This is an excerpt from an article in today Detroit News.  This is GREAT NEWS!!!  Click here to go to the full article.

Michigan’s recovery outpaces rest of U.S.

Confidence rises along with home, retail sales

Michigan fell the hardest during the recession, but it’s bouncing back better than the rest of the country.

While economic uncertainty in Europe is creating a cloud over the U.S. economy, and the state’s unemployment rate has ticked up two-tenths of a percentage point to 8.6 percent in the past two months, existing home sales and retail sales in Michigan are doing better than elsewhere in the country.

“We’ve been telling our clients since late 2011 that Michigan is turning the corner faster economically than any other state in the country,” said Patrick Anderson, founder and CEO of the East Lansing-based consulting firm Anderson Economic Group.

Home sales are up 10 percent through June in the Great Lakes State compared with the nation’s 5 percent growth rate, according to the National Association of Realtors. And the state’s retail sales surged in April and May, while the national figure fell 0.2 percent.

The ongoing recovery of Detroit’s three automakers has paved the way for the uptick, with a resurgence in jobs and profitability. Michiganians figure the state has weathered the worst and are feeling more secure in their jobs, said Grosse Pointe Woods real estate agent Michael LeVan.

From his vantage point, “most people feel significantly better about their jobs than they did five years ago.”

The new confidence can be seen in the upswing in home sales in the four-county Metro Detroit region. Sales increased 5.1 percent through the first half of the year and have risen 11 of the past 12 months, according to Realcomp II Ltd., a Farmington Hills multiple listing service. Home prices in the Detroit area jumped for 10 straight months through April, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index.

Homeowners are more confident in their ability to sell their homes, LeVan said, and are “reasonably sure that they’d be able to sell theirs, and not pay two mortgages for 10 or 12 months.”

“We’re now getting multiple offers on houses on a regular basis” for the first time in a decade, LeVan said, echoing the experience of many real estate agents.