![](https://www.ibj.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Home-sale-300x200.jpg)
Central Indiana home sales sink 12% amid higher prices
Closed sales in the Indianapolis area have fallen in 28 of the past 29 months on a year-over-year basis.
Closed sales in the Indianapolis area have fallen in 28 of the past 29 months on a year-over-year basis.
Closed existing-home sales in the 16-county area have fallen in 27 of the last 28 months.
SPCS is a tool that a growing number of lenders are adopting to help improve credit access for underserved groups.
They have been around since the 1970s, but they’ve recently become a lot more popular.
Sales of existing homes in central Indiana have fallen for 24 straight months on a year-over-year basis., but the market showed signs of improvement in January amid a small decline in mortgage rates.
Almost half of Black home buyers in 2022 were first-time buyers, and newcomers haven’t benefited from the rising home equity that could help defray swelling sale prices and lending costs.
The sharply higher home loan borrowing costs limited home hunters’ buying power on top of years of soaring prices. A dearth of homes for sale also kept many would-be homebuyers and sellers on the sidelines.
Mortgage rates escalated for the first 10 months of last year. No surprise: Existing-home sales in the 16-county area dropped from 35,876 in 2022 to 29,483 in 2023.
The average rate on a 30-year mortgage rose to 6.66% from 6.62% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.33%.
Another incentive for builders: The inventory of previously occupied homes for sale is likely to remain tight because many homeowners have locked in low mortgage rates.
Closed sales in the area have fallen for 22 straight months on a year-over-year basis, but prices are still on the rise.
Six of the area’s nine counties saw a year-over-year increase in single-family building permit filings in October.
Surging mortgage rates and rising prices are keeping many prospective homebuyers on the sidelines.
Meanwhile, the median sales price for a house in the 16-county area in October jumped 3.9%, to $299,000, from the same month a year ago.
The decision involves a sale’s commission, which hovers around 5% to 6% of the home sale price and is paid by the home seller both to the sellers agent and the buyers agent.
Sales of existing homes in the 16-county area have fallen for 20 straight months.
Existing homes in the 16-county area are spending much more time on the market than a year ago, from an average of 22 days in August 2022 to 31 days last month.
Sales dropped for the 17th straight month on a year-over-year basis as inventories continued to tighten.
The U.S. housing market has yet to emerge from a slump that started a little more than a year ago, when the average rate on a 30-year mortgage began to climb from ultra-low levels.
The amount of time homes are spending on the market in the Indianapolis area is soaring compared with a year ago, but median sales prices are still on the rise.
Homes are spending much more time on the market than they did a year ago, but median prices are still on the rise.