Guess what?
The holidays are upon us and guess what I got you?
A partridge in a pear tree? Better!
Some turtle doves and geese laying things? Betterer!
A bunch of milkmaids, some calling birds and some lords leaping about? Betterrerrerrr!
If you guessed a giant bag of data, you would be correct!
Let's check the stats, shall we?
Look, I ain't know why the news reports keep saying the housing market is on the verge of armageddon. That's simply not true, especially for the Indy Metro area. Remember, inventory is the single most metric to track in this housing market.
Why is that?
Well, the law of supply and demand, for starters. People will always need a place to live--shelter is a basic necessity and one that cannot be outsourced, rising interest rates or not. Homeownership is the bedrock of every successful community and remains the quickest way to building wealth.
Speaking of which, are you aware that interest rates are falling?
"FHA went from upper 6's to mid 6's; conventional has gone from darn near 8% to 7 and 1/4% in the past two weeks," says Kevin Fleck, senior loan officer at Nest Mortgage with 33 years of experience in the mortgage industry. "We're expecting the market to improve all the way around around May and going into June."
Back to inventory...let's take a look over the past five years.
Available housing inventory started shrinking in major US cities around 2017.
It took a minute to reach the Indianapolis Metro Area, yet here we are:
As you can see, inventory in the Indy Metro area has become increasingly scarce. While we have slightly more homes since the pandemic ended, we're still nowhere near the approximately 5700 to 6800 homes we've historically had during the November months.
Our scarcity issue isn't going away anytime soon--and neither is demand.
Remember that when people who aren't using facts, data or logic local to your market try to tell you otherwise.
Maybe, just maybe, they want what you have. I'm not saying that equitable gains have risen 46% since the pandemic started (I mean, that's what this news article is for), but what I want to say rhymes with the word "equity".*
*It's equity.
If taking this conversation further is of interest to you, please feel free to contact me. I specialize in selling your home for the most amount of money the market can bear.
Protecting your equity is all I do, and I ain't play around.
At all.
With Gratitude,
Miriam
