On July 20, 2026, two homes sold on Birwood Avenue in the Village of Beverly Hills, Michigan. Both had three bedrooms. Both had a bath and a half. Both sold within a few weeks of listing, in the same market, on the same short residential street west of Woodward. One closed at $383,000. The other closed at $555,000. The size difference between them was about 150 square feet, roughly one extra bedroom's worth of space. It does not come close to explaining a $172,000 gap.
If you've been watching Beverly Hills home prices on the usual portals, you've probably seen a single median number and assumed it describes a single kind of house. It doesn't. It's an average of two very different products sitting inside the same zip code, and until you understand why, you're shopping blind.
The Same Street, The Same Week, Two Different Products
The lower-priced Birwood Avenue home, 1,382 square feet, sold almost exactly at its $385,000 list price after 24 days on market. The higher-priced one, 1,535 square feet, sold at $555,000 after 26 days, a few percent under its $574,900 ask. Neither was a distress sale. Neither lingered. Both moved in a market where homes in the village are, on average, selling in a little over three weeks.
What separates them isn't square footage. It's what's inside the walls: the condition of the kitchen, the age of the mechanicals, whether the primary suite was added at some point or is original to the house, whether the roof and siding are recent or original. None of that shows up in the headline price-per-square-foot math that portals run. It shows up when you walk through the front door, and by then you've already anchored on a number that told you almost nothing.
This is the pattern across the village right now, not just on Birwood Avenue. In the same stretch of summer 2026, a 1,287-square-foot home on Dunblaine Avenue sold for $509,908 after fielding an offer 13% over its $449,900 list. A 3,598-square-foot home on Kirkshire Avenue sold for $945,000, also over asking. A 1,353-square-foot home, also on Birwood, sold for $463,000. Four homes, four prices, no consistent relationship between size and dollars. The variable doing the real work is condition and vintage, and the village's own housing stock explains why that variable is so large.
Why Four Out of Five Doors Open the Same Year
Beverly Hills was incorporated in 1958 under the name Westwood, changing to its current name the following year, and the bulk of its housing dates to that same postwar stretch. The overwhelming majority of homes in the village, on the order of four out of every five, were built between the 1940s and the 1960s. Only a small sliver, roughly one in thirty, was built after 2000.
That matters because it means most buyers shopping in Beverly Hills right now aren't choosing between "old" and "new." They're choosing between original 1950s and 1960s construction that's been updated to varying degrees, ranging from a fresh coat of paint to a full gut renovation. A ranch that's had its plumbing, electrical, roof, and kitchen replaced in the last five years is a fundamentally different asset than a ranch of the same square footage that hasn't been touched since the Ford administration, even if both are asking the same price per square foot. The village's own housing age is the reason the same-street, same-week price gap exists at all.
What Different Corners of the Village Are Actually Doing
The village-wide numbers themselves don't agree cleanly, and that disagreement is itself informative. Village-wide, home prices were selling at a median of $643,000 as of February 2026, up 37.6% from a year earlier, with the typical home moving from listing to sale in 23 days, down from 40 days the year before. By July 2026, the median list price across the village was running closer to $612,000, and one tracker's July 2026 figures put the median sale price nearer $575,000 with an average closer to $598,000. Three measurements, three numbers, all technically describing the same 4-square-mile village in the same rough window. None of them is wrong. They're measuring different slices of an uneven inventory.
That unevenness shows up at the sub-neighborhood level too:
| Median sale price (trailing 3 mos., as of July 2026) | Price per sq ft | Typical days to sell | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Westwood | $545,000 | $305 | 10 days |
| Artesian Heights | $568,000 | $276 | 17 days |
The gap between these two pockets, about $23,000 on the median, is modest. It's nowhere near the $172,000 spread we saw on a single street. That's the real lesson: the variance inside a pocket, driven by condition and vintage, dwarfs the variance between pockets. Knowing which named subdivision a listing sits in tells you less than knowing what year its kitchen was last touched.
The Builders Have Already Made Their Bet
Local custom builders aren't waiting for buyers to figure this out. PRM Custom Builders, which works primarily in Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Franklin, and Beverly Hills, builds full custom homes for clients who've decided the original 1950s footprint isn't worth renovating around. Balbes Custom Building, with more than two decades in the area, offers the same build-from-scratch path. S&S Homes, a third-generation, family-owned builder founded in 1962, has been part of this same rebuilding cycle since roughly the same era that produced most of the village's original housing stock.
You can see the choice being marketed directly to buyers. One recent listing on a 2.2-acre parcel at Lasher and 13 Mile Road, walking distance to Detroit Country Day School, Brother Rice, and Marian, was pitched to the market as a build-new-or-renovate opportunity on an existing 3,300-square-foot ranch. The seller wasn't guessing which buyer would show up. They were pricing the land and the option, not just the house.
A property doesn't have to be pristine to move fast in this market. It has to be honest about which category it's in: finished, or a project.
What This Means If You're Comparing Beverly Hills to Franklin or Bloomfield Hills
If you're cross-shopping Beverly Hills against neighboring Oakland County communities, the comparison that matters isn't the median price tag. It's what decade of construction that price tag is buying you. At $550,000 to $650,000 in Beverly Hills right now, you are most likely buying a 1,300 to 1,700 square foot home built between the 1940s and 1960s, on a quarter-acre or larger lot, with a wide range of possible renovation histories behind that number. A similar median price in a community with a newer housing base might buy you a different vintage entirely. Neither is better. They're different products wearing similar price tags, and only one of them comes with a hidden line item for updated wiring or a new roof.
Before You Write the Offer
A few questions are worth settling before you get attached to a number:
- When were the major systems (roof, electrical panel, plumbing, HVAC) last replaced, not just "updated"?
- Is the primary suite, if there is one, original to the house or a later addition?
- Does the listing language hint at a full renovation, or does it use softer words like "move-in ready" that can mean less than they imply?
- If the lot and location are what you actually want, is a rebuild a more honest comparison than a renovation estimate?
None of this shows up in a median price. It shows up in the walk-through, and it's the difference between paying $383,000 or $555,000 for what looks, on paper, like the same house.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Beverly Hills, MI currently a buyer's or seller's market? Homes across the village have been selling quickly, in roughly three weeks on average as of mid-2026, and several recent sales closed at or above list price, which points to a market that still favors well-prepared sellers, particularly on updated homes.
Why do two similarly sized homes in Beverly Hills sell for such different prices? The village's housing stock is overwhelmingly postwar construction from the 1940s through the 1960s. Condition and renovation history, not square footage alone, are doing most of the work in separating a $400,000 sale from a $600,000 one.
Should I renovate an older Beverly Hills home or consider a teardown? That depends on the lot, the bones of the existing structure, and your budget for either path. Several local builders work specifically in this market and can help you price both options honestly before you commit.
If you're trying to figure out which side of that Birwood Avenue gap your next home falls on, Angela Snedeker can walk the actual comps with you, not just the headline median. Get Your Free Home Valuation to start with a clear number for your specific situation.
