Cooper: Tight Indiana Home Market Not Going Away
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowTight inventories statewide are pushing up home values and showing no signs of going away. That’s the observation of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Realtor Greg Cooper, who says the trend is frustrating prospective home buyers statewide. “It’s getting worse, progressively, and it’s not a huge jump, but it sure feels like it when you’re trying to buy your first home and six other people are standing right next to you throwing a bunch of money at the same house,” said Cooper.
Cooper talked about the Indiana housing market and what might be ahead on this weekend’s edition of Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick.
Cooper says the effects of the tight housing inventory continue to be felt statewide, with home values increasing faster than at any time in recent memory. He points to a 4.7 percent year-to-date increase in homes values over 2018, a historically very high number for Indiana.
According to figures from the Indiana Association of Realtors, the average sales price of a home in Indiana has increased 6.3 percent, to more than $209,700.
Cooper believes the roots of the inventory situation date back more than a decade, to the housing collapse and exit of the state’s largest homebuilder, C.P. Morgan. “February 27, 2009, the largest homebuilder in the state of Indiana ceased its operations. They had built tens of thousands of homes in Indiana over the previous decade, give or take, and all of a sudden, they’re gone. That was not highly impactful in 2009 and 2010 when we weren’t building a lot of homes, but the net effect over the last ten, elven years is we’re way down in the number of homes for available people who want to buy them,” said Cooper.