Grand Rapids Real Estate Market 2026: Score 93, 86% of Listings Under Contract

Grand Rapids has 1,136 homes for sale as of February 2026. It has 979 homes under contract.

That pending ratio of 0.8618 is one of the highest in the PropertyIQ dataset. For every 100 homes listed for sale, 86 are already under contract.

PropertyIQ scores Grand Rapids a 93 out of 100 as of February 28, 2026. The market has held above 89 for every month in the past two years.

The Score and Its Consistency

Grand Rapids is not a market that recently recovered from a low. It has been a consistent top-tier performer.

| Month | Score | |-------|-------| | June 2024 | 96 | | September 2024 | 93 | | December 2024 | 90 | | March 2025 | 94 | | June 2025 | 95 | | September 2025 | 93 | | December 2025 | 90 | | January 2026 | 89 | | February 2026 | 93 |

The score has never dropped below 89 in the 21-month history shown. The range is 89-96. That consistency reflects a structural supply constraint, not a temporary data spike.

What Is Driving the 0.86 Pending Ratio

The pending ratio tells you how much of the active inventory is already spoken for. In a slow market, that ratio is low. In Grand Rapids, 86 out of every 100 listed homes are under contract.

The explanation is inventory. With only 1,136 homes for sale in a metro of 1.15 million, the supply is thin relative to buyer demand. Inventory is down 4.7% year over year as of February 2026. New listings are down 7.44% year over year. The pool of available homes is shrinking.

When supply tightens and demand holds steady, the pending ratio rises. In Grand Rapids, it has been rising.

Current Market Conditions

The median listing price in Grand Rapids is $399,900 as of February 1, 2026. The Zillow median home value is approximately $342,610 as of January 31, 2026.

Home values are up 3.94% year over year as of February 2026. That is positive real growth, in contrast to the -5.77% and -5.27% readings in Los Angeles and San Diego respectively. Grand Rapids is appreciating while coastal California is still working through its correction.

The five-year appreciation in Grand Rapids is 27.99%.

Sale Velocity

Homes in Grand Rapids average 64 days on market as of February 2026. Sellers receive 99.83% of their asking price as of November 2025. Price cuts affect 10.62% of listings.

Zillow forecasts 4.0% near-term price appreciation for Grand Rapids as of December 2025. That is the strongest forecast of the Michigan metros and among the highest in the Midwest dataset.

Home sales are down 3.45% year over year, a modest decline that reflects the constrained inventory rather than softening demand. There are fewer homes to sell because fewer are being listed.

Affordability and Accessibility

The median listing price is $399,900. The estimated income required to purchase a median-priced home is $106,292 as of February 2026. The metro median household income is $80,296.

The gap between required income and actual median income is $26,000 annually. That spread is significantly narrower than in coastal markets. San Diego requires $239,203 with a median income of $102,285. Grand Rapids is stretched, but not structurally inaccessible for a dual-income household.

The overvaluation reading is 20.5%, one of the lowest in the active dataset. For comparison, Los Angeles reads 188.3% overvalued and San Diego 152.6%.

The homeownership rate in Grand Rapids is 74.31% as of 2023 Census data. That is the highest reading among the markets covered in this batch and reflects the accessible price point relative to local wages.

Grand Rapids vs Michigan Peers

Grand Rapids is the second-largest metro in Michigan. Detroit, covered separately, shows a different pattern: larger inventory, more volatile score history, and a recovering post-industrial market story.

Grand Rapids' advantage is its smaller scale and manufacturing base anchored by companies like Meijer, Amway, and Spectrum Health. The unemployment rate is 4.0% as of November 2025, stable and consistent with a market that has not seen the same industrial disruption as other Midwest metros.

The Demand Score

The demand score for Grand Rapids is 63.88 out of 100 as of February 2026. The supply score is 55.52. Both readings are moderate in absolute terms, but the interaction between them -- more demand than supply in a market this small -- produces the high pending ratio and the 93 overall score.

The hotness score is 59.70. That reading combined with a pending ratio of 0.86 confirms what the score shows: a market where available homes are moving quickly once listed.

PropertyIQ score as of February 28, 2026. Listing and inventory data as of February 1, 2026. Zillow home value data as of January 31, 2026. Sale-to-list data as of November 30, 2025. Forecast data as of December 2025. Census data as of 2023. Economic data as of November 2025. All data for informational purposes only.