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Indianapolis Housing Market 2014

Indianapolis Housing Market is definitely growing and showing increasing stability as time goes on, despite a lower total for the first quarter of the year. This is certainly a good sign as this slow but steady increase follows several years of market decline.

Indianapolis Housing Market:

The Indianapolis housing market 2014 is on the rebound – following several years of market decline – and houses are selling particularly fast in and around the region. In fact, along with home prices seeing a 7 percent increase in the past year – the median price is currently at $124,900, there has been an 18 percent annual sales increase for existing homes in each of the past two years in the region, due specifically to low interest rates, job growth, and a loosening of loan standards.

However this increasing call for existing homes for sale has caused a ‘pent-up demand’, which many are calling a seller’s market since the demand far outweighs the supply of homes available. Many buyers are finding their choices very limited.

Some growth can be seen in the number of homes available in certain counties; Johnson County in particular saw a 10.4 percent increase to 978 from 886 home sin May 2013. Boone and Hamilton Counties saw similar increases.

In other counties though, a decrease can be seen. Hendricks County saw a 10.3 percent fall to 907 from 1,011 homes for sale.

With the demand for homes on a steady incline and the low supply of existing homes available, finished and vacant inventory has fallen steadily in the overall market in order to keep up, which has new home construction on the rise. Most notably in Hamilton County who leads the way with 42.9 percent of all new home construction and Hendricks County with 14.7 percent of new home construction.

The downside to this new rise in home construction is that the months of supplies for lots in the Indianapolis housing market region is dwindling – falling from the nearly 80 months in 2009 to the current level of 30.9 months with levels of new home supplies low in most every county in the region, most only having a 1.5 – 2 month supply.

The overall positive factors of the growing Indianapolis housing market 2014 far outweigh any lingering doubts that might still remain that the housing market isn’t improving. Aside from median housing prices rising, there has been a decline in the past years in the percent of mortgages that are either in foreclosure or seriously delinquent. While about 10 percent of homes were in foreclosure or delinquent in 2012, 2013 only had 6 percent of foreclosures and 3.2 of homes that were seriously delinquent; and these numbers are only expected to lower even more in 2014 as well.

Another contributing factor to the stability of the Indianapolis housing market is the growing practice of large investment groups buying up single-family homes as rental properties. While long-term consequences for the local economy remain to be seen, this trend does help, and has the effect of increasing prices and investments in the housing market.

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