The "New Reality" of Indianapolis Home Sales
September 20th, 2010
I saw an interesting presentation on the state of the Indianapolis real estate market the other day. Leaving there, I’m reminded of a Chrysler exec who, talking about U.S. carmakers, stated, “This is the new reality” (since used in dozens of other situations). In this case, he meant that you can’t compare last year, two years ago or ten years ago to today. Today is today. And our work today can only affect what happens to us today and tomorrow.
Very simply, the presentation showed that the local market of home sales is actually rebounding pretty nicely from “the bottom” in June and July. Of course, the news reports will probably highlight a comparison to 2009 - the fact that 25%-30% fewer homes were sold than last year. But the new reality tells us that home sales are actually up 18%-20% from June’s low.
What about home prices? Haven’t home prices been falling for several years? Not lately. In metro Indianapolis, the average selling price did decrease for 22 consecutive months. Our new reality is that prices on Indianapolis homes for sale have now increased for 11 straight months. Carpenter Realtors’ agents are actually seeing sales and average sale price increases that are better than the market’s.
But the “reality” is that few real estate agents are going to sell as many homes as they did in 2000, 2003 or 2006. The ones who will succeed understand the new reality. They’re working harder for their sellers and using the marketing tools their broker provides them to expose their homes for sale to as many potential buyers as possible.
Posted by: 
Jim Newell
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