active ratio near one hundred seventy-nine percent. The core band, where Jenison's median lives, runs about one hundred forty-nine. Above five hundred thousand it drops to eighty-six, which means more listings than deals. That is the only band where buyers have real room. So what does all of that mean when you are actually writing an offer, or deciding whether to accept one? It comes down to two things: what money costs, and how much slack the market is willing to give you. Money first. The thirty-year fixed averaged six point four nine percent in the Freddie Mac survey for the week ending July ninth, a touch below the six point seven two percent of a year ago. On a three hundred fifty thousand dollar loan, that gap is worth roughly sixty dollars a month. Forecasts cluster between six and six and a half percent through the back half of the year. Nobody credible is calling for fives. Here is my read. Jenison is still a seller's market. Twenty-five active listings and a fourteen-day pending clock will do that. But it is a seller's market with a hairline crack in it, because the average home now takes twenty-seven days instead of twelve. So where does the leverage actually sit? Buyers picked up inventory, up about a third, and time, fifteen extra days of it. Sellers still hold thin supply, a sale-to-list ratio of one hundred point two percent, and an Ottawa County median up eight point three percent year over year. Both of those things are true at the same time. If you are buying here, four moves. Underwrite at six and a half percent, not at the rate you are waiting for. Budget around three hundred seventy-two thousand five hundred, or roughly two hundred five dollars a foot. Assume you pay list, because a hundred point two percent sale-to-list means a lowball on a fresh listing is a fantasy. And go hunting above five hundred thousand, or on anything that has been sitting past thirty days. That eighty-six percent ratio is where your discount actually lives. If you are selling here, price to the typical value, not to the headline. That four hundred sixty-four thousand five hundred dollar June median was a mix story, not your house. The real number for most Jenison homes is closer to three hundred seventy-two thousand five hundred, and your first fourteen days are the entire negotiation. Miss them and you join the twenty-seven-day average, and at a hundred point two percent sale-to-list, going over asking is no longer the base case. Those are the numbers for the town. The number that matters is the one for your street. Send me the address and I will tell you exactly what your house does in this market: what it is worth, how fast it moves, and what a buyer will actually pay for it.