Higher mortgage interest rates might eventually cool off Michiana’s red-hot housing market, but they likely won’t be enough to dampen interest in the area’s ultra-luxury homes that most of us can only dream about. h That’s because people shopping for those types of homes — often overlooking Lake Michigan, the St. Joseph River or one of the region’s numerous inland lakes — can often plunk down large down payments or pay cash for the multi-million-dollar properties they want.
And demand has been soaring since the pandemic started two years ago as people with the financial means first looked for a place to safely recreate with their families and then learned that they could continue working nearly as well from offices located in those homes, said Paul Delano, owner of Lake Life Realty Group in Union, Mich.
“There’s been about a 30- to 40-percent appreciation in some of those properties since COVID,” Delano said, referring to the price increases caused by the greater demand.
In that geographic range — including Cass, Berrien and St. Joseph counties, as well as the southern end of Kalamazoo and VanBuren counties — the annual sale of $1 million-plus properties was in the consistent single digits for years leading up to the pandemic, according to Delano, who specializes in the sale of homes and lots on about 120 lakes in southwestern Michigan.
But then, sales of those properties jumped to 21 in 2020 and 31 in 2021, he said.