Thoughts on the Housing market in Indiana... (Indianapolis, Fort Wayne: for sale, real estate)

[Jay_F]

What are your feelings concerning the market in your area or town? Are houses moving, prices up or down for your locale, afraid to buy due to down, pessimistic national outlook/credit crisis???

I would think IN is doing better overall than what is being shown constantly on TV, but I am no expert by any stretch.

Thanks for your insight.

[mbuszu]

Homes in Fort Wayne are moving quickly - at least in the desirable areas for particular price ranges (definitely not the high end ones - it seems like the $300k+ homes are moving slow right now - I see the same ones up for sale week after week).

I think despite the sales of existing homes being fast paced, this market is being majorly impacted by the developers who keep putting up new developments and new spec homes... it seems a bit nuts but I've heard this is happening all over the country. Developers are developing faster than ever before.

What this does is depress the house values in our area. In Fort Wayne right now for just about ~240k you can build a new 2700-3500 sq ft Mcmansion on a culd-de-sac, with a finished walk-out basement to a pond in a new neighborhood with a pool. That would be from a low-end builder - but still... doesn't that seem like a heck of a deal? Almost too good to be true, but it is true. Those of us with existing homes find that they appreciate perhaps 1-2% a year... thus real estate isn't an investment around here like it is in other areas - instead your house is just something to enjoy living in.

[domergurl]

I thank my lucky stars that we were able to sell our home in Fishers as quickly as we did!!!

[Southside Shrek]

a realtor in Indianapolis told me a couple of weeks ago "It's a Sellers' market!". I looked at him with a puzzled look after he said that and thought he must have just attended classes on how to be an optimist.

[domergurl]

They got it mixed up. It's definitely a buyers market, especially if you are vinyl village dweller. We just totally lucked out.

[Jay_F]

Although I don't know the condition of the Columbus housing market where I live, I can tell you that it seems every sq inch of land is having somthing constructed on it, or the local I-65 factories expanding. Where the new Wal-Mart went in by the interstate, there has been a tremendous building boom, and right next to the Nissan dealer somthing is going up (anyone know what).

Shadow Wood, and several new housing areas are going full tilt, as are very expensive new homes in Tipton Lakes... Maybe Cummins stock going through the roof has folks feeling rich, and flush with $$$.

[domergurl]

You betcha!!! Things are moving in my neighborhood now too. A house behind me that has been empty/rented for 4 years was just sold!

Columbus seems to be a great place to be for now. I would love to look at that that mansion for sale on Washington St.

With Honda moving in down the road in Greensburg ... 30 minutes away (just drove it a couple days ago), I think that Columbus is only going to expand.

[rtboy1961]

We have had our house on the market since may 2007. We have a guarantee buyout with remax. We hit the buyout last month. We will lose 2500 with that. We have a purchase agreement with davis homes we want to get out of but it looks like they wont let us out. Our new house will be finished in 4 weeks. We want to sell it immediatly but dont see how thaT WILL HAPPEN WITH THE MARKET THE WAY IT IS. We want to move out of state. Its looking grim on moving to another state. Sure the new house is awesome but we were wanting to relocate for employment reasons.

[SJU]

My dad's a realtor, and I asked him this very thing the other day. Houses under 200k still relatively strong compared to the rest of the country, but higher than that is extremely slow. He mainly sells on the northside of Indy.