Happy Fourth of July!!! It seems like summer just started and now we are almost at the halfway mark. Historically, July tends to be the month for vacations…and we certainly feel it in the real estate market! Activity generally goes down for about 4-6 weeks and then picks back up again until mid-November. We hope you have a fun, safe and enjoyable Fourth of July holiday whether you are staying home or traveling.
First and foremost, you read in our newsletter last month that Thea and Michael had their first baby in May. They are all doing great and loving being parents. While we sure do miss Thea, we know her most important job is being a mom to Parks. She is enjoying spending lots of time with him and is scheduled to come back to work around July 24th at this point.
Helena has been helping us and filling in for Thea while she is on maternity leave. She has been a huge help with our buyers! She just returned from a 2-week trip to Australia and loved every minute of it!!! That is one of many places on our bucket list. Have you ever been?? If so, drop me an e-mail or call as I would love to hear your travel advice.
Kylie and her family are enjoying the summer sun and spending time at the pool. She is teaching a class at our office on Reiki and how it works and the benefits people can realize from it. She loves teaching about it and our team has seen some real health benefits from it.
The end of June and beginning of July are busy weeks for our family. Ana has new student orientation at IU at the end of June, Tali is with all 7 cheer gyms from ICE up in Michigan for a camp from July 1-3 and then we leave on July 4th to Florida to celebrate Brigid’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Family is flying in from all over the country for their re-commitment ceremony and then we spend a few days at Disney before returning home.
Thank you to everyone who attended our June Happy Hour sponsored by CREW Property Improvement Specialists! They are the company we recommend for any handyman items. They do a great job, guarantee their work and are licensed and bonded. Give me a call if you want their info. Hope you have down on your calendars to join us for our July Happy Hour on Thursday, July 20th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. This month is sponsored by EcoBak Restoration. They handle all of our restoration needs, including water, fire and mold. Great, locally-owned company! Come and say hello!
The next Home Seller Workshop will be on Tuesday, July 11th from 7-8:30pm via Zoom only. E-mail kylie@Welcome2Indy.com if you or someone you care about would like to register. This is a low-key, interactive workshop showing you the Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Listing Your House…these can literally cost you thousands of $$$.
Our next Home Buyer Workshop is come back upon Thea’s return and is tentatively scheduled for July. More info will be coming out soon!
Be on the lookout for your Football calendar magnet from us later this summer. Snap a photo of it on your fridge or wherever you like to keep it and post it to your Facebook and Instagram page and tag us and we will enter you to win a $100 gift card to a restaurant of your choosing!
The real estate market has been strange lately. Inventory is still extremely low and interest rates have come down a bit and are projected to continue to fall to maybe the mid 5% range sometime this fall. We are expecting a very busy fall as a result, which is welcome for many people as the spring market was not nearly as robust as usual due to low inventory, high home prices and high mortgage interest rates (relatively speaking, of course).
Until interest rates come down below the 6% range, the gap between the rate homeowners have now and what the current rates are is keeping many sellers on the sidelines further suppressing inventory and keeping housing prices high. Builders are extremely optimistic right now and are building more inventory than they have since before the recession. That will help, but won’t be anywhere remotely close enough to bridge the supply gap we have at 1 month right now.
Here are some stats from MIBOR comparing April 2023 to May 2023 in the 16 counties they service:
Median Sales Price UP 3.4% to $300,000
Closed Sales UP 17.2% to 2,901 units
New Listings UP 13.0% to 3,319 units
Pending Sales UP 8.1% to 3,035 units
Average Days on Market UP 62.0% to 81 days
Median Days on Market NO CHANGE at 7 days
Price per s.f. UP 2.0% to $156
% of Asking Price Received UP 0.6% to 99.5%
Active Inventory DOWN 5.6% to 3,026 units
Absorption Rate DOWN 23.1% to 1.0 months
You can see that these numbers are all trending in the right direction. We just need more inventory. So, if you know someone thinking about selling, please give us a call. We would love to talk with them about their options and show them how our listings sell, on average for 7.9% MORE than the average real estate agent gets. For a $300,000 house, that is $23,700 back in their pocket! Of course, we would love to help with any buying or building needs as well. Give us a call today-317-339-7698!
Happy Independence Day!! We hope you enjoy our July newsletter! Click here to read it.
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, Helena, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Sunday, May 28, 2023
June 2023 Newsletter
Welcome to the unofficial start of summer!! School is out and grad and pool parties abound. Speaking of those, we are hosting a grad party for our daughter Ana next week. She graduated from Guerin Catholic and will be attending IU Kelley School of Business in the Fall. While she is excited to start a new chapter, we sure will miss having her here with us. We have absolutely loved watching her grow up from a little girl to a beautiful, confident, smart young woman with so many opportunities ahead of her. We are looking forward to heading down to B-Town for football tailgating, basketball games, and just to take her to dinner. If you have kids who have already gone down this road, you know both how excited we are as well as heartbroken.
The other HUGE news we have to share is that Thea and Michael welcomed Parks Jordan into this world on May 11th. They are all home and getting used to the new life they have together. We have seen photos of Parks and he is such a handsome baby with lots of hair. Thea and Michael are really enjoying being parents. Thea plans to return to the team mid-July. We have an agent from our office who was gracious enough to fill in for Thea while she is on maternity leave. Helena Hoen has been so helpful in working with Thea’s clients to ensure we don’t miss a step.
Tali finished her competition cheer season with a #10 and #2 in the world finishes at All-Star Worlds in Orlando last month. We are so proud of both teams as they worked so hard this year. They already have their new teams and have started practicing for 2024 Worlds!! It never stops!
Kylie is excited for the summer as her kids are out of school and the pool is open. Kylie loves her sun and soaking up all of that Vitamin D. She has been so amazing at helping Helena get acclimated to the team while Thea is out. She does a great job of keeping us all in line!
The spring real estate market has been unusually slower than in past years, especially recently. This is due to several factors, but chief among them is higher mortgage interest rates and record-high home prices. Along with those, low inventory is making it hard for buyers to find homes and sellers to feel comfortable putting theirs on the market. We do expect to see mortgage interest rates start tracking down and get to around a 5.5% rate by Fall. Every economist I have read and heard has said don’t expect to see mortgage interest rates dip below 5% again in our lifetimes.
With the low supply, we aren’t going to see home values decline here in Indy. Did you know that 2/3 of all people who purchased homes in the past 3-years have buyer’s remorse due to buying too quickly, paying too much and making too many concessions? Frankly, if you wanted to buy a home over the past 3-years, you had to be okay with all of those. Once we see mortgage rates tick below 6%, we expect to see more inventory become available. We will also see more buyers enter the market.
Here are some stats from MIBOR for the Greater Indianapolis area and its 16-county service area comparing April 2023 to March 2023:
Median Sales Price-$290,000 UP 5.5%
Closed Sales-2,447 units DOWN 8.3%
New Listings-2,919 units DOWN 1.9%
Pending Sales-2,997 units UP 4.6%
Days on Market-51 days UP 6.3%
Price per s.f.-$153 UP 2.0%
% of Ask Received-98.9% UP 0.8%
Active Inventory-2,778 units DOWN 15.7%
Absorption Rate-1.1 months DOWN 8.3%
We are seeing some of the spring seasonality come into play here, although not as strong as usual. We do expect to see a busy summer and fall if mortgage interest rates continue to fall.
There is a LOT of misinformation out there. If you or someone you care about are thinking of buying, selling, building or investing in real estate, please give us a call-317-573-1880. We would be happy to share relevant, factual, and accurate information about the housing market that is specific to you/them.
We hope you will join us for our June Happy Hour from 5-6:30pm on Thursday, June 15th at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. We will likely be out on the patio if the weather cooperates. Please RSVP to kylie@Welcome2Indy.com
Also, my Seller Workshop is from 7-8:30pm on Tuesday, June 13th via Zoom. Please e-mail steve@Welcome2Indy.com for a link. This is GREAT for anyone thinking about selling in the next year or so. No pressure or selling, just good info as you prepare to get your house on the market.
We hope you enjoy reading this month's newsletter!!! Click here.
Happy Summer!!!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, Mark and Helena
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
The other HUGE news we have to share is that Thea and Michael welcomed Parks Jordan into this world on May 11th. They are all home and getting used to the new life they have together. We have seen photos of Parks and he is such a handsome baby with lots of hair. Thea and Michael are really enjoying being parents. Thea plans to return to the team mid-July. We have an agent from our office who was gracious enough to fill in for Thea while she is on maternity leave. Helena Hoen has been so helpful in working with Thea’s clients to ensure we don’t miss a step.
Tali finished her competition cheer season with a #10 and #2 in the world finishes at All-Star Worlds in Orlando last month. We are so proud of both teams as they worked so hard this year. They already have their new teams and have started practicing for 2024 Worlds!! It never stops!
Kylie is excited for the summer as her kids are out of school and the pool is open. Kylie loves her sun and soaking up all of that Vitamin D. She has been so amazing at helping Helena get acclimated to the team while Thea is out. She does a great job of keeping us all in line!
The spring real estate market has been unusually slower than in past years, especially recently. This is due to several factors, but chief among them is higher mortgage interest rates and record-high home prices. Along with those, low inventory is making it hard for buyers to find homes and sellers to feel comfortable putting theirs on the market. We do expect to see mortgage interest rates start tracking down and get to around a 5.5% rate by Fall. Every economist I have read and heard has said don’t expect to see mortgage interest rates dip below 5% again in our lifetimes.
With the low supply, we aren’t going to see home values decline here in Indy. Did you know that 2/3 of all people who purchased homes in the past 3-years have buyer’s remorse due to buying too quickly, paying too much and making too many concessions? Frankly, if you wanted to buy a home over the past 3-years, you had to be okay with all of those. Once we see mortgage rates tick below 6%, we expect to see more inventory become available. We will also see more buyers enter the market.
Here are some stats from MIBOR for the Greater Indianapolis area and its 16-county service area comparing April 2023 to March 2023:
Median Sales Price-$290,000 UP 5.5%
Closed Sales-2,447 units DOWN 8.3%
New Listings-2,919 units DOWN 1.9%
Pending Sales-2,997 units UP 4.6%
Days on Market-51 days UP 6.3%
Price per s.f.-$153 UP 2.0%
% of Ask Received-98.9% UP 0.8%
Active Inventory-2,778 units DOWN 15.7%
Absorption Rate-1.1 months DOWN 8.3%
We are seeing some of the spring seasonality come into play here, although not as strong as usual. We do expect to see a busy summer and fall if mortgage interest rates continue to fall.
There is a LOT of misinformation out there. If you or someone you care about are thinking of buying, selling, building or investing in real estate, please give us a call-317-573-1880. We would be happy to share relevant, factual, and accurate information about the housing market that is specific to you/them.
We hope you will join us for our June Happy Hour from 5-6:30pm on Thursday, June 15th at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. We will likely be out on the patio if the weather cooperates. Please RSVP to kylie@Welcome2Indy.com
Also, my Seller Workshop is from 7-8:30pm on Tuesday, June 13th via Zoom. Please e-mail steve@Welcome2Indy.com for a link. This is GREAT for anyone thinking about selling in the next year or so. No pressure or selling, just good info as you prepare to get your house on the market.
We hope you enjoy reading this month's newsletter!!! Click here.
Happy Summer!!!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, Mark and Helena
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
May 2023 Newsletter
Welcome to May!! May is my favorite month of the year. School is almost out, temperatures are getting warmer, the flowers and trees are blooming, the days are getting longer, the real estate season is HOT, and everyone is looking forward to a fun summer! And, the Indy 500!!! We hope you are looking forward to some fun summer plans as well.
Baby update!! Thea is due May 11th and by the time you read this, she may be close to delivering. We are so excited for Thea and Michael and can’t wait to see their new baby. Hopefully, next newsletter, we will have some BIG news to share!!! Thea is planning on taking 2 months maternity leave and then plans to return to helping our clients. During her leave, Helena Hoen will be filling in for Thea. Helena is a great agent and person and we know you will love working with her while Thea is away. Thank you to Helena for stepping in to help out our client family!!
If you were in attendance at Casino Night on April 21st, you had a great time!!! We absolutely LOVED seeing everyone and hearing all of the cheering and laughing all night. We expect to be able to invite ALL of our clients next year and hope you will join us. It was so much fun!!!
We also hosted our first 2023 Shred and Recycling Day on Earth Day. Hopefully, you were able to swing by and take part. If not, we hope to have another one later this year.
We also had our April Happy Hour on the 20th. It was fun to see so many friends and clients and hang out. Please join us for our May Happy Hour on Thursday, May 18th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. FREE drinks and appetizers!
Don’t miss our next Seller Workshop on Tuesday, May 9th from 7-8:30pm. E-mail kylie@Welcome2Indy.com to register. If you know anyone thinking of selling this year, invite them to hop on. It is low-key, informative, and fun! All of your questions will be answered.
Thea’s next Buyer Workshop will be held likely in July after she returns from maternity leave. If you know anyone who is thinking of buying or building this year, have them get in contact with me: Steve@Welcome2Indy.com. I would be happy to conduct a personal buyer workshop and answer all of their questions.
Thank you to Butler University for hosting us in April for our Home Buyer and Seller Workshop. We had a great turnout and loved being back on campus. We look forward to being back again next year for another brand new workshop.
Exciting news for our family is that Tali is competing on 2 competitive cheer teams with ICE Cheer in Orlando for Worlds! One of her teams is ranked 1st in the nation and they are going to defend their title. We are so excited! Please send some good vibes our way from May 4-7.
Ana is winding down her senior year at Guerin and our spare bedroom is the stock room for dorm furnishings. She already has her orientation weekend set with her roommate. Graduation party is set and invites are about to go out. Things are getting real!!!
Kylie has been dealing with terrible allergies and sick kiddos. No fun!!! She is getting through and is looking forward to allergies dying down.
The real estate market has been up and down all year with the number of transactions much lower than last year. We are down about 17.8% from last year YTD. Here are some numbers comparing March 2023 to February 2023 courtesy of MIBOR:
Median Sales Price-No change-$275,000
Closed Sales-UP 39.9% to 2,631 units
New Listings-UP 34.4% to 2,971 units
Pending Sales-UP 29.4% to 3,046 units
Days on Market-DOWN 9.3% to 49 days
Price per s.f.-UP 2.7% to $150
% of Ask Received-UP 0.6% to 98.1%
Active Inventory-DOWN 14.3% to 2,764 units
Absorption Rate-DOWN 35.3% 1.1 months
Circle May 10th on your calendars. The annual inflation report is released then. It will show significant easing in inflation and mortgage rates will drop. We expect them to be in the mid-5% this summer. Trust me, things are going to get crazy again, so if you or someone you care about are remotely thinking of making a move this year, do it now, before things get nuts again (they already are in some price points). You can always refinance later and many lenders, in anticipation of this are already marketing streamlined refinances. Call me to learn more-317-339-7698.
We hope you have an amazing May!!! Thank you for being such great clients and referral partners. We truly appreciate you and everything you do for our families. Who is the next person you know who needs our help with buying, selling, building, or investing in real estate? We would love to talk with them!
Your friends in real estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, Mark and Helena
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!!
Click here to read our May newsletter full of fun articles for spring and some interesting trivia.
Baby update!! Thea is due May 11th and by the time you read this, she may be close to delivering. We are so excited for Thea and Michael and can’t wait to see their new baby. Hopefully, next newsletter, we will have some BIG news to share!!! Thea is planning on taking 2 months maternity leave and then plans to return to helping our clients. During her leave, Helena Hoen will be filling in for Thea. Helena is a great agent and person and we know you will love working with her while Thea is away. Thank you to Helena for stepping in to help out our client family!!
If you were in attendance at Casino Night on April 21st, you had a great time!!! We absolutely LOVED seeing everyone and hearing all of the cheering and laughing all night. We expect to be able to invite ALL of our clients next year and hope you will join us. It was so much fun!!!
We also hosted our first 2023 Shred and Recycling Day on Earth Day. Hopefully, you were able to swing by and take part. If not, we hope to have another one later this year.
We also had our April Happy Hour on the 20th. It was fun to see so many friends and clients and hang out. Please join us for our May Happy Hour on Thursday, May 18th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. FREE drinks and appetizers!
Don’t miss our next Seller Workshop on Tuesday, May 9th from 7-8:30pm. E-mail kylie@Welcome2Indy.com to register. If you know anyone thinking of selling this year, invite them to hop on. It is low-key, informative, and fun! All of your questions will be answered.
Thea’s next Buyer Workshop will be held likely in July after she returns from maternity leave. If you know anyone who is thinking of buying or building this year, have them get in contact with me: Steve@Welcome2Indy.com. I would be happy to conduct a personal buyer workshop and answer all of their questions.
Thank you to Butler University for hosting us in April for our Home Buyer and Seller Workshop. We had a great turnout and loved being back on campus. We look forward to being back again next year for another brand new workshop.
Exciting news for our family is that Tali is competing on 2 competitive cheer teams with ICE Cheer in Orlando for Worlds! One of her teams is ranked 1st in the nation and they are going to defend their title. We are so excited! Please send some good vibes our way from May 4-7.
Ana is winding down her senior year at Guerin and our spare bedroom is the stock room for dorm furnishings. She already has her orientation weekend set with her roommate. Graduation party is set and invites are about to go out. Things are getting real!!!
Kylie has been dealing with terrible allergies and sick kiddos. No fun!!! She is getting through and is looking forward to allergies dying down.
The real estate market has been up and down all year with the number of transactions much lower than last year. We are down about 17.8% from last year YTD. Here are some numbers comparing March 2023 to February 2023 courtesy of MIBOR:
Median Sales Price-No change-$275,000
Closed Sales-UP 39.9% to 2,631 units
New Listings-UP 34.4% to 2,971 units
Pending Sales-UP 29.4% to 3,046 units
Days on Market-DOWN 9.3% to 49 days
Price per s.f.-UP 2.7% to $150
% of Ask Received-UP 0.6% to 98.1%
Active Inventory-DOWN 14.3% to 2,764 units
Absorption Rate-DOWN 35.3% 1.1 months
Circle May 10th on your calendars. The annual inflation report is released then. It will show significant easing in inflation and mortgage rates will drop. We expect them to be in the mid-5% this summer. Trust me, things are going to get crazy again, so if you or someone you care about are remotely thinking of making a move this year, do it now, before things get nuts again (they already are in some price points). You can always refinance later and many lenders, in anticipation of this are already marketing streamlined refinances. Call me to learn more-317-339-7698.
We hope you have an amazing May!!! Thank you for being such great clients and referral partners. We truly appreciate you and everything you do for our families. Who is the next person you know who needs our help with buying, selling, building, or investing in real estate? We would love to talk with them!
Your friends in real estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, Mark and Helena
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!!
Click here to read our May newsletter full of fun articles for spring and some interesting trivia.
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
April 2023 Newsletter
Hoo-hoo-Hoosiers!!! We have a new Hoosier in the house now! That’s right, our daughter Ana has officially committed to IU Bloomington for the Fall. She is a Direct Admit to the Kelley School of Business to study marketing and Brigid and I couldn’t be any prouder! We visited this past weekend for Direct Admit Day and were so impressed with the program, curriculum, support and, of course the campus, which is ranked as one of the most beautiful in the US. The Kelley School of Business is ranked #8 in the US as well. A LOT is about to change and, frankly I, for one, am not ready for Ana to leave home. I really don’t know how you all did it when your kids left for college. We will deeply miss Ana later this year, but know this is her next step in her journey and we support her 100%. Now, looks like I need to buy some IU gear as I have absolutely nada.
Ana and Brigid are in Anna Maria Island as I write this on Ana’s senior year spring break with a bunch of her friends. Sounds like they are having a great time! Tali and I leave on Saturday to Whistler, Canada to go skiing. Brigid will be flying up to join us (not ski, but rather knit in the lodge) while Ana stays home with our dog Duke and goes to school. This will be the first time I have skied in over 30-years, so wish me luck!!! Tali will be learning how to ski as this will be her first time on skis.
Speaking of Tali, we are so proud of her and her competitive cheer team as they ended up #1 in the Nation and won the Golden Buzzer at their last competition. This means they have earned a fully-paid bid to Nationals in Orlando in May. She and her teammates have worked so hard for this and we can’t wait to see how they do against some really stiff competition from all over the US.
The other super-exciting news is that Thea is just a few weeks away from her due date of May 11th!!! She and baby are doing great and she can’t wait to meet him/her. We are excited for her and Michael and can’t wait to see little baby Snelly!! While Thea is on maternity leave, an agent in our office Helena Hoen will be helping us with our buyers. Thea has been working closely with Helena so she will be ready to help when Thea is out. We are so excited Helena is on the team and has fit right in!
Thank you to Butler University for inviting me back to speak to your faculty and staff after a COVID break. If you work at Butler, I hope you will join me on Wednesday, April 11th from 12-1pm where I will be teaching a brand new workshop entitled the Top 7 Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make in Today’s Real Estate Market.
If you or someone you care about would like to learn some of these and don’t work at Butler join me from 7-8:30pm on Zoom that night where I will be hosting another workshop titled The Top 10 Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House. E-mail me at steve@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
If you or someone you care about are thinking of buying a house this year, you can’t miss Thea’s Buyer Workshop on Wednesday, April 26th from 5-6:30pm where she will walk you through the buying process and common mistakes to avoid in this crazy real estate market. E-mail thea@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
Don’t miss our Happy Hour on Thursday, April 20th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel for some fun conversation, meet new friends and enjoy some cold drinks and hot appetizers on me! E-mail kylie@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
The housing market continues to be front page of the news. The market is absolutely heating back up again and we are seeing many houses (not all) receiving multiple offers above asking price. Interest rates are slowly coming back down and should continue to do so throughout the year. Housing appreciation has cooled, but is NOT contracting. Inventory, while still stubbornly low, has risen a bit, but but is far from being where we need it. That will take years to get back to where we need it to be. Indiana is 30,000 housing units short of current demand and the US is over 1.7 million housing units short of demand. The gap continues to grow.
See below stats from MIBOR comparing February 2023 to January 2023:
Median Sales Price-UP 0.7% to $275,000
Closed Sales-UP 20.1% to 1,850 units
New Listings-UP 7.6% to 2,202 units
Pending Sales-UP 9.7% to 2,502 units
Days on Market-DOWN 13.1% to 53 days
Price per s.f.-DOWN 6.4% to $146
% of Asking Price Received-UP 0.6% to 97.5%
Active Inventory-DOWN 18.9% to 2,883 units
Absorption Rate-DOWN 30.4% to 1.6 months (this is UP 128.6% from 2/2022 when it was 0.7 months)
We hope you are enjoying the first weeks of spring and the longer daylight in the evenings. We also hope that you have a wonderful Easter.
Please enjoy this month’s newsletter and let us know what you think about it. We really try to find fun and entertaining articles and stories that are a quick read. How did we do? Click here to read our April newsletter.
Happy Spring!!!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Ana and Brigid are in Anna Maria Island as I write this on Ana’s senior year spring break with a bunch of her friends. Sounds like they are having a great time! Tali and I leave on Saturday to Whistler, Canada to go skiing. Brigid will be flying up to join us (not ski, but rather knit in the lodge) while Ana stays home with our dog Duke and goes to school. This will be the first time I have skied in over 30-years, so wish me luck!!! Tali will be learning how to ski as this will be her first time on skis.
Speaking of Tali, we are so proud of her and her competitive cheer team as they ended up #1 in the Nation and won the Golden Buzzer at their last competition. This means they have earned a fully-paid bid to Nationals in Orlando in May. She and her teammates have worked so hard for this and we can’t wait to see how they do against some really stiff competition from all over the US.
The other super-exciting news is that Thea is just a few weeks away from her due date of May 11th!!! She and baby are doing great and she can’t wait to meet him/her. We are excited for her and Michael and can’t wait to see little baby Snelly!! While Thea is on maternity leave, an agent in our office Helena Hoen will be helping us with our buyers. Thea has been working closely with Helena so she will be ready to help when Thea is out. We are so excited Helena is on the team and has fit right in!
Thank you to Butler University for inviting me back to speak to your faculty and staff after a COVID break. If you work at Butler, I hope you will join me on Wednesday, April 11th from 12-1pm where I will be teaching a brand new workshop entitled the Top 7 Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make in Today’s Real Estate Market.
If you or someone you care about would like to learn some of these and don’t work at Butler join me from 7-8:30pm on Zoom that night where I will be hosting another workshop titled The Top 10 Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House. E-mail me at steve@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
If you or someone you care about are thinking of buying a house this year, you can’t miss Thea’s Buyer Workshop on Wednesday, April 26th from 5-6:30pm where she will walk you through the buying process and common mistakes to avoid in this crazy real estate market. E-mail thea@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
Don’t miss our Happy Hour on Thursday, April 20th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel for some fun conversation, meet new friends and enjoy some cold drinks and hot appetizers on me! E-mail kylie@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
The housing market continues to be front page of the news. The market is absolutely heating back up again and we are seeing many houses (not all) receiving multiple offers above asking price. Interest rates are slowly coming back down and should continue to do so throughout the year. Housing appreciation has cooled, but is NOT contracting. Inventory, while still stubbornly low, has risen a bit, but but is far from being where we need it. That will take years to get back to where we need it to be. Indiana is 30,000 housing units short of current demand and the US is over 1.7 million housing units short of demand. The gap continues to grow.
See below stats from MIBOR comparing February 2023 to January 2023:
Median Sales Price-UP 0.7% to $275,000
Closed Sales-UP 20.1% to 1,850 units
New Listings-UP 7.6% to 2,202 units
Pending Sales-UP 9.7% to 2,502 units
Days on Market-DOWN 13.1% to 53 days
Price per s.f.-DOWN 6.4% to $146
% of Asking Price Received-UP 0.6% to 97.5%
Active Inventory-DOWN 18.9% to 2,883 units
Absorption Rate-DOWN 30.4% to 1.6 months (this is UP 128.6% from 2/2022 when it was 0.7 months)
We hope you are enjoying the first weeks of spring and the longer daylight in the evenings. We also hope that you have a wonderful Easter.
Please enjoy this month’s newsletter and let us know what you think about it. We really try to find fun and entertaining articles and stories that are a quick read. How did we do? Click here to read our April newsletter.
Happy Spring!!!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Thursday, February 23, 2023
March 2023 newsletter
Happy almost spring!!! By the time our next newsletter comes out, it WILL be spring, at least officially on the calendar, and longer daylight due to Daylight Saving Time. Whether you like DST or not, it IS nice to have more daylight at the end of the day so if you have kiddos they can play longer after school and even later throughout the summer. Not sure why this winter has seemed so long, but I am ready for it to be over and get on with spring. So, here’s to spring!!!
Steve’s family has kept busy this spring on a lot of different fronts. The spring market is picking up and keeping me extremely busy, which is good. More on the market later…Ana is taking, likely her last finals of her high school career and is so excited! If she keeps A’s in all of her classes last trimester senior year, she doesn’t have to take finals. Whoo hoo!!! She also starts her internship with The Westfield Chamber of Commerce helping with marketing and communications. This should be an incredible opportunity to learn more about the business world as well as marketing, which is what she intends to study at IU. She leaves tomorrow with 2 of her good friends for St. Pete, FL to stay with Brigid’s parents for a few days and get some sun before the last trimester starts.
Tali is still neck-deep into competitive cheer. Next competition is this weekend downtown at the Convention Center. Then, a couple of weeks later, we head to Chicago and then a few weeks after that, we finish at Grand Park in Westfield. Finally, is Nationals in Orlando in May. We are still chasing a bid for her two teams she is on and expect to get them at one of these competitions.
Spring Break is next month and after Ana heads to Anna Maria Island with a significant part of her senior class (Brigid is going with her along with parents of her friends and they are all staying in a big house together for the week), then Brigid flies to Whistler, Canada to meet up with Tali and me to ski for our spring break for the week. So, from sun and sand to snow! I haven’t skied in over 25-years and Tali and Brigid haven’t ever skied, so this will be interesting. Send us good thoughts for no broken bones!!
Brigid just returned from Charlotte with Merck for a meeting for the week. She always enjoys spending time with her team, but also enjoys coming home!
Thea is doing great with her pregnancy and her due date of May 11th is rapidly approaching! We are excited for her and Michael and have made arrangements with an agent in our office to fill in for Thea while she is on maternity leave. She anticipates being out for 2 months. We welcome Helena Hoen to our team to help us with buyers while Thea is out. Helena comes from a background of data analytics in the corporate world. She will fit in well with our team and we hope you will get a chance to meet her.
Kylie has had her hands full with lots of work to catch up on as well as juggling kids, planning team events and her side hustle of Reiki. I was unfamiliar with Reiki until I met Kylie. It is starting to be taught alongside traditional medicine as its benefits are well-documented. She has worked on our team as well as several of our clients who swear by it. Feel free to call Kylie and she would be happy to tell you more and see if it is a good fit for you.
As usual, we have lots of upcoming events and we hope you can join us for all or some of them.
Happy Hour-Thursday, March 16th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. Day before St. Patrick’s Day, so come in your green and party a day early!! We had a nice group at the February Happy Hour and would love to see YOU in March. RSVP to Kylie@Welcome2Indy.com.
Tuesday, March 14th from 10:30-4:30 is our next Vacation Giveaway!!! All you have to do is call in that day to 317-975-1511 between the hours above and we will register you to win a $5,000 vacation gift card. You can use that money however you like and it doesn’t even have to be for a vacation. Who doesn’t like FREE money??? For every referral you give us, we will put 3 additional entries in the drawing. Drawing will be shortly after 5pm on Facebook Live.
Now, onto the real estate market. There has been a LOT of coverage in the news and social media about it for awhile now. Please understand that all real estate is local. What you hear on the national news is NOT what is happening in the Indy area. Bottom line, Indy was ranked as the most affordable city again this year as well as one of the best places to live…again. We fully expect interest rates to continue to fall (it won’t be a straight-line drop), to around 5% by June. There is a LOT that can happen between now and then, but the inflation data is fully supporting this so far. That will flood the market with buyers…and sellers. Our market is NOT depreciating either. We are seeing modest appreciation in the 3-5% range. Inventory is still woefully short of demand and we are at 2.2 months of supply. A balanced market is 6-months. In Indiana, we are short over 30,000 housing units to meet demand. This number is growing every month as homeowners are not putting their houses on the market to the extent needed and builders aren’t able to build enough product. FHA and VA just reduced their funding fees as well. FHA reduced theirs by 30 bps. For a $400,000 house, that means a $100/month savings. Contact us for more info.
Check out the stats below courtesy of MIBOR comparing January 2023 to December 2022:
Median Sales Price-$272,000-DOWN 2.9%
Closed Sales-1,519 units-DOWN 37.3%
New Listings-2,037 units-UP 20.2%
Pending Sales-2,399 units-UP 52.5%
Days on Market-59 days-UP 18.0%
Price per s.f.-$156-DOWN 2.5%
% of Ask Received-96.8%-DOWN 0.9%
Active Inventory-3,388 units-DOWN 8.7%
Absorption Rate-2.2 months-UP 46.7%
You will notice that this is starting to be much more buyer-friendly. If you or someone you care about has been sitting on the sidelines to buy, this would be an excellent time to have a conversation with us about the pros and cons of taking action sooner rather than later.
We hope you have a great start to spring and enjoy the longer daylight hours in the evening. Please know how thankful we are for you and those you introduce to us to help. Please contact steve@Welcome2Indy.com if your plans for 2023 involve buying, selling, or investing in real estate. Also, keep in mind that we have a huge referral network of the Top 5% of agents in the US and if you or someone you care about are thinking of moving out of the Indy area, give us a call and we will match you with a perfect agent who is one of the best in their field.
Click here to read our March newsletter
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret. The best way to introduce us to someone you care about is e-mail or call Steve at steve@Welcome2Indy.com or 317-573-1880. Thank you!
Steve’s family has kept busy this spring on a lot of different fronts. The spring market is picking up and keeping me extremely busy, which is good. More on the market later…Ana is taking, likely her last finals of her high school career and is so excited! If she keeps A’s in all of her classes last trimester senior year, she doesn’t have to take finals. Whoo hoo!!! She also starts her internship with The Westfield Chamber of Commerce helping with marketing and communications. This should be an incredible opportunity to learn more about the business world as well as marketing, which is what she intends to study at IU. She leaves tomorrow with 2 of her good friends for St. Pete, FL to stay with Brigid’s parents for a few days and get some sun before the last trimester starts.
Tali is still neck-deep into competitive cheer. Next competition is this weekend downtown at the Convention Center. Then, a couple of weeks later, we head to Chicago and then a few weeks after that, we finish at Grand Park in Westfield. Finally, is Nationals in Orlando in May. We are still chasing a bid for her two teams she is on and expect to get them at one of these competitions.
Spring Break is next month and after Ana heads to Anna Maria Island with a significant part of her senior class (Brigid is going with her along with parents of her friends and they are all staying in a big house together for the week), then Brigid flies to Whistler, Canada to meet up with Tali and me to ski for our spring break for the week. So, from sun and sand to snow! I haven’t skied in over 25-years and Tali and Brigid haven’t ever skied, so this will be interesting. Send us good thoughts for no broken bones!!
Brigid just returned from Charlotte with Merck for a meeting for the week. She always enjoys spending time with her team, but also enjoys coming home!
Thea is doing great with her pregnancy and her due date of May 11th is rapidly approaching! We are excited for her and Michael and have made arrangements with an agent in our office to fill in for Thea while she is on maternity leave. She anticipates being out for 2 months. We welcome Helena Hoen to our team to help us with buyers while Thea is out. Helena comes from a background of data analytics in the corporate world. She will fit in well with our team and we hope you will get a chance to meet her.
Kylie has had her hands full with lots of work to catch up on as well as juggling kids, planning team events and her side hustle of Reiki. I was unfamiliar with Reiki until I met Kylie. It is starting to be taught alongside traditional medicine as its benefits are well-documented. She has worked on our team as well as several of our clients who swear by it. Feel free to call Kylie and she would be happy to tell you more and see if it is a good fit for you.
As usual, we have lots of upcoming events and we hope you can join us for all or some of them.
Happy Hour-Thursday, March 16th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. Day before St. Patrick’s Day, so come in your green and party a day early!! We had a nice group at the February Happy Hour and would love to see YOU in March. RSVP to Kylie@Welcome2Indy.com.
Tuesday, March 14th from 10:30-4:30 is our next Vacation Giveaway!!! All you have to do is call in that day to 317-975-1511 between the hours above and we will register you to win a $5,000 vacation gift card. You can use that money however you like and it doesn’t even have to be for a vacation. Who doesn’t like FREE money??? For every referral you give us, we will put 3 additional entries in the drawing. Drawing will be shortly after 5pm on Facebook Live.
Now, onto the real estate market. There has been a LOT of coverage in the news and social media about it for awhile now. Please understand that all real estate is local. What you hear on the national news is NOT what is happening in the Indy area. Bottom line, Indy was ranked as the most affordable city again this year as well as one of the best places to live…again. We fully expect interest rates to continue to fall (it won’t be a straight-line drop), to around 5% by June. There is a LOT that can happen between now and then, but the inflation data is fully supporting this so far. That will flood the market with buyers…and sellers. Our market is NOT depreciating either. We are seeing modest appreciation in the 3-5% range. Inventory is still woefully short of demand and we are at 2.2 months of supply. A balanced market is 6-months. In Indiana, we are short over 30,000 housing units to meet demand. This number is growing every month as homeowners are not putting their houses on the market to the extent needed and builders aren’t able to build enough product. FHA and VA just reduced their funding fees as well. FHA reduced theirs by 30 bps. For a $400,000 house, that means a $100/month savings. Contact us for more info.
Check out the stats below courtesy of MIBOR comparing January 2023 to December 2022:
Median Sales Price-$272,000-DOWN 2.9%
Closed Sales-1,519 units-DOWN 37.3%
New Listings-2,037 units-UP 20.2%
Pending Sales-2,399 units-UP 52.5%
Days on Market-59 days-UP 18.0%
Price per s.f.-$156-DOWN 2.5%
% of Ask Received-96.8%-DOWN 0.9%
Active Inventory-3,388 units-DOWN 8.7%
Absorption Rate-2.2 months-UP 46.7%
You will notice that this is starting to be much more buyer-friendly. If you or someone you care about has been sitting on the sidelines to buy, this would be an excellent time to have a conversation with us about the pros and cons of taking action sooner rather than later.
We hope you have a great start to spring and enjoy the longer daylight hours in the evening. Please know how thankful we are for you and those you introduce to us to help. Please contact steve@Welcome2Indy.com if your plans for 2023 involve buying, selling, or investing in real estate. Also, keep in mind that we have a huge referral network of the Top 5% of agents in the US and if you or someone you care about are thinking of moving out of the Indy area, give us a call and we will match you with a perfect agent who is one of the best in their field.
Click here to read our March newsletter
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret. The best way to introduce us to someone you care about is e-mail or call Steve at steve@Welcome2Indy.com or 317-573-1880. Thank you!
Wednesday, February 08, 2023
February 2023 Newsletter
Happy Valentine’s Day! We hope your year is off to a great start and if you have a significant other, that you are able to do something special for Valentine’s Day. Now that the holidays are over and interest rates are coming down, we are seeing a resurgence in the real estate market. More on that below.
We enjoyed our first Happy Hour of the year last month and loved seeing many of our clients and friends. We hope to see you at an upcoming Happy Hour. They are usually the 3rd Thursday of the month from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s. The next one is Thursday, February 16th. RSVP to kylie@Welcome2Indy.com
Four lucky clients won a Valentine’s Day dinner reservation at Season’s 52 with a bottle of wine on us! Whatever you do for Valentine’s Day, we hope you can do something special.
Workshops! Are you or someone you care about thinking about selling or buying a home this year? If so, jump on a quick Zoom workshop with us and we will cover all of your questions, including what is the current state of the real estate market and what do we project happening this year and how will that affect you? Steve walks his clients through the entire home selling process starting from 1-year out to putting your house on the market and covers the Top Ten Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House. Thea walks buyers through the Top Ten Things to Know before Buying Your Next Home as well as the process. Steve’s next Seller Workshop is on March 14th from 7-8:30pm. E-mail steve@Welcome2Indy.com to register. Thea’s next buyer workshop is February 22nd from 5:30-6:30pm. E-mail thea@Welcome2Indy.com to register. Both are via Zoom only.
Ready for some warm weather? Wanna get away? Wanna have someone else pay for it?? Look for more information on our next $5,000 Vacation Giveaway on March 14th. All you have to do is call in to register. More info is coming soon…
Big news for Steve’s family!!! Ana who is a senior at Guerin Catholic just accepted a direct admit to The Kelly School of Business at IU Bloomington in the Fall!!! She applied to a lot of great universities all over the country and had many acceptance letters and chose IU. Brigid and I couldn’t be happier!!! She will be close, attending the 8th-ranked Business School in the nation and can we say in-state tuition?? Score!!!
Tali is in the middle of competitive cheer season. Earlier this month she was in French Lick competing and both teams for which she cheers came in first place! We are still looking to win a bid to Nationals in May and have 3 more competitions left this season to earn one. Fingers crossed!!
Kylie is continuing to grow her Reiki business. If you are familiar with Reiki (or even if you aren’t), feel free to give Kylie a call at 317-573-1818. She does a phenomenal job and already has several regular clients.
Thea is working hard to keep up with the spring market that has already started. She celebrated a big birthday on February 7th and we were excited to celebrate with her!!! Her pregnancy is going great so far and we are getting closer and closer to her due date in May. Don’t worry, if you are working with Thea, we have a transition plan in place so we don’t miss a beat helping you or someone you referred to us find the perfect home. We will be excited to welcome Thea back after a couple of months of maternity leave.
The market…what is going on with it? After many months of sluggish activity, things have picked up already and we are expecting a busy spring market. Interest rates are coming down and have dropped already around 1% from their highs just a couple of months ago. They are projected to keep dropping to around the 5% mark by summer, which is awesome news! As a result, buyers and sellers who were on the sidelines the past several months are entering the market. Mortgage applications are up 28% already and new listings are down, keeping for a tight market, which is pushing the median sales price up to $280,000. We still only have 1.6 months supply of inventory and with a healthy level at 6-months, you can see why we don’t expect to see this changing anytime soon. We are seeing multiple offers on houses again, although not nearly as many as last spring and only in certain areas and price points.
See some numbers below courtesy of MIBOR comparing December 2022 to November 2022:
Median Sales Price-UP 0.8% to $280,000
Closed Sales-DOWN 4.3% to 2,414 units
New Listings-DOWN 27.2% to 1,706 units
Pending Sales-DOWN 10.3% to 1,878 units
Days on Market-UP 31.4% to 46 days
Price per s.f.-no change-$160
% of Ask Received-DOWN 0.1% to 97.7%
Active Inventory-DOWN 12.3% to 3,816 units
Absorption Rate-DOWN 5.9% to 1.6 months
While these numbers can look pretty ugly, keep in mind this is during the holidays, which is the slowest month for real estate sales and also some of the highest interest rates we have seen in years. Things are getting better. In fact, if you are a buyer, jumping in the market right now will be to your benefit as we expect a lot of competition again this spring, and as stated above, we are already seeing it.
We hope to see you at some of our upcoming events. As always, THANK YOU for keeping us in mind for all of your real estate needs AND for introducing us to people you care about who are thinking about buying, selling, or building a new home. We will treat them like family!! This is how we stay in business.
Finally, if you or someone you know is moving out of the area, CALL US. We have a vetted referral network of the TOP 5% of real estate agents nationwide. We would be happy to connect you or someone you care about to ensure you get the absolute BEST agent to help with your next home.
Click here to read our February newsletter.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
Please don’t keep us a secret!
We enjoyed our first Happy Hour of the year last month and loved seeing many of our clients and friends. We hope to see you at an upcoming Happy Hour. They are usually the 3rd Thursday of the month from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s. The next one is Thursday, February 16th. RSVP to kylie@Welcome2Indy.com
Four lucky clients won a Valentine’s Day dinner reservation at Season’s 52 with a bottle of wine on us! Whatever you do for Valentine’s Day, we hope you can do something special.
Workshops! Are you or someone you care about thinking about selling or buying a home this year? If so, jump on a quick Zoom workshop with us and we will cover all of your questions, including what is the current state of the real estate market and what do we project happening this year and how will that affect you? Steve walks his clients through the entire home selling process starting from 1-year out to putting your house on the market and covers the Top Ten Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House. Thea walks buyers through the Top Ten Things to Know before Buying Your Next Home as well as the process. Steve’s next Seller Workshop is on March 14th from 7-8:30pm. E-mail steve@Welcome2Indy.com to register. Thea’s next buyer workshop is February 22nd from 5:30-6:30pm. E-mail thea@Welcome2Indy.com to register. Both are via Zoom only.
Ready for some warm weather? Wanna get away? Wanna have someone else pay for it?? Look for more information on our next $5,000 Vacation Giveaway on March 14th. All you have to do is call in to register. More info is coming soon…
Big news for Steve’s family!!! Ana who is a senior at Guerin Catholic just accepted a direct admit to The Kelly School of Business at IU Bloomington in the Fall!!! She applied to a lot of great universities all over the country and had many acceptance letters and chose IU. Brigid and I couldn’t be happier!!! She will be close, attending the 8th-ranked Business School in the nation and can we say in-state tuition?? Score!!!
Tali is in the middle of competitive cheer season. Earlier this month she was in French Lick competing and both teams for which she cheers came in first place! We are still looking to win a bid to Nationals in May and have 3 more competitions left this season to earn one. Fingers crossed!!
Kylie is continuing to grow her Reiki business. If you are familiar with Reiki (or even if you aren’t), feel free to give Kylie a call at 317-573-1818. She does a phenomenal job and already has several regular clients.
Thea is working hard to keep up with the spring market that has already started. She celebrated a big birthday on February 7th and we were excited to celebrate with her!!! Her pregnancy is going great so far and we are getting closer and closer to her due date in May. Don’t worry, if you are working with Thea, we have a transition plan in place so we don’t miss a beat helping you or someone you referred to us find the perfect home. We will be excited to welcome Thea back after a couple of months of maternity leave.
The market…what is going on with it? After many months of sluggish activity, things have picked up already and we are expecting a busy spring market. Interest rates are coming down and have dropped already around 1% from their highs just a couple of months ago. They are projected to keep dropping to around the 5% mark by summer, which is awesome news! As a result, buyers and sellers who were on the sidelines the past several months are entering the market. Mortgage applications are up 28% already and new listings are down, keeping for a tight market, which is pushing the median sales price up to $280,000. We still only have 1.6 months supply of inventory and with a healthy level at 6-months, you can see why we don’t expect to see this changing anytime soon. We are seeing multiple offers on houses again, although not nearly as many as last spring and only in certain areas and price points.
See some numbers below courtesy of MIBOR comparing December 2022 to November 2022:
Median Sales Price-UP 0.8% to $280,000
Closed Sales-DOWN 4.3% to 2,414 units
New Listings-DOWN 27.2% to 1,706 units
Pending Sales-DOWN 10.3% to 1,878 units
Days on Market-UP 31.4% to 46 days
Price per s.f.-no change-$160
% of Ask Received-DOWN 0.1% to 97.7%
Active Inventory-DOWN 12.3% to 3,816 units
Absorption Rate-DOWN 5.9% to 1.6 months
While these numbers can look pretty ugly, keep in mind this is during the holidays, which is the slowest month for real estate sales and also some of the highest interest rates we have seen in years. Things are getting better. In fact, if you are a buyer, jumping in the market right now will be to your benefit as we expect a lot of competition again this spring, and as stated above, we are already seeing it.
We hope to see you at some of our upcoming events. As always, THANK YOU for keeping us in mind for all of your real estate needs AND for introducing us to people you care about who are thinking about buying, selling, or building a new home. We will treat them like family!! This is how we stay in business.
Finally, if you or someone you know is moving out of the area, CALL US. We have a vetted referral network of the TOP 5% of real estate agents nationwide. We would be happy to connect you or someone you care about to ensure you get the absolute BEST agent to help with your next home.
Click here to read our February newsletter.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
Please don’t keep us a secret!
Friday, December 30, 2022
January 2023 newsletter
Happy New Year!!! We hope that you enjoyed your holidays spent with family and friends. As I write this, it is the week between Christmas and New Year’s-a time that generally is slower and allows time to be spent with family and friends who have come into town to celebrate together. It is always a nice time to reflect back on the year and look forward to the year ahead. Following this time is the spring market which will typically start a few short weeks from now, so a bit of time to rest and reflect is always welcome. We hope you are able to take some time to do the same as finding quiet and reflective time in this fast-paced world has gotten harder and harder.
This holiday season, Kylie has been able to take a couple of weeks off at the end of the year for a much-needed vacation with her family. Thea has also taken a week off to spend time with her family in Cleveland. Next Christmas and every one thereafter will be MUCH different with a child. It is always so fun to relive the wonder, excitement and joy of Christmas through a child’s eyes.
Steve and Thea had a big day 2 weeks ago when they were sworn in as the Chairman of The Board of Directors and Chairwoman of the Young Professionals Council, respectively of the Westfield Chamber of Commerce! Westfield is the fastest-growing city in the state and one of the fastest-growing in the country and we are thrilled to take the helm together to help our city grow and represent fellow business leaders young and experienced make Westfield the best city around! Please connect with us if you have ideas to help make our community better.
As we start to prepare for the spring selling season, we have received quite a few questions from clients wanting to know what to expect. While no one has a clear crystal ball, this is what we have read, heard and seen from some pretty reputable experts and most of them have been pretty in sync with their predictions. We also tend to agree.
The interest rates the Federal Reserve have increased have absolutely had the effect they were intending and that is to cool an overheated market, including housing. While our housing market is still at an anemic 1.7-months of inventory compared to a balanced market of 6-months, the momentum has absolutely shifted to the buyers’ favor for the first time in almost 3 years.
Interest rates have fallen almost 100 basis points or 1% from their high a few weeks ago, which is great news! We are expecting them to continue to fall to around 5% by June of next year.
There will absolutely be more inventory hitting the market this spring as it always does, but we are still woefully short of what we need.
Builders have slowed building due to the drop off in buyer demand and their profit margins are shrinking quickly as the prices their subs charge are not decreasing, but the prices builders are charging buyers are decreasing and the incentives they are having to offer buyers are increasing. Both of these contribute to shrinking profits.
Due to the above, many, many buyers and sellers have sidelined themselves the past several months contributing to a lot of pent up demand. As interest rates decline these buyers and sellers will enter the market and we are likely to see a busy spring market again, which may include bidding wars. Our market continues to appreciate even though pending and closed sales are seeing declines just short of 30% year-over-year.
Interest rate buy-downs have become the tool of the market right now allowing buyers to snag a rate around 4.5% for the first year, 5.5% for the second year and 6.5% for the rest of the term. Buyers are banking on the fact that interest rates will decline in the next 2-years and then they will refinance into a permanent, lower rate. While this is a risk, it is unlikely rates will not continue to decline. Mortgage interest rates are tied to inflation data, which is showing inflation going down. This is why mortgage rates are dropping while the Fed is continuing to increase the Fed Funds rate.
If you are a seller, spring should be your friend. If you are a buyer, NOW is the time to buy before the feeding frenzy picks up again and you have lots more competition. Spring will bring more choices to buyers, however.
Nationwide, we are approximately 5-7 million homes short of what is needed.
As always, please let us know if you have specific questions about your house or buying plans. We are happy to consult with you about your specific situation and how you can make the most out of the market. Due to the crazy swings in the market, the automated valuation sites are more inaccurate than we have seen them in a long time. Your best bet is to have us come out to take a look at your house and give you specific data relative to your house and your specific market. We are happy to do this!
Don’t miss some of our upcoming events for January:
Steve’s Seller Workshop-The Top Ten Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House. This interactive workshop will take you from house prep to going on the market and everything in-between. Join us on Tuesday, January 10th from 7-8:30pm via Zoom. E-mail steve@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
Thea’s Home Buyer Workshop-Everything You Need to Know to Buy A Home in Today’s Market. Join Thea on Wednesday, January 25th from 5:30-7pm via Zoom to hear the tips and tricks Thea teaches her clients to succeed in today’s market. E-mail thea@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
Our first Happy Hour of the year will be on the 4th Thursday of January due to a scheduling conflict on our usual 3rd Thursday. Join us from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel as we toast in the new year and catch up with each other and hear about holiday festivities. E-mail kylie@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
From our family to yours, we wish you a happy and prosperous New Year. As always, if your plans for 2023 include a change in housing, give us a call. We would love to help!
Click here to read our January newsletter
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
This holiday season, Kylie has been able to take a couple of weeks off at the end of the year for a much-needed vacation with her family. Thea has also taken a week off to spend time with her family in Cleveland. Next Christmas and every one thereafter will be MUCH different with a child. It is always so fun to relive the wonder, excitement and joy of Christmas through a child’s eyes.
Steve and Thea had a big day 2 weeks ago when they were sworn in as the Chairman of The Board of Directors and Chairwoman of the Young Professionals Council, respectively of the Westfield Chamber of Commerce! Westfield is the fastest-growing city in the state and one of the fastest-growing in the country and we are thrilled to take the helm together to help our city grow and represent fellow business leaders young and experienced make Westfield the best city around! Please connect with us if you have ideas to help make our community better.
As we start to prepare for the spring selling season, we have received quite a few questions from clients wanting to know what to expect. While no one has a clear crystal ball, this is what we have read, heard and seen from some pretty reputable experts and most of them have been pretty in sync with their predictions. We also tend to agree.
The interest rates the Federal Reserve have increased have absolutely had the effect they were intending and that is to cool an overheated market, including housing. While our housing market is still at an anemic 1.7-months of inventory compared to a balanced market of 6-months, the momentum has absolutely shifted to the buyers’ favor for the first time in almost 3 years.
Interest rates have fallen almost 100 basis points or 1% from their high a few weeks ago, which is great news! We are expecting them to continue to fall to around 5% by June of next year.
There will absolutely be more inventory hitting the market this spring as it always does, but we are still woefully short of what we need.
Builders have slowed building due to the drop off in buyer demand and their profit margins are shrinking quickly as the prices their subs charge are not decreasing, but the prices builders are charging buyers are decreasing and the incentives they are having to offer buyers are increasing. Both of these contribute to shrinking profits.
Due to the above, many, many buyers and sellers have sidelined themselves the past several months contributing to a lot of pent up demand. As interest rates decline these buyers and sellers will enter the market and we are likely to see a busy spring market again, which may include bidding wars. Our market continues to appreciate even though pending and closed sales are seeing declines just short of 30% year-over-year.
Interest rate buy-downs have become the tool of the market right now allowing buyers to snag a rate around 4.5% for the first year, 5.5% for the second year and 6.5% for the rest of the term. Buyers are banking on the fact that interest rates will decline in the next 2-years and then they will refinance into a permanent, lower rate. While this is a risk, it is unlikely rates will not continue to decline. Mortgage interest rates are tied to inflation data, which is showing inflation going down. This is why mortgage rates are dropping while the Fed is continuing to increase the Fed Funds rate.
If you are a seller, spring should be your friend. If you are a buyer, NOW is the time to buy before the feeding frenzy picks up again and you have lots more competition. Spring will bring more choices to buyers, however.
Nationwide, we are approximately 5-7 million homes short of what is needed.
As always, please let us know if you have specific questions about your house or buying plans. We are happy to consult with you about your specific situation and how you can make the most out of the market. Due to the crazy swings in the market, the automated valuation sites are more inaccurate than we have seen them in a long time. Your best bet is to have us come out to take a look at your house and give you specific data relative to your house and your specific market. We are happy to do this!
Don’t miss some of our upcoming events for January:
Steve’s Seller Workshop-The Top Ten Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House. This interactive workshop will take you from house prep to going on the market and everything in-between. Join us on Tuesday, January 10th from 7-8:30pm via Zoom. E-mail steve@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
Thea’s Home Buyer Workshop-Everything You Need to Know to Buy A Home in Today’s Market. Join Thea on Wednesday, January 25th from 5:30-7pm via Zoom to hear the tips and tricks Thea teaches her clients to succeed in today’s market. E-mail thea@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
Our first Happy Hour of the year will be on the 4th Thursday of January due to a scheduling conflict on our usual 3rd Thursday. Join us from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel as we toast in the new year and catch up with each other and hear about holiday festivities. E-mail kylie@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
From our family to yours, we wish you a happy and prosperous New Year. As always, if your plans for 2023 include a change in housing, give us a call. We would love to help!
Click here to read our January newsletter
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Sunday, December 04, 2022
December 2022 Newsletter
Happy Holidays! From our family to yours, we hope this finds you thankful for all of your blessings you celebrated with family and friends over Thanksgiving and looking forward to the holiday season full of excitement and anticipation. It is hard to believe yet another holiday season is upon us as we look back at 2022 and wonder where the year went. For the real estate market, this year has been the proverbial roller coaster, to be sure. More on that below.
The most exciting news by far for our team is that our Senior Buyer Specialist Thea Snelly and her husband Michael are expecting their first child in May of next year!!! We couldn’t be more excited for them to welcome this new life into the world. They will be amazing parents. If you have ever worked with Thea, you know first-hand just how caring and compassionate she is. Thea will be coming back to the team after taking several weeks off for maternity leave, however in the meantime, we are looking for someone to either fill in for Thea while she is spending time with her baby or perhaps even add a 2nd buyer’s agent. If you know someone who would be good, please e-mail me at Steve@Welcome2Indy.com. We would love to talk with them!
Kylie is looking forward to taking a couple of weeks off to spend with her family for the Christmas holiday mid-December. Thea and I will be holding down the fort for her as she enjoys a much-needed and well-deserved break.
My family will be staying here in Indy during Christmas as Brigid’s parents visit from Florida as well as her brother and his family from Boston. We are looking forward to spending time with them. We continue to wait for news from colleges for Ana, but having a couple of acceptance letters in hand makes the wait a little more tolerable. Tali is into her competitive cheer season and is fresh off her first competition where the two teams she is on earned 4 first place trophies and Grand Champion. We are so proud of her and all of the many hours of hard work she puts in at the gym.
This has been an extremely busy 3-weeks for our team! On November 19th, we welcomed almost 500 people into our office to get their professional photos taken with Santa. We hope you enjoyed the day and appreciate you making us part of your holiday traditions!
On November 22nd, we had our 3rd annual Thanksgiving Pie Giveaway. We gave away almost 100 pies to our clients and referral partners and donated pies to Student Impact of Westfield. We also supported a local bakery No Label at The Table, which makes gluten and dairy-free pies that are made by young people on the autism spectrum. Thank you for making us part of your Thanksgiving meal!
On December 1st we had two events. The first was an extremely special presentation featuring Holocaust survivor Frank Grunwald. We are honored to have invited Frank to speak to The Westfield Chamber of Commerce and were the title sponsor. Frank gave an incredibly moving and haunting account of his time spent in 4 concentration camps complete with original photos. Over 230 people from the community came to hear Frank speak including 62 high school kids from Guerin Catholic, Westfield High and Corum Deo Latin school. We were honored to have sponsored several student tables as well so they could hear first-hand what they have been learning in school about the Holocaust. We welcomed over 30 of our clients and were honored to provide tickets for 20 of them to hear this amazing story about Frank’s experiences. If you were able to attend, thank you! It was truly a moving, powerful and thought-provoking experience for everyone.
We finished the day with a more light-hearted event as we welcomed many of you to our final Happy Hour of the year at Matt The Miller’s. Thank you to Walla Painting for sponsoring again this year!! If you need any painting done, give Jonathan a call-317-999-8124. He is the exclusive painter for our team. Tell him we sent you!
We have our final Seller Workshop of the year on Tuesday, December 13th from 7-8:30pm via Zoom. E-mail steve@Welcome2Indy.com if you or someone you know is thinking about selling in the next 12-months or so. This workshop is interactive and you will learn the Top Ten Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House (and how to avoid them). These mistakes have been know to cost people thousands of dollars. We will also talk about the market and give more info on where we have been, where we are now, and where we believe we will go next year.
In January, Thea will be hosting a Buyer Workshop via Zoom. More info will be coming later. Tons of great info about this crazy market will be discussed and how you can take advantage of it.
From the spring market being the hottest on record in terms of price appreciation at a national average of 22.3% to the Fall seeing that number dip to 9.8%, interest rates climbed an unprecedented 4%+/- in a matter of months, the fastest ever recorded and buyer demand went from a white hot record to some of the lowest ever recorded in the shortest time ever measured. Over 43% of houses on the market now have made a price adjustment, something we haven’t really seen for 3-years. Inventory is up from 2 weeks to 1.6-months in the span of 9-months. It is important to note that inventory is rising very slowly compared to other parts of the country, which is good.
We have enjoyed talking with many of you asking for clarity on this market and what to expect next year as you plan to buy, sell and/or build a new home. The good news is that every economist I have read, including the most accurate mortgage rate economist Barry Habib states interest rates that were once around 7.5%, are expected to continue to decline at least into summer 2023. They have already dropped ~1% from their highs to ~6.5%. They are expected to drop to around 5% by Q2 2023. So, this is good news! If you or someone you know is thinking about buying, selling, or building next year, pay attention to what I say next.
If the overwhelming majority of the predictions are even close to what happens in the market next year, we could be in for another crazy spring market. Here’s why. Many sellers and buyers have stayed on the sidelines due to interest rates and the market volatility. There is substantial pent-up demand as a result. If interest rates decline, we are going to see a lot of houses hit the market (this is a good thing!), but also even more buyers enter the market and we will be in another bidding war situation.
The good news is that there are tools specifically designed for this exact situation. One of the most popular is the 2/1 rate buy-down. Basically, the seller pays to buy your rate down to around 3.75% for 2-years. You re-finance into a more permanent rate next spring when rates are lower. Any of the unused money for the rate buy-down is applied to your principal mortgage balance and your monthly payment stays low for the term of your loan. If you do this now before the spring market heats up and you are back into a competitive situation thus paying a lot more for the same house you could buy today, you stand to save potentially tens of thousands of dollars over the term of your loan. If this sounds interesting to you, please send me an e-mail at steve@Welcome2Indy.com or call me at 317-339-7698. I would be happy to walk you through this and connect you with one of our preferred loan partners to run specific numbers for your unique situation.
Here are some stats from MIBOR comparing October 2022 numbers to September 2022:
Median Sales Price-DOWN 1.8% to $280,000
Closed Sales-DOWN 16.4% to 2,726 units
New Listings-DOWN 11.1% to 3,044 units
Pending Sales-DOWN 0.1% to 2,703 units
Days on Market-UP 7.1% to 30 days
Price per s.f.-UP 0.6% to $163
% of Ask Received-DOWN 0.4% to 98.3%
Active Inventory-UP 3.1% to 4,491 units
Absorption Rate-UP 23.1% to 1.6 months
You can see that all of these numbers are showing a slowing of the market, just like the Fed has worked hard to do. It is working!!! However, we are NOT in a buyer’s market or in a market that is poised for a contraction with housing values going down. We are slowing down and getting back to a more manageable pace that is normal and healthy. You have questions. We have answers!!! Call us-317-339-7698. We are happy to help answer questions and provide clarity for YOUR specific situation so you can make an informed decision.
We hope you enjoyed the calendar we sent you in November for 2023. As mentioned last month, this will be the last calendar we send. Due to technology replacing the need for paper wall calendars and the significantly increasing costs to send them to our growing list of clients, we made the hard decision to pull the plug on them after almost 50-years. We have also decided to not duplicate the monthly newsletter we send you and just send it electronically…at least for the time-being. If you prefer the paper copy, please send me an e-mail at Steve@Welcome2Indy.com. If enough people want the paper one, we may bring it back sometime next year. We will still send the postcards you have come to enjoy twice/month.
Thank you for reading this far!! May you and those you love enjoy this magical time of the year and know that our family is grateful for you and the blessings you bring to us. Always feel comfortable calling us when you or someone you care about needs help with real estate. We are always here for you!
Your Personal Real Estate Consultants…for Life!
Steve, Kylie, Thea and Mark
Click here to read our December newsletter
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
The most exciting news by far for our team is that our Senior Buyer Specialist Thea Snelly and her husband Michael are expecting their first child in May of next year!!! We couldn’t be more excited for them to welcome this new life into the world. They will be amazing parents. If you have ever worked with Thea, you know first-hand just how caring and compassionate she is. Thea will be coming back to the team after taking several weeks off for maternity leave, however in the meantime, we are looking for someone to either fill in for Thea while she is spending time with her baby or perhaps even add a 2nd buyer’s agent. If you know someone who would be good, please e-mail me at Steve@Welcome2Indy.com. We would love to talk with them!
Kylie is looking forward to taking a couple of weeks off to spend with her family for the Christmas holiday mid-December. Thea and I will be holding down the fort for her as she enjoys a much-needed and well-deserved break.
My family will be staying here in Indy during Christmas as Brigid’s parents visit from Florida as well as her brother and his family from Boston. We are looking forward to spending time with them. We continue to wait for news from colleges for Ana, but having a couple of acceptance letters in hand makes the wait a little more tolerable. Tali is into her competitive cheer season and is fresh off her first competition where the two teams she is on earned 4 first place trophies and Grand Champion. We are so proud of her and all of the many hours of hard work she puts in at the gym.
This has been an extremely busy 3-weeks for our team! On November 19th, we welcomed almost 500 people into our office to get their professional photos taken with Santa. We hope you enjoyed the day and appreciate you making us part of your holiday traditions!
On November 22nd, we had our 3rd annual Thanksgiving Pie Giveaway. We gave away almost 100 pies to our clients and referral partners and donated pies to Student Impact of Westfield. We also supported a local bakery No Label at The Table, which makes gluten and dairy-free pies that are made by young people on the autism spectrum. Thank you for making us part of your Thanksgiving meal!
On December 1st we had two events. The first was an extremely special presentation featuring Holocaust survivor Frank Grunwald. We are honored to have invited Frank to speak to The Westfield Chamber of Commerce and were the title sponsor. Frank gave an incredibly moving and haunting account of his time spent in 4 concentration camps complete with original photos. Over 230 people from the community came to hear Frank speak including 62 high school kids from Guerin Catholic, Westfield High and Corum Deo Latin school. We were honored to have sponsored several student tables as well so they could hear first-hand what they have been learning in school about the Holocaust. We welcomed over 30 of our clients and were honored to provide tickets for 20 of them to hear this amazing story about Frank’s experiences. If you were able to attend, thank you! It was truly a moving, powerful and thought-provoking experience for everyone.
We finished the day with a more light-hearted event as we welcomed many of you to our final Happy Hour of the year at Matt The Miller’s. Thank you to Walla Painting for sponsoring again this year!! If you need any painting done, give Jonathan a call-317-999-8124. He is the exclusive painter for our team. Tell him we sent you!
We have our final Seller Workshop of the year on Tuesday, December 13th from 7-8:30pm via Zoom. E-mail steve@Welcome2Indy.com if you or someone you know is thinking about selling in the next 12-months or so. This workshop is interactive and you will learn the Top Ten Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House (and how to avoid them). These mistakes have been know to cost people thousands of dollars. We will also talk about the market and give more info on where we have been, where we are now, and where we believe we will go next year.
In January, Thea will be hosting a Buyer Workshop via Zoom. More info will be coming later. Tons of great info about this crazy market will be discussed and how you can take advantage of it.
From the spring market being the hottest on record in terms of price appreciation at a national average of 22.3% to the Fall seeing that number dip to 9.8%, interest rates climbed an unprecedented 4%+/- in a matter of months, the fastest ever recorded and buyer demand went from a white hot record to some of the lowest ever recorded in the shortest time ever measured. Over 43% of houses on the market now have made a price adjustment, something we haven’t really seen for 3-years. Inventory is up from 2 weeks to 1.6-months in the span of 9-months. It is important to note that inventory is rising very slowly compared to other parts of the country, which is good.
We have enjoyed talking with many of you asking for clarity on this market and what to expect next year as you plan to buy, sell and/or build a new home. The good news is that every economist I have read, including the most accurate mortgage rate economist Barry Habib states interest rates that were once around 7.5%, are expected to continue to decline at least into summer 2023. They have already dropped ~1% from their highs to ~6.5%. They are expected to drop to around 5% by Q2 2023. So, this is good news! If you or someone you know is thinking about buying, selling, or building next year, pay attention to what I say next.
If the overwhelming majority of the predictions are even close to what happens in the market next year, we could be in for another crazy spring market. Here’s why. Many sellers and buyers have stayed on the sidelines due to interest rates and the market volatility. There is substantial pent-up demand as a result. If interest rates decline, we are going to see a lot of houses hit the market (this is a good thing!), but also even more buyers enter the market and we will be in another bidding war situation.
The good news is that there are tools specifically designed for this exact situation. One of the most popular is the 2/1 rate buy-down. Basically, the seller pays to buy your rate down to around 3.75% for 2-years. You re-finance into a more permanent rate next spring when rates are lower. Any of the unused money for the rate buy-down is applied to your principal mortgage balance and your monthly payment stays low for the term of your loan. If you do this now before the spring market heats up and you are back into a competitive situation thus paying a lot more for the same house you could buy today, you stand to save potentially tens of thousands of dollars over the term of your loan. If this sounds interesting to you, please send me an e-mail at steve@Welcome2Indy.com or call me at 317-339-7698. I would be happy to walk you through this and connect you with one of our preferred loan partners to run specific numbers for your unique situation.
Here are some stats from MIBOR comparing October 2022 numbers to September 2022:
Median Sales Price-DOWN 1.8% to $280,000
Closed Sales-DOWN 16.4% to 2,726 units
New Listings-DOWN 11.1% to 3,044 units
Pending Sales-DOWN 0.1% to 2,703 units
Days on Market-UP 7.1% to 30 days
Price per s.f.-UP 0.6% to $163
% of Ask Received-DOWN 0.4% to 98.3%
Active Inventory-UP 3.1% to 4,491 units
Absorption Rate-UP 23.1% to 1.6 months
You can see that all of these numbers are showing a slowing of the market, just like the Fed has worked hard to do. It is working!!! However, we are NOT in a buyer’s market or in a market that is poised for a contraction with housing values going down. We are slowing down and getting back to a more manageable pace that is normal and healthy. You have questions. We have answers!!! Call us-317-339-7698. We are happy to help answer questions and provide clarity for YOUR specific situation so you can make an informed decision.
We hope you enjoyed the calendar we sent you in November for 2023. As mentioned last month, this will be the last calendar we send. Due to technology replacing the need for paper wall calendars and the significantly increasing costs to send them to our growing list of clients, we made the hard decision to pull the plug on them after almost 50-years. We have also decided to not duplicate the monthly newsletter we send you and just send it electronically…at least for the time-being. If you prefer the paper copy, please send me an e-mail at Steve@Welcome2Indy.com. If enough people want the paper one, we may bring it back sometime next year. We will still send the postcards you have come to enjoy twice/month.
Thank you for reading this far!! May you and those you love enjoy this magical time of the year and know that our family is grateful for you and the blessings you bring to us. Always feel comfortable calling us when you or someone you care about needs help with real estate. We are always here for you!
Your Personal Real Estate Consultants…for Life!
Steve, Kylie, Thea and Mark
Click here to read our December newsletter
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Monday, October 31, 2022
November 2022 Newsletter
Happy Thanksgiving!! From our family to yours, we hope that you are able to take some time this holiday season to pause and reflect on all of the positive things in your life. Too often, we let ourselves focus and dwell on the negative. Here is an interesting fact: We can’t control the first thought that comes to our mind, but we CAN control the second thought. Our wish for you is for peace, gratitude, comfort, and thankfulness this holiday season. We sure do appreciate you!! If you are reading this newsletter, it is because you are an important part of our lives either as a client or a referral partner. We are grateful to be part of your life and we appreciate you!!
A few updates from our team:
Steve and his family returned a couple of weeks ago from a bucket-list vacation to Italy and Switzerland. We visited Milan (took a fashion tour, saw the Last Supper painting and toured the Duomo), Bologna (we saw the Ferrari and Lamborghini factories and museums), headed to Lake Como and took a boat ride around the lake and saw George Clooney’s house as well the house where a James Bond movie was filmed as well as a Star Wars movie. Then, we took the Bernina Express to St. Moritz in Switzerland and toured the city center as well as took a couple of funiculars and a gondola to the top of the mountain for some amazing views during lunch. Long travel time to and from Milan, but worth it for some amazing memories.
Ana has been accepted to Ole Miss and IU and is waiting on more letters from colleges over the next couple of months. Fingers crossed for more acceptance letters (as well as scholarships!).
Tali just ended her school cheer season. She enjoyed cheering on the sideline as well as the competition team, which placed 2nd in state on Saturday! They are so excited! Now, she focuses on her club team ICE, which starts competing in 2-weeks. No rest for the weary!!!
Thea and Michael are looking forward to a fun vacation to enjoy some downtime starting Thursday. They will be gone a little over a week. I am on duty for all buyers while Thea is gone, so if you or someone you care about needs anything, give me a call. Happy to help!
Kylie celebrated a birthday a couple weeks ago and took a long weekend to celebrate. Thea and I treated her to a birthday lunch upon her return. She is looking forward to Trick-Or-Treating with her youngest Jax.
Thank you to everyone who attended our October Happy Hour. We had a great time and Shellie Law was the lucky winner of the gift card drawing. Thank you to our sponsor 360 Tours who is our real estate photography company for sponsoring this month! Please note, due to Thanksgiving, the November Happy Hour will be December 1st from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s. This will be the last Happy Hour of the year. We hope you can join us!! Check your e-mail to register.
Don’t miss Steve’s Home Seller Workshop on Tuesday, November 8th from 7-8pm. This is an awesome, low-pressure workshop for you or someone you care about thinking about selling in the next year. We talk about the market, common mistakes we see sellers make, and offer FREE Staging tips and tricks to get the highest price out of your house. E-mail steve@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
Photos with Santa is Saturday, November 19th from 12-3pm at our office. Don’t forget to register with kylie@Welcome2Indy.com Your kiddo can tell Santa what they would like for Christmas, write a letter to Santa (Santa WILL write back), enjoy treats, and get a professional photo with Santa to use for your holiday cards.
Annual Thanksgiving Pie Giveaway is scheduled for Tuesday, November 22nd from 11AM-6pm at our office. Please let kylie@Welcome2Indy.com know what type and flavor of pie you would like. You can order gluten-free cherry or Steve and Mark’s Perfectly Peach pie or a regular pie and those flavors are apple, cherry, or pumpkin. Our gluten-free pies are coming again from No Label at The Table here in Carmel. That is a small, family-owned bakery that employs young men and women on the autism spectrum. We love to support them and all of the good they do! We hope to see you!!! Thank you to Mark Kuchik and CrossCountry Mortgage for partnering with us!!
Finally, on the event front, I hope you saw the e-mail I sent a few days ago about the Holocaust Survivor presentation featuring Frank Grunwald. Frank is a friend of my father Jack. He survived 3 concentration camps and is the subject of a documentary about his experience as well as having several artifacts in the National Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. We have arranged for Frank to speak at Westfield Intermediate School and Guerin Catholic High School last year. This year, we have arranged from him to speak to the Westfield Chamber at a special presentation. I have the honor of being the Title Sponsor for the event and have purchased 2 tables for clients and a 3rd table for Guerin Catholic students. Frank is a master story-teller and will move you when you hear his story and see his photos. This event is open to the public and will sell out. If you are interested in hearing Frank’s chilling story, please register for this event here
Please join us on Thursday, December 1st from 11AM-1PM at IMMI in Westfield to hear this amazing man and his incredible story of survival. It is powerful, moving, and incredible to hear.
This market has been nutty lately, hasn’t it? Interest rates are above 7% and housing has certainly taking a break from the crazy pace of the past 3-years. This isn’t a bad thing. We will be talking more about this at my Home Seller Workshop, so sign up to get more details then. We do expect interest rates to start falling starting in November. Expectations are that they will be back in the 5% range within 6-months. Time will tell. If that happens, there will be another crazy spring market as buyers and sellers rush to take advantage of the lower interest rates. If you or someone you care about is thinking or buying, selling, or building a new home in the next 12-months, give us a call. We are happy to consult with you/them about your options.
Here is the latest housing data comparing August to September in Metro Indy courtesy of MIBOR:
Median Sales Price-$285,000-No change
Closed Sales-3,216 units-DOWN 8.6%
New Listings-3,407 units-DOWN 10.1%
Pending Sales-2,940 units-DOWN 9.4%
Days on Market-28 days-UP 27.3%
Price per s.f.-$162-DOWN 2.4%
% of Asking Price Received-98.7%-DOWN 0.5%
Active Inventory-4,357 units-UP 8.8%
Absorption Rate-1.4 months-UP 27.3%
You can quickly see effect of the mortgage rates more than doubling in 6-months. Housing has certainly slowed, however we are NOT expecting house prices to depreciate. We do expect them to appreciate at a slower pace of 3-5%, which is normal for our market. Housing inventory is still extremely low with a balanced market being 6-months of inventory and we are at 1.4 months! Bottom line, if you are thinking of selling, there is still very little competition and there is still buyer demand.
If you are a buyer, use a 2/1 rate buy-down until interest rates come down next year and then re-finance. Don’t wait until the spring rush with lower interest rates when you will have a ton of competition again like this spring. Buyer have more leverage now than they have had in 3-years. Take advantage of it while you can!
Click here to read our November newsletter.
Happy Thanksgiving!!
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!!
P.P.S. Don’t forget to register for all of our upcoming events we have planned for you!
A few updates from our team:
Steve and his family returned a couple of weeks ago from a bucket-list vacation to Italy and Switzerland. We visited Milan (took a fashion tour, saw the Last Supper painting and toured the Duomo), Bologna (we saw the Ferrari and Lamborghini factories and museums), headed to Lake Como and took a boat ride around the lake and saw George Clooney’s house as well the house where a James Bond movie was filmed as well as a Star Wars movie. Then, we took the Bernina Express to St. Moritz in Switzerland and toured the city center as well as took a couple of funiculars and a gondola to the top of the mountain for some amazing views during lunch. Long travel time to and from Milan, but worth it for some amazing memories.
Ana has been accepted to Ole Miss and IU and is waiting on more letters from colleges over the next couple of months. Fingers crossed for more acceptance letters (as well as scholarships!).
Tali just ended her school cheer season. She enjoyed cheering on the sideline as well as the competition team, which placed 2nd in state on Saturday! They are so excited! Now, she focuses on her club team ICE, which starts competing in 2-weeks. No rest for the weary!!!
Thea and Michael are looking forward to a fun vacation to enjoy some downtime starting Thursday. They will be gone a little over a week. I am on duty for all buyers while Thea is gone, so if you or someone you care about needs anything, give me a call. Happy to help!
Kylie celebrated a birthday a couple weeks ago and took a long weekend to celebrate. Thea and I treated her to a birthday lunch upon her return. She is looking forward to Trick-Or-Treating with her youngest Jax.
Thank you to everyone who attended our October Happy Hour. We had a great time and Shellie Law was the lucky winner of the gift card drawing. Thank you to our sponsor 360 Tours who is our real estate photography company for sponsoring this month! Please note, due to Thanksgiving, the November Happy Hour will be December 1st from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s. This will be the last Happy Hour of the year. We hope you can join us!! Check your e-mail to register.
Don’t miss Steve’s Home Seller Workshop on Tuesday, November 8th from 7-8pm. This is an awesome, low-pressure workshop for you or someone you care about thinking about selling in the next year. We talk about the market, common mistakes we see sellers make, and offer FREE Staging tips and tricks to get the highest price out of your house. E-mail steve@Welcome2Indy.com to register.
Photos with Santa is Saturday, November 19th from 12-3pm at our office. Don’t forget to register with kylie@Welcome2Indy.com Your kiddo can tell Santa what they would like for Christmas, write a letter to Santa (Santa WILL write back), enjoy treats, and get a professional photo with Santa to use for your holiday cards.
Annual Thanksgiving Pie Giveaway is scheduled for Tuesday, November 22nd from 11AM-6pm at our office. Please let kylie@Welcome2Indy.com know what type and flavor of pie you would like. You can order gluten-free cherry or Steve and Mark’s Perfectly Peach pie or a regular pie and those flavors are apple, cherry, or pumpkin. Our gluten-free pies are coming again from No Label at The Table here in Carmel. That is a small, family-owned bakery that employs young men and women on the autism spectrum. We love to support them and all of the good they do! We hope to see you!!! Thank you to Mark Kuchik and CrossCountry Mortgage for partnering with us!!
Finally, on the event front, I hope you saw the e-mail I sent a few days ago about the Holocaust Survivor presentation featuring Frank Grunwald. Frank is a friend of my father Jack. He survived 3 concentration camps and is the subject of a documentary about his experience as well as having several artifacts in the National Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. We have arranged for Frank to speak at Westfield Intermediate School and Guerin Catholic High School last year. This year, we have arranged from him to speak to the Westfield Chamber at a special presentation. I have the honor of being the Title Sponsor for the event and have purchased 2 tables for clients and a 3rd table for Guerin Catholic students. Frank is a master story-teller and will move you when you hear his story and see his photos. This event is open to the public and will sell out. If you are interested in hearing Frank’s chilling story, please register for this event here
Please join us on Thursday, December 1st from 11AM-1PM at IMMI in Westfield to hear this amazing man and his incredible story of survival. It is powerful, moving, and incredible to hear.
This market has been nutty lately, hasn’t it? Interest rates are above 7% and housing has certainly taking a break from the crazy pace of the past 3-years. This isn’t a bad thing. We will be talking more about this at my Home Seller Workshop, so sign up to get more details then. We do expect interest rates to start falling starting in November. Expectations are that they will be back in the 5% range within 6-months. Time will tell. If that happens, there will be another crazy spring market as buyers and sellers rush to take advantage of the lower interest rates. If you or someone you care about is thinking or buying, selling, or building a new home in the next 12-months, give us a call. We are happy to consult with you/them about your options.
Here is the latest housing data comparing August to September in Metro Indy courtesy of MIBOR:
Median Sales Price-$285,000-No change
Closed Sales-3,216 units-DOWN 8.6%
New Listings-3,407 units-DOWN 10.1%
Pending Sales-2,940 units-DOWN 9.4%
Days on Market-28 days-UP 27.3%
Price per s.f.-$162-DOWN 2.4%
% of Asking Price Received-98.7%-DOWN 0.5%
Active Inventory-4,357 units-UP 8.8%
Absorption Rate-1.4 months-UP 27.3%
You can quickly see effect of the mortgage rates more than doubling in 6-months. Housing has certainly slowed, however we are NOT expecting house prices to depreciate. We do expect them to appreciate at a slower pace of 3-5%, which is normal for our market. Housing inventory is still extremely low with a balanced market being 6-months of inventory and we are at 1.4 months! Bottom line, if you are thinking of selling, there is still very little competition and there is still buyer demand.
If you are a buyer, use a 2/1 rate buy-down until interest rates come down next year and then re-finance. Don’t wait until the spring rush with lower interest rates when you will have a ton of competition again like this spring. Buyer have more leverage now than they have had in 3-years. Take advantage of it while you can!
Click here to read our November newsletter.
Happy Thanksgiving!!
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!!
P.P.S. Don’t forget to register for all of our upcoming events we have planned for you!
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
October 2022 Newsletter
Happy Fall!!! Like it or not, pumpkin spice lattes, football, Fall festivals, and hot apple cider are here!! Fall is also usually a time for the real estate market to make its final push before winter. More on that later…
We hope that you are enjoying the cooler temps and watching football again after a long break. It is hard to believe that soccer is almost over and sectionals are only a couple of weeks away. Ana is looking forward to the end of this season and having more time for pursuing other interests. Tali only has two more football games for which to cheer the first week of October and then that season is over. Her school competition cheer team had their first competition a couple of weeks ago and they placed first! The next one coming up will be MUCH harder!
Brigid just got back from a business trip to Philly and then leaves again for another trip to Denver in a week. She will be able to see her aunt and uncle and maybe cousins who live out there now and is looking forward to that.
As a family, we are looking forward to Fall Break next month. We have been anxiously awaiting this trip for 3 years since we had to cancel it due to the pandemic. We are headed to Italy! We have never been before and are SO excited! We will be touring Milan, Lake Cuomo, as well as part of Switzerland and the Alps. If you have traveled to any of these places and have some must-do experiences, please let me know.
Thea is staying extremely busy helping buyers in this shifting marketing. Making sure you have an extremely strong advocate who is knowledgeable about not only the market, but also the mortgage environment is crucial right now.
Kylie is keeping very busy with keeping up with the team paperwork and reports as well as marketing (with Thea’s help as well). She is doing a great job, as always keeping everything organized so we and our clients don’t miss a beat!
Lots happening for our clients over the next few months!!! Thank you to everyone who attended our September Happy Hour. We had a great turnout and really enjoyed hearing from our sponsor Sarah Snarr with Journey Injection Lounge-309-621-5797. If you have thought about cosmetic injections or need to address joint pain, give Sarah a call. She is a Nurse Practitioner who puts her clients first and achieves great results.
Our October Happy Hour is being moved back one week due to Fall Break. Please join us on Thursday, October 27th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. Our sponsor this month is Susie Chamberlin with 360-Tour Design. They do all of our photo and video shoots for our listings and do an amazing job!! As always, we will cover the food and drinks. Come relax, meet some new friends and maybe some old ones and share a smile with us. You are welcome to bring a friend as well!
I hope you were able to join us for Thea’s Home Buyer Workshop on the 28th. She covers what is going on in the market right now as well as what the home buying process looks like and how to position yourself to be successful. She also answers all of your questions. If you or someone you care about are thinking of buying a home in the next year, please sign up for this awesome workshop. Guarantee you will learn something new! You can text Thea at 440-862-1118 to register for the October workshop on the 26th.
Thank you to those who attended my Home Seller Workshop on the 13th of September. We covered the Top Ten Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House. We also covered the current shifting market, what specifically that means for each participant, what the future is likely to hold (our crystal balls are a little cloudy right now as well!) and how you can make your house stand out in this market when homes are not typically selling in a day anymore. The next workshop will be on October 11th from 7-8:30pm via Zoom. Contact Steve at 317-339-7698 to get registered.
Mark your calendars now for November 22nd for our annual Thanksgiving Day Pie Pick-up. We will again be supporting No Label at The Table this year and provide gluten-free pies AND we will also be providing regular pies for those who prefer those. You will have several flavors from which to choose and we will have your pie ready to pick up on the 22nd. Look for more info in the mail and e-mail soon!
Also, mark your calendars for our annual Photos with Santa on Saturday, November 19th at our office from 11AM-3PM. The first hour is for sensory-sensitive children only. It will be on the 4th floor of our building this year. Photos will be sent to you within a week so you can include them on holiday cards whether they are printed or digital. We will have a Santa’s workshop and your children can write a letter to Santa and he will be responding to each one!!!
Due to Thanksgiving, we are moving our November Happy Hour back two weeks to December 1st from 5-6:30pm. We hope you will join us for our last Happy Hour of the year!!
Also, a bit of sad news to report. Your calendars for 2023 will be the LAST ones you will receive from us. We have provided calendars for our clients for over 40-years!!! Sadly, like so many print materials, they have become obsolete for so many of our clients. After talking with many of you, we made the decision to make 2023 the final year. As you can imagine, they are very expensive for us to send and have only gotten more expensive over the years. With so many people (including our families) only using electronic calendars to keep track of everything, we felt this was the right decision. Thank you for understanding!
Finally, the real estate market. It. Has. Shifted. Houses are not selling in hours. Most houses aren’t even selling in days. Most houses are taking weeks to sell now and 41% of houses have needed a price reduction in order to sell. Builders are offering nice incentives again, such as $20,000 Design Center credits and $10,000 toward closing costs. Things have drastically changed in 6-months, however we are still extremely short of housing supply. It is trending up, but we are a long way away from being in a balanced market defined as approximately 6-months of inventory. We have 1-month of inventory right now! Interest rates continue to climb to the high 6% range, which is still below the 40-year average of around 8%. We do expect them to come back down next year. If you are thinking of buying/selling/building/investing in a house, give us a call TODAY so we can walk you through your options as you have many right now. Below are some stats from MIBOR comparing August 2022 to July 2022:
Median Sales Price-DOWN 3.1% to $285,000
Closed Sales-UP 1.0% to 3,461 units
New Listings-DOWN 8.4% to 3,761 units
Pending Sales-UP 2.0% to 3,486 units
Days on Market-UP 35.3% to 23 days
Price per s.f.-DOWN 1.2% to $166
% of Ask Received-DOWN 1.4% to 99.3%
Active Inventory-UP 3.9% to 4,010 units
Absorption Rate-9.1% to 1.2 months
Happy Fall!!! See you soon at an upcoming event!!
Enjoy the October newsletter (click here) and let us know what you think!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
We hope that you are enjoying the cooler temps and watching football again after a long break. It is hard to believe that soccer is almost over and sectionals are only a couple of weeks away. Ana is looking forward to the end of this season and having more time for pursuing other interests. Tali only has two more football games for which to cheer the first week of October and then that season is over. Her school competition cheer team had their first competition a couple of weeks ago and they placed first! The next one coming up will be MUCH harder!
Brigid just got back from a business trip to Philly and then leaves again for another trip to Denver in a week. She will be able to see her aunt and uncle and maybe cousins who live out there now and is looking forward to that.
As a family, we are looking forward to Fall Break next month. We have been anxiously awaiting this trip for 3 years since we had to cancel it due to the pandemic. We are headed to Italy! We have never been before and are SO excited! We will be touring Milan, Lake Cuomo, as well as part of Switzerland and the Alps. If you have traveled to any of these places and have some must-do experiences, please let me know.
Thea is staying extremely busy helping buyers in this shifting marketing. Making sure you have an extremely strong advocate who is knowledgeable about not only the market, but also the mortgage environment is crucial right now.
Kylie is keeping very busy with keeping up with the team paperwork and reports as well as marketing (with Thea’s help as well). She is doing a great job, as always keeping everything organized so we and our clients don’t miss a beat!
Lots happening for our clients over the next few months!!! Thank you to everyone who attended our September Happy Hour. We had a great turnout and really enjoyed hearing from our sponsor Sarah Snarr with Journey Injection Lounge-309-621-5797. If you have thought about cosmetic injections or need to address joint pain, give Sarah a call. She is a Nurse Practitioner who puts her clients first and achieves great results.
Our October Happy Hour is being moved back one week due to Fall Break. Please join us on Thursday, October 27th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. Our sponsor this month is Susie Chamberlin with 360-Tour Design. They do all of our photo and video shoots for our listings and do an amazing job!! As always, we will cover the food and drinks. Come relax, meet some new friends and maybe some old ones and share a smile with us. You are welcome to bring a friend as well!
I hope you were able to join us for Thea’s Home Buyer Workshop on the 28th. She covers what is going on in the market right now as well as what the home buying process looks like and how to position yourself to be successful. She also answers all of your questions. If you or someone you care about are thinking of buying a home in the next year, please sign up for this awesome workshop. Guarantee you will learn something new! You can text Thea at 440-862-1118 to register for the October workshop on the 26th.
Thank you to those who attended my Home Seller Workshop on the 13th of September. We covered the Top Ten Dumb Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House. We also covered the current shifting market, what specifically that means for each participant, what the future is likely to hold (our crystal balls are a little cloudy right now as well!) and how you can make your house stand out in this market when homes are not typically selling in a day anymore. The next workshop will be on October 11th from 7-8:30pm via Zoom. Contact Steve at 317-339-7698 to get registered.
Mark your calendars now for November 22nd for our annual Thanksgiving Day Pie Pick-up. We will again be supporting No Label at The Table this year and provide gluten-free pies AND we will also be providing regular pies for those who prefer those. You will have several flavors from which to choose and we will have your pie ready to pick up on the 22nd. Look for more info in the mail and e-mail soon!
Also, mark your calendars for our annual Photos with Santa on Saturday, November 19th at our office from 11AM-3PM. The first hour is for sensory-sensitive children only. It will be on the 4th floor of our building this year. Photos will be sent to you within a week so you can include them on holiday cards whether they are printed or digital. We will have a Santa’s workshop and your children can write a letter to Santa and he will be responding to each one!!!
Due to Thanksgiving, we are moving our November Happy Hour back two weeks to December 1st from 5-6:30pm. We hope you will join us for our last Happy Hour of the year!!
Also, a bit of sad news to report. Your calendars for 2023 will be the LAST ones you will receive from us. We have provided calendars for our clients for over 40-years!!! Sadly, like so many print materials, they have become obsolete for so many of our clients. After talking with many of you, we made the decision to make 2023 the final year. As you can imagine, they are very expensive for us to send and have only gotten more expensive over the years. With so many people (including our families) only using electronic calendars to keep track of everything, we felt this was the right decision. Thank you for understanding!
Finally, the real estate market. It. Has. Shifted. Houses are not selling in hours. Most houses aren’t even selling in days. Most houses are taking weeks to sell now and 41% of houses have needed a price reduction in order to sell. Builders are offering nice incentives again, such as $20,000 Design Center credits and $10,000 toward closing costs. Things have drastically changed in 6-months, however we are still extremely short of housing supply. It is trending up, but we are a long way away from being in a balanced market defined as approximately 6-months of inventory. We have 1-month of inventory right now! Interest rates continue to climb to the high 6% range, which is still below the 40-year average of around 8%. We do expect them to come back down next year. If you are thinking of buying/selling/building/investing in a house, give us a call TODAY so we can walk you through your options as you have many right now. Below are some stats from MIBOR comparing August 2022 to July 2022:
Median Sales Price-DOWN 3.1% to $285,000
Closed Sales-UP 1.0% to 3,461 units
New Listings-DOWN 8.4% to 3,761 units
Pending Sales-UP 2.0% to 3,486 units
Days on Market-UP 35.3% to 23 days
Price per s.f.-DOWN 1.2% to $166
% of Ask Received-DOWN 1.4% to 99.3%
Active Inventory-UP 3.9% to 4,010 units
Absorption Rate-9.1% to 1.2 months
Happy Fall!!! See you soon at an upcoming event!!
Enjoy the October newsletter (click here) and let us know what you think!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Saturday, September 03, 2022
September 2022 Newsletter
The end of another summer and the start of another school year. Why does it seem like the older we get, the shorter time seems to be? Ana is in her senior year at Guerin Catholic and we are finishing up applications for colleges. Clemson is still her #1 choice, by far. She is making the most of her senior year by being involved in a lot around school from Deca to school choir to managing the varsity women’s soccer team, to attending football games on Friday nights. Time is going so fast and before we know it, we will be posting move-in photos for college next year!!
Natalia is in 7th grade at Westfield Middle School and is heavily involved in competitive cheer. She is still cheering at ICE, which is her All-Star cheer team as well as her school sideline cheer team for football games and her school competition team. The school cheer teams are new for her and so far she really enjoys them. Many of her ICE teammates are also on the school team, so she knows many of them already.
Brigid is still rocking it at Merck and is taking on more and more responsibility as they roll up a division under her. She is much busier than she was as a field rep, but loves every minute of it. So very proud of her!!!
My biggest news is that I turned 50 a couple of weeks ago! While it is just a number and another day, it IS quite the milestone and the alternative isn’t too appealing! Brigid threw me a nice party (it wasn’t a surprise party) and it was so nice to see so many friends and neighbors.
Thea has been enjoying this shifting market and having more than 5-minutes in order to see and write an offer on houses for her buyers!! She has been keeping busy with not only quite a few buyers, but also working at Greekfest and she is the Council Chairwoman for the Westfield Young Professionals who are organizing an amazing Young Professionals Leadership Conference on September 8th. We are also a sponsor. If you or someone you know is under the age of 40, we would LOVE to have you attend and there are a few tickets still remaining. E-mail Thea at thea@Welcome2Indy.com and she will get you registered.
Kylie has been focused on getting her kiddos back in school over the past couple of weeks. Trey is a freshman at Carmel High School. That is always a significant transition from elementary school, but he is doing well. Jax is starting kindergarten this year, which is also a huge transition and he has been so excited!! On top of this, Kylie organized our first Broker Progressive Open House for a builder we represent, Olthof Homes and she just knocked it out of the park!
We hope you were able to make our Party in The Park a couple of weeks ago. We had a great time with some amazing live music courtesy of The Beatless, Kona Ice truck, photo booth, caricature artist, magician, and games, food, and drink. If you missed it, we hope to see you at an upcoming event soon!!
Speaking of upcoming events, join us for our Happy Hours! They are always the 3rd Thursday of each month from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. Food and drinks are always on us! Thank you to our sponsor last month Jonathan Walla with Walla Painting. They are our go-to painter for not only all of our clients, but also personally. They do an amazing job, are trustworthy and very competitive on price. If you are considering a painting job soon, give Jonathan a call at 317-999-8124. Tell him I sent you. Join us for our next Happy Hour on Thursday, September 15th. RSVP to events@Welcome2Indy.com by September 13th.
Thea and I are hosting virtual Buyer and Seller Workshops monthly. If you or someone you know is thinking of buying, selling, or building in the next year, please join us. We will be talking about what the process looks like, the most common mistakes we see people make and how to avoid them and answer any questions you have. This is a laid-back, conversational hour of learning. Steve’s next Seller Workshop is at 7pm on September 13th and Thea’s next Buyer Workshop is at 5:30pm on September 28th. RSVP via the Eventbrite link you should have received or just e-mail us and we will get you signed up. steve@Welcome2Indy.com or thea@Welcome2Indy.com
Based on the feedback, we know you want an all-expense paid vacation!!! Our next $5,000 vacation giveaway is coming up in 2-weeks!! Call us from 11:30AM-5:30pm on Tuesday, September 13th and we will get you registered for the $5,000. If you give us a referral, we will add 5 entries PER REFERRAL! The phone number to call is 317-975-1511. We hope to hear from you!
There has been a LOT of talk lately about the economy and especially real estate. Interest rates have gone up for the moment, but are still below the 40-year average of 8%. Also, housing inventory is creeping back up again and that is a welcome change from the 2-week inventory we have had for the past year! We are still only at 1-month of supply and we should be around 6 months +/-.
We are expecting mortgage interest rates to fall starting Q4 of this year as we have entered an official recession and history has shown us that interest rates have fallen in every one of the past 6 recessions. None of the economists or industry leaders I have heard believe this will be a long or deep recession and we should pull out of it by summer 2023. Time will tell if they are correct or not.
Is our market overvalued?? Recent news stories would have you believe so, however consider this-the average appreciation rate for the US over the past 40-years is ~4%. If you set a trend line of 4% over those 40-years and extend it to today, we are right where we should be! This takes into account The Great Recession as well as our recent boom. Will some markets around the US depreciate slightly?? Most likely yes. I do not believe Indianapolis will be one of them and neither do any of the economists with whom I have spoken.
This is still a great time to buy or sell. You have never been able to get as high of a price for your house as you will today. If you are a buyer, you DO have more time and inventory from which to choose. As the adage goes, Marry the house and date the rate! Want more info or info specific to YOUR situation, please e-mail me at Steve@Welcome2Indy.com.
Below are some market stats courtesy of MIBOR comparing July 2022 to June 2022:
Median Sales Price-DOWN 1.8% to $294,500
Closed Sales-DOWN 9.8% to 3,404 units
New Listings-DOWN 17.8% to 4,087 units
Pending Sales-DOWN 0.7% to 3,585 units
Days on Market-UP 28.6% to 18 days
Price per s.f.-DOWN 0.6% to $168
% of Ask Received-DOWN 1.2% to 100.7%
Active Inventory-UP 12.8% to 3,866 units
Absorption Rate-UP 22.2% to 1.1 months
Have a great Fall and we hope to see you at some of our upcoming events!!!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Click here to read our September newsletter
Natalia is in 7th grade at Westfield Middle School and is heavily involved in competitive cheer. She is still cheering at ICE, which is her All-Star cheer team as well as her school sideline cheer team for football games and her school competition team. The school cheer teams are new for her and so far she really enjoys them. Many of her ICE teammates are also on the school team, so she knows many of them already.
Brigid is still rocking it at Merck and is taking on more and more responsibility as they roll up a division under her. She is much busier than she was as a field rep, but loves every minute of it. So very proud of her!!!
My biggest news is that I turned 50 a couple of weeks ago! While it is just a number and another day, it IS quite the milestone and the alternative isn’t too appealing! Brigid threw me a nice party (it wasn’t a surprise party) and it was so nice to see so many friends and neighbors.
Thea has been enjoying this shifting market and having more than 5-minutes in order to see and write an offer on houses for her buyers!! She has been keeping busy with not only quite a few buyers, but also working at Greekfest and she is the Council Chairwoman for the Westfield Young Professionals who are organizing an amazing Young Professionals Leadership Conference on September 8th. We are also a sponsor. If you or someone you know is under the age of 40, we would LOVE to have you attend and there are a few tickets still remaining. E-mail Thea at thea@Welcome2Indy.com and she will get you registered.
Kylie has been focused on getting her kiddos back in school over the past couple of weeks. Trey is a freshman at Carmel High School. That is always a significant transition from elementary school, but he is doing well. Jax is starting kindergarten this year, which is also a huge transition and he has been so excited!! On top of this, Kylie organized our first Broker Progressive Open House for a builder we represent, Olthof Homes and she just knocked it out of the park!
We hope you were able to make our Party in The Park a couple of weeks ago. We had a great time with some amazing live music courtesy of The Beatless, Kona Ice truck, photo booth, caricature artist, magician, and games, food, and drink. If you missed it, we hope to see you at an upcoming event soon!!
Speaking of upcoming events, join us for our Happy Hours! They are always the 3rd Thursday of each month from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. Food and drinks are always on us! Thank you to our sponsor last month Jonathan Walla with Walla Painting. They are our go-to painter for not only all of our clients, but also personally. They do an amazing job, are trustworthy and very competitive on price. If you are considering a painting job soon, give Jonathan a call at 317-999-8124. Tell him I sent you. Join us for our next Happy Hour on Thursday, September 15th. RSVP to events@Welcome2Indy.com by September 13th.
Thea and I are hosting virtual Buyer and Seller Workshops monthly. If you or someone you know is thinking of buying, selling, or building in the next year, please join us. We will be talking about what the process looks like, the most common mistakes we see people make and how to avoid them and answer any questions you have. This is a laid-back, conversational hour of learning. Steve’s next Seller Workshop is at 7pm on September 13th and Thea’s next Buyer Workshop is at 5:30pm on September 28th. RSVP via the Eventbrite link you should have received or just e-mail us and we will get you signed up. steve@Welcome2Indy.com or thea@Welcome2Indy.com
Based on the feedback, we know you want an all-expense paid vacation!!! Our next $5,000 vacation giveaway is coming up in 2-weeks!! Call us from 11:30AM-5:30pm on Tuesday, September 13th and we will get you registered for the $5,000. If you give us a referral, we will add 5 entries PER REFERRAL! The phone number to call is 317-975-1511. We hope to hear from you!
There has been a LOT of talk lately about the economy and especially real estate. Interest rates have gone up for the moment, but are still below the 40-year average of 8%. Also, housing inventory is creeping back up again and that is a welcome change from the 2-week inventory we have had for the past year! We are still only at 1-month of supply and we should be around 6 months +/-.
We are expecting mortgage interest rates to fall starting Q4 of this year as we have entered an official recession and history has shown us that interest rates have fallen in every one of the past 6 recessions. None of the economists or industry leaders I have heard believe this will be a long or deep recession and we should pull out of it by summer 2023. Time will tell if they are correct or not.
Is our market overvalued?? Recent news stories would have you believe so, however consider this-the average appreciation rate for the US over the past 40-years is ~4%. If you set a trend line of 4% over those 40-years and extend it to today, we are right where we should be! This takes into account The Great Recession as well as our recent boom. Will some markets around the US depreciate slightly?? Most likely yes. I do not believe Indianapolis will be one of them and neither do any of the economists with whom I have spoken.
This is still a great time to buy or sell. You have never been able to get as high of a price for your house as you will today. If you are a buyer, you DO have more time and inventory from which to choose. As the adage goes, Marry the house and date the rate! Want more info or info specific to YOUR situation, please e-mail me at Steve@Welcome2Indy.com.
Below are some market stats courtesy of MIBOR comparing July 2022 to June 2022:
Median Sales Price-DOWN 1.8% to $294,500
Closed Sales-DOWN 9.8% to 3,404 units
New Listings-DOWN 17.8% to 4,087 units
Pending Sales-DOWN 0.7% to 3,585 units
Days on Market-UP 28.6% to 18 days
Price per s.f.-DOWN 0.6% to $168
% of Ask Received-DOWN 1.2% to 100.7%
Active Inventory-UP 12.8% to 3,866 units
Absorption Rate-UP 22.2% to 1.1 months
Have a great Fall and we hope to see you at some of our upcoming events!!!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Click here to read our September newsletter
Sunday, July 24, 2022
August 2022 Real Estate Update
Back to school time is just about here again. How does it seem like summer just flies by each year? We hope you and those you care about are having an amazing summer and are creating some fun summer memories. Keep reading for a BRAND NEW event we have created that will do just that!!!
Probably the biggest news (at least for me!) is that I turn 50-years old on August 6th! How is this possible? I certainly don’t FEEL 50, but the numbers don’t lie. Ugh! At least my family were kind enough to ask if I wanted a party or not. I said, ‘Why not?’ Everyone needs a reason to throw a good party!! So, a party it will be and since August 6th falls on a Saturday, it should be even more fun!! I can celebrate officially being old enough to be a full member of AARP!
Ana is starting her senior at Guerin Catholic this year. Instead of playing on the soccer team, she chose to be the team manager as she has had one too many concussions. She loves it and enjoys being with all of her friends on the team. The college admissions applications are ready to be sent on August 1st when they open and she is gunning for Clemson. She has visited campus twice and absolutely loves it and feels at home there. We will see what the admissions gods have to say and will keep you posted.
Tali is working on her choreography for her cheer team as I write this. Since she moved up a level and is the strongest base on the team, there is a lot of weight on her shoulders, literally and figuratively. She absolutely loves it and the gym owner decided to coach her team this year and has made their routine harder than ever before. She wants to WIN. As long as Tali is having fun, we are good with it. They should be a formidable force this year.
Brigid is working harder than ever after being promoted and hiring her team. It seems she is on conference calls all day with a never-ending list of To-Dos. She loves what she does, so that is all that matters.
For those of you who knew Patti on our team, she was our Marketing Director. She decided to pursue a different direction in her life suddenly and we wished her well about a month ago. We hope she is happy with this new chapter and will miss having her coordinate all of our marketing for our clients and team.
Kylie has taken up Patti’s responsibilities, so she is busier than ever. She is doing well and she does have help in that we hired a Virtual Assistant about 4 months ago. His name is Mark and he has been an absolute delight to have on the team helping us from the other side of the world. He has taken a lot of the pressure off of Kylie until we find a new Marketing Director. If you know of someone who would make an outstanding team member for us, please let me know. We are going to hold off on hiring for the immediate future, but will do so before too long.
Thea has been busting her butt all year long and is just getting busier and busier. She is handling the extra work like a champ and getting offers accepted for our buyers left and right. With the market softening, our buyers are finding their offers are getting a little more attention than before and that is especially helpful for our first-time buyers. She also hosted a very successful first-time buyer workshop on July 12th and will be hosting another one in August. Please contact her to be added to the list. It is Zoom only. thea@Welcome2Indy.com
I hosted a seller workshop also on July 12th and we had a great time learning about the Top 10 Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House. Our next one is on August 9th at 7pm. Please contact me if you would like to attend. steve@Welcome2Indy.com
Thank you to everyone who attended our July Happy Hour!!! We had a great group and a lot of fun! If you haven’t ever attended (or even if you have), please consider joining us at our August Happy Hour on August 18th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. As always, drinks and food are on us!!!
HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT!!!
For the first time ever, we are hosting a Party in The Park on Sunday, August 12th from 1-4pm. Thank you to our lender partner Mark Kuchik with CrossCountry Mortgage for co-sponsoring this event. You do NOT want to miss this!!! You should have received e-mails and a postcard already. Please RSVP for this by August 10th. Links are in the e-mails and postcard, but if you would like to attend and can’t find the link, please e-mail kylie@Welcome2Indy.com with the number of tickets you would like and we will register you. Check out what we have in store for the afternoon:
Live Band-The Beatless
Magician
Caricature artist
Kona Ice truck
Photo Booth
Games
Food
Drinks
We hope you will join us!!!
As mentioned earlier, our market has absolutely softened in the past few months. This does NOT mean we are seeing a ‘bubble bursting’. There is a big difference between ‘depreciation’ and ‘deceleration’. We are seeing the latter. In the first quarter of this year, home price appreciation hit the highest on record at 20.3%!!! That is simply not sustainable. Since then, mortgage rates have risen, but so have home prices…just at a much slower pace. We expect the year to end at around 5-7% annualized appreciation. This is still much higher than our average of 3%/year. This is a great time to buy/sell a house. There is less buyer competition, but people are still getting record prices for their houses. Interest rates are expected to fall next year, so if that is the case and you have a higher interest rate, you can re-finance for a modest fee. As the saying goes, ‘Marry the house and date the rate.’
Here are some stats from MIBOR comparing June 2022 to May 2022:
Median Sales Price-UP 3.8% to $300,000 (another record!)
Closed Sales-UP 9.2% to 3,711 units
New Listings-UP 15.9% to 4,925 units (this is a good thing!)
Pending Sales-UP 1.1% to 3,842 units (more houses are coming on the market than are being sold. This is helping our inventory shortage)
Days on Market-UP 7.7% to 14 days
Price per s.f.-UP 0.6% to $169
% of Ask Received-DOWN 0.5% to 101.9% (still an amazing number, but trending down showing weakening competition from buyers)
Active Inventory-UP 47.3% to 3,414 units (this number is HUGE!!!!)
Absorption Rate-UP 28.6% to 0.9 months (still anemic, but getting longer)
Bottom line, you can see the market shifting in just ONE month. Pay attention to these numbers. They are still excellent, but shift your expectations. Dave Ramsey says this year will be probably one of the best years to buy/sell in history. Listen to one of his latest podcasts and he will explain why he believes this, but suffice it to say, if you are even thinking of buying or selling, give us a call. We will walk you through your options and set realistic expectations with you, so you can make an informed decision. It’s what we do…Guide, Lead, and Protect our clients.
Have a great rest of the summer!!! If you see me, please go easy on the 50th birthday jokes…
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Click here to read our August newsletter
Probably the biggest news (at least for me!) is that I turn 50-years old on August 6th! How is this possible? I certainly don’t FEEL 50, but the numbers don’t lie. Ugh! At least my family were kind enough to ask if I wanted a party or not. I said, ‘Why not?’ Everyone needs a reason to throw a good party!! So, a party it will be and since August 6th falls on a Saturday, it should be even more fun!! I can celebrate officially being old enough to be a full member of AARP!
Ana is starting her senior at Guerin Catholic this year. Instead of playing on the soccer team, she chose to be the team manager as she has had one too many concussions. She loves it and enjoys being with all of her friends on the team. The college admissions applications are ready to be sent on August 1st when they open and she is gunning for Clemson. She has visited campus twice and absolutely loves it and feels at home there. We will see what the admissions gods have to say and will keep you posted.
Tali is working on her choreography for her cheer team as I write this. Since she moved up a level and is the strongest base on the team, there is a lot of weight on her shoulders, literally and figuratively. She absolutely loves it and the gym owner decided to coach her team this year and has made their routine harder than ever before. She wants to WIN. As long as Tali is having fun, we are good with it. They should be a formidable force this year.
Brigid is working harder than ever after being promoted and hiring her team. It seems she is on conference calls all day with a never-ending list of To-Dos. She loves what she does, so that is all that matters.
For those of you who knew Patti on our team, she was our Marketing Director. She decided to pursue a different direction in her life suddenly and we wished her well about a month ago. We hope she is happy with this new chapter and will miss having her coordinate all of our marketing for our clients and team.
Kylie has taken up Patti’s responsibilities, so she is busier than ever. She is doing well and she does have help in that we hired a Virtual Assistant about 4 months ago. His name is Mark and he has been an absolute delight to have on the team helping us from the other side of the world. He has taken a lot of the pressure off of Kylie until we find a new Marketing Director. If you know of someone who would make an outstanding team member for us, please let me know. We are going to hold off on hiring for the immediate future, but will do so before too long.
Thea has been busting her butt all year long and is just getting busier and busier. She is handling the extra work like a champ and getting offers accepted for our buyers left and right. With the market softening, our buyers are finding their offers are getting a little more attention than before and that is especially helpful for our first-time buyers. She also hosted a very successful first-time buyer workshop on July 12th and will be hosting another one in August. Please contact her to be added to the list. It is Zoom only. thea@Welcome2Indy.com
I hosted a seller workshop also on July 12th and we had a great time learning about the Top 10 Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House. Our next one is on August 9th at 7pm. Please contact me if you would like to attend. steve@Welcome2Indy.com
Thank you to everyone who attended our July Happy Hour!!! We had a great group and a lot of fun! If you haven’t ever attended (or even if you have), please consider joining us at our August Happy Hour on August 18th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s in Carmel. As always, drinks and food are on us!!!
HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT!!!
For the first time ever, we are hosting a Party in The Park on Sunday, August 12th from 1-4pm. Thank you to our lender partner Mark Kuchik with CrossCountry Mortgage for co-sponsoring this event. You do NOT want to miss this!!! You should have received e-mails and a postcard already. Please RSVP for this by August 10th. Links are in the e-mails and postcard, but if you would like to attend and can’t find the link, please e-mail kylie@Welcome2Indy.com with the number of tickets you would like and we will register you. Check out what we have in store for the afternoon:
Live Band-The Beatless
Magician
Caricature artist
Kona Ice truck
Photo Booth
Games
Food
Drinks
We hope you will join us!!!
As mentioned earlier, our market has absolutely softened in the past few months. This does NOT mean we are seeing a ‘bubble bursting’. There is a big difference between ‘depreciation’ and ‘deceleration’. We are seeing the latter. In the first quarter of this year, home price appreciation hit the highest on record at 20.3%!!! That is simply not sustainable. Since then, mortgage rates have risen, but so have home prices…just at a much slower pace. We expect the year to end at around 5-7% annualized appreciation. This is still much higher than our average of 3%/year. This is a great time to buy/sell a house. There is less buyer competition, but people are still getting record prices for their houses. Interest rates are expected to fall next year, so if that is the case and you have a higher interest rate, you can re-finance for a modest fee. As the saying goes, ‘Marry the house and date the rate.’
Here are some stats from MIBOR comparing June 2022 to May 2022:
Median Sales Price-UP 3.8% to $300,000 (another record!)
Closed Sales-UP 9.2% to 3,711 units
New Listings-UP 15.9% to 4,925 units (this is a good thing!)
Pending Sales-UP 1.1% to 3,842 units (more houses are coming on the market than are being sold. This is helping our inventory shortage)
Days on Market-UP 7.7% to 14 days
Price per s.f.-UP 0.6% to $169
% of Ask Received-DOWN 0.5% to 101.9% (still an amazing number, but trending down showing weakening competition from buyers)
Active Inventory-UP 47.3% to 3,414 units (this number is HUGE!!!!)
Absorption Rate-UP 28.6% to 0.9 months (still anemic, but getting longer)
Bottom line, you can see the market shifting in just ONE month. Pay attention to these numbers. They are still excellent, but shift your expectations. Dave Ramsey says this year will be probably one of the best years to buy/sell in history. Listen to one of his latest podcasts and he will explain why he believes this, but suffice it to say, if you are even thinking of buying or selling, give us a call. We will walk you through your options and set realistic expectations with you, so you can make an informed decision. It’s what we do…Guide, Lead, and Protect our clients.
Have a great rest of the summer!!! If you see me, please go easy on the 50th birthday jokes…
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Mark
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret!
Click here to read our August newsletter
Saturday, June 25, 2022
July 2022 Real Estate Update
Welcome (officially) to summer!! We hope you are enjoying this more relaxed time of year with warmer temperatures, kids out of school, summer concerts, vacations, sports, and the longer daylight hours. While it certainly poses its unique challenges, we hope you are able to spend some fun times making memories with those you care about.
We have some sad news to report in that Patti who was our Director of Marketing resigned abruptly a couple of weeks ago. She will be missed and we wish her nothing but success as she turns a new page in her next chapter. In case you didn’t know, we hired a Virtual Assistant name Mark to help Patti with marketing. She did a great job training him and he will be taking over most of her responsibilities. We will be looking for a replacement for Patti in the coming months, so if you know of a ROCKSTAR person who would make a great Director of Marketing for a high-producing team who is extremely adept at social media and video editing, please send them my way: Steve@Welcome2Indy.com.
Steve is getting ready to leave on a family vacation with Brigid’s family from July 3-10. They will be taking a Norwegian cruise from NYC to Bermuda. Should be a fun time to unwind. Ana is continuing to look at colleges and took a 2nd tour of Clemson in June. She still loves it and it is her #1 choice so far. She toured Auburn at the end of June and it is her #2. She also took a Teen Driving Safety Course at the BMW Performance Center in Greer, SC while looking at Clemson an absolutely loved it!!! If you have a teen driver, we highly recommend this (or similar course). It just may save someone’s life!!!
Brigid has hired her first two employees since being promoted to an Assistant Director position. She loves what she does and that she can work from home. Tali is neck deep in cheer after making the next level team as well as her school cheer team and then also their competition cheer team. She will have 3 cheer teams for which she is cheering. That is a LOT of cheer, but she wouldn’t have it any other way!
Thea is keeping extremely busy with buyers at the moment and is enjoying the summer months. She is the Chair of the Young Professionals Group of Westfield and is busy planning events for the rest of the year, including a parade and a Young Professionals Summit this Fall.
Kylie is keeping busy with her family and two kids trying to keep them busy with summer camps and activities. She really is enjoying the pool and taking the kids to play there.
This real estate market has brought an onslaught of phone calls, texts and e-mails. Know that we constantly stay up-to-date with the latest information so we can pass that along to our clients. Besides reading white papers from Lawrence Yun who is the Chief Economist for NAR, Shelley Specchio who is the CEO of MIBOR, we have recently listened to Steve Lains who is the CEO of BAGI (Builder’s Association of Greater Indianapolis) and Dr. Elliot Eisenberg who is an internationally-acclaimed economist who specializes in real estate.
Along with our own research, every one of these industry experts have steadfastly said there is no real estate bubble. Period. We have the soundest real estate financial fundamentals in history right now and the tightest supply with incredible demand in history. We have an inflation problem. Dr. Eisenberg said we are about at the apex of inflation and should start to see is tick downward soon. A recession will happen, likely next year and will not be bad, but a typical 8-10 month inflation period (which we need). Our recovery will be slow, but steady. We are already seeing goods start to rebound from their trough of supply, but labor is a continued problem. Quite a few people are re-entering the labor market after retiring due to the stock market falling. This should help.
Interest rates have dropped from their peak of around 6.3875% to around 6%. We hope and expect them to continue to fall during the course of the rest of the year. Housing prices will NOT depreciate, but rather decelerate the appreciation we have seen the past few years. We expect to see appreciation rates in the 7-8% range this year, which is down from the 18% we saw last year, but that was not sustainable.
Fun news!!! We hope everyone enjoyed our July Happy Hour at Matt The Miller’s this pas month. Thank you to Keith Pemberton with Pemberton Insurance for sponsoring it!!! We hope to see you at our July Happy Hour on Thursday, July 21st from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s.
Don’t miss two really great workshops coming up!!! Thea’s Homebuyer workshop is from 5:30-6:30pm on July 12th and she will answer all of your questions about buying a home in this shifting market. It is Zoom only. contact her for log-in info at: Thea@Welcome2Indy.com. Our second workshop is for home sellers and it is also on July 12th from 7-8pm hosted by me. We will be discussing the Top 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make When Preparing Their House for Sale along with market updates and what to expect in this shifting market. This is live only. Contact me for more info: steve@Welcome2Indy.com
Finally, mark your calendars for our first ever Party in The Park!!! It will be on Sunday, August 14th from 1-4pm at Cool Creek Park in Westfield. You do not want to miss this FREE event! We will have snacks, beverages, a LIVE band, magician, face painting, photo booth, caricature drawings, games, Kona Ice truck and professional photographer and MUCH more!! Look for your invitation in the mail and register via the Eventbrite link to make sure you are on the list. There is limited space, so RSVP early to ensure you get a spot!!! We are grateful to our co-sponsors Mark Kuchik with CrossCountry Mortgage!!!!
Enjoy your July and remember to keep us in mind for people you care about considering making a move. We would love to help them!!!
Here are the market stats from MIBOR comparing May 2022 to May 2021:
Median Sales Price-UP 12.8% to $287,625
Closed Sales-DOWN 2.9% to 3,336 units
New Listings-UP 6.1% to 4,217 units
Pending Sales-UP 2.4% to 3,960 units
Days on Market-DOWN 13.3% to 13 days
Price per s.f.-UP 15.9% to $168
% of Ask Received-UP 0.8% to 102.4%
Active Inventory-UP 29.8% to 2,295 units
Absorption Rate-UP 40.0% to 0.7 months
You will notice that the median sales price is the highest on record. We expect this to keep climbing, but inventory will as well as days on market.
Have a great July!!!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, and Thea
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret! Click here to read our July newsletter
We have some sad news to report in that Patti who was our Director of Marketing resigned abruptly a couple of weeks ago. She will be missed and we wish her nothing but success as she turns a new page in her next chapter. In case you didn’t know, we hired a Virtual Assistant name Mark to help Patti with marketing. She did a great job training him and he will be taking over most of her responsibilities. We will be looking for a replacement for Patti in the coming months, so if you know of a ROCKSTAR person who would make a great Director of Marketing for a high-producing team who is extremely adept at social media and video editing, please send them my way: Steve@Welcome2Indy.com.
Steve is getting ready to leave on a family vacation with Brigid’s family from July 3-10. They will be taking a Norwegian cruise from NYC to Bermuda. Should be a fun time to unwind. Ana is continuing to look at colleges and took a 2nd tour of Clemson in June. She still loves it and it is her #1 choice so far. She toured Auburn at the end of June and it is her #2. She also took a Teen Driving Safety Course at the BMW Performance Center in Greer, SC while looking at Clemson an absolutely loved it!!! If you have a teen driver, we highly recommend this (or similar course). It just may save someone’s life!!!
Brigid has hired her first two employees since being promoted to an Assistant Director position. She loves what she does and that she can work from home. Tali is neck deep in cheer after making the next level team as well as her school cheer team and then also their competition cheer team. She will have 3 cheer teams for which she is cheering. That is a LOT of cheer, but she wouldn’t have it any other way!
Thea is keeping extremely busy with buyers at the moment and is enjoying the summer months. She is the Chair of the Young Professionals Group of Westfield and is busy planning events for the rest of the year, including a parade and a Young Professionals Summit this Fall.
Kylie is keeping busy with her family and two kids trying to keep them busy with summer camps and activities. She really is enjoying the pool and taking the kids to play there.
This real estate market has brought an onslaught of phone calls, texts and e-mails. Know that we constantly stay up-to-date with the latest information so we can pass that along to our clients. Besides reading white papers from Lawrence Yun who is the Chief Economist for NAR, Shelley Specchio who is the CEO of MIBOR, we have recently listened to Steve Lains who is the CEO of BAGI (Builder’s Association of Greater Indianapolis) and Dr. Elliot Eisenberg who is an internationally-acclaimed economist who specializes in real estate.
Along with our own research, every one of these industry experts have steadfastly said there is no real estate bubble. Period. We have the soundest real estate financial fundamentals in history right now and the tightest supply with incredible demand in history. We have an inflation problem. Dr. Eisenberg said we are about at the apex of inflation and should start to see is tick downward soon. A recession will happen, likely next year and will not be bad, but a typical 8-10 month inflation period (which we need). Our recovery will be slow, but steady. We are already seeing goods start to rebound from their trough of supply, but labor is a continued problem. Quite a few people are re-entering the labor market after retiring due to the stock market falling. This should help.
Interest rates have dropped from their peak of around 6.3875% to around 6%. We hope and expect them to continue to fall during the course of the rest of the year. Housing prices will NOT depreciate, but rather decelerate the appreciation we have seen the past few years. We expect to see appreciation rates in the 7-8% range this year, which is down from the 18% we saw last year, but that was not sustainable.
Fun news!!! We hope everyone enjoyed our July Happy Hour at Matt The Miller’s this pas month. Thank you to Keith Pemberton with Pemberton Insurance for sponsoring it!!! We hope to see you at our July Happy Hour on Thursday, July 21st from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s.
Don’t miss two really great workshops coming up!!! Thea’s Homebuyer workshop is from 5:30-6:30pm on July 12th and she will answer all of your questions about buying a home in this shifting market. It is Zoom only. contact her for log-in info at: Thea@Welcome2Indy.com. Our second workshop is for home sellers and it is also on July 12th from 7-8pm hosted by me. We will be discussing the Top 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make When Preparing Their House for Sale along with market updates and what to expect in this shifting market. This is live only. Contact me for more info: steve@Welcome2Indy.com
Finally, mark your calendars for our first ever Party in The Park!!! It will be on Sunday, August 14th from 1-4pm at Cool Creek Park in Westfield. You do not want to miss this FREE event! We will have snacks, beverages, a LIVE band, magician, face painting, photo booth, caricature drawings, games, Kona Ice truck and professional photographer and MUCH more!! Look for your invitation in the mail and register via the Eventbrite link to make sure you are on the list. There is limited space, so RSVP early to ensure you get a spot!!! We are grateful to our co-sponsors Mark Kuchik with CrossCountry Mortgage!!!!
Enjoy your July and remember to keep us in mind for people you care about considering making a move. We would love to help them!!!
Here are the market stats from MIBOR comparing May 2022 to May 2021:
Median Sales Price-UP 12.8% to $287,625
Closed Sales-DOWN 2.9% to 3,336 units
New Listings-UP 6.1% to 4,217 units
Pending Sales-UP 2.4% to 3,960 units
Days on Market-DOWN 13.3% to 13 days
Price per s.f.-UP 15.9% to $168
% of Ask Received-UP 0.8% to 102.4%
Active Inventory-UP 29.8% to 2,295 units
Absorption Rate-UP 40.0% to 0.7 months
You will notice that the median sales price is the highest on record. We expect this to keep climbing, but inventory will as well as days on market.
Have a great July!!!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, and Thea
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret! Click here to read our July newsletter
Friday, June 03, 2022
June 2022 Home News
Happy summer!!! We made it!! As I write this, my youngest Natalia has been out of school for a week and is now a 7th grader. My oldest Anastasia just finished her last final today and is now a senior at Guerin. Where did the time go?? We truly hope that you are able to create some fun memories this summer and make up for some missed ones over the past few years.
Along with finishing yet another school year, our family has had some exciting happenings. Ana was hit by an inattentive driver a few weeks ago. Everyone is okay, but her car did sustain some damage. The other driver fully admitted fault, so we are good there, but body shops are booked up for MONTHS. It is crazy. So, if you see her driving around with a damaged door, that wasn’t her fault!!! :-)
Natalia made the next level up for her competitive cheer team and she is so excited! She also made the school cheer team and competitive cheer team, so she will be doing a LOT of cheering this next year, but she absolutely loves it!!!
Brigid is still enjoying her promotion at work and has made her first two hires of her career and now will be a manager for the first time ever. She is excited and can’t wait to have some help as she has been doing the job of three people lately.
I am so excited that I get to take Ana next week to a second campus visit to Clemson. That is her #1 school by far. After that I am taking her to the BMW Performance Center where I went in February and she is taking a 2-day Teen Driving School course. We have heard nothing but rave reviews about it and Ana couldn’t be any more excited!!!
Kylie is enjoying her favorite pastime in the summer of laying out by the pool. She loves the sun and her kids love the water. They are also doing some remodeling of their house and she can’t wait until that is finished.
Patti took a vacation last week and knocked out many items on her To Do list. She enjoyed the time off to relax and unwind before our busy summer.
Thea continues to keep busy with her buyers and is doing such a great job getting offers accepted in this HOT market. If you or someone you know is thinking about buying, you need to talk with Thea as she is the best in the biz!
Thank you to everyone who attended our May Happy Hour!! We had a great turnout and a lot of fun as usual!!! Please plan to attend our June Happy Hour on June 16th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s. As always, drinks and appetizers are included. You bring the smiles!
Check our website and social media channels for our Father’s Day giveaway. We have some very cool gifts for dad, including a huge gift basket full of beer, grilling equipment, gift cards to 18|8 men’s salon and from a med spa for fixing hair loss, or wrinkles. This prize package is worth $500!!! You don’t have to call in. Just like and follow our social media channels and/or give us a great review on Google and we will enter you into the contest. We will give a review for each new follow/review.
Save the date for a brand new event called A Day in The Park. We are finalizing details now, but look for your invite. We will have food, drinks, prizes, a magician, caricature artist, Kona Ice, games, and a live band!! It is going to be so much fun!!! Reserve August 14th so you can join us!!
I was honored as the Chair-elect of the Westfield Chamber of Commerce and sponsor of one of three scholarships the chamber awards each year to present at the Westfield High School Scholarship and Awards Night. Three Westfield High School students won an essay contest we promote as to what new business you think would be a good addition to the Westfield community and why. It is always so amazing to see what these kiddos have accomplished at such a young age.
The real estate market has been making headlines yet again. Let me cut to the chase. THERE IS NO REAL ESTATE BUBBLE. There is 6-7 years supply shortage right now and too much demand. Inflation and rising interest rates have certainly tempered the market to an extent, but we are still seeing multiple offers above listing price on most houses going on the market. If you or someone you care about are thinking about selling, buying, or building, PLEASE call me-317-573-1880. I would love to talk with you and learn more about your situation so you can be armed with the most relevant and specific information tailored to your situation. I cannot stress this enough. Also, come to my next workshop on June 14th at 7pm titled, ‘The Top 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House And How to Avoid Them’. Call/e-mail/text me and I will register you and give you more details. It is a great way to get all of your questions answered in a fun and relaxed environment.
Here are the latest stats from MIBOR comparing March 2022 to April 2022 for the entire Indy Metro area in all price points:
Median Sales Price-$275,000-UP 3.8%
Closed Sales-2,987 units-UP 5.6%
New Listings-3,870 units-UP 7.0%
Pending Sales-3,580 units-UP 4.6%
Days on Market-15 days-DOWN 21.1%
Price per s.f.-$162-UP 4.5%
% of Ask Received-102.1%-UP 0.9%
Active Inventory-1,979 units-UP 23.5%
Absorption Rate-0.7 months-UP 16.7%
Pay close attention to the last two lines. Inventory is UP almost 25%! That is HUGE. Yes, prices continue to increase, but so do closed sales, new listings, and pending sales. Call me if you would like to discuss what these numbers mean to you and your specific situation.
We hope that you enjoy the summer weather and are able to get out and have some fun!! Thank you for being our client and referral partners. We truly appreciate you and couldn’t do what we love without you!!!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Patti
Click here to read our June newsletter.
P. S. Please don’t keep us a secret.
Along with finishing yet another school year, our family has had some exciting happenings. Ana was hit by an inattentive driver a few weeks ago. Everyone is okay, but her car did sustain some damage. The other driver fully admitted fault, so we are good there, but body shops are booked up for MONTHS. It is crazy. So, if you see her driving around with a damaged door, that wasn’t her fault!!! :-)
Natalia made the next level up for her competitive cheer team and she is so excited! She also made the school cheer team and competitive cheer team, so she will be doing a LOT of cheering this next year, but she absolutely loves it!!!
Brigid is still enjoying her promotion at work and has made her first two hires of her career and now will be a manager for the first time ever. She is excited and can’t wait to have some help as she has been doing the job of three people lately.
I am so excited that I get to take Ana next week to a second campus visit to Clemson. That is her #1 school by far. After that I am taking her to the BMW Performance Center where I went in February and she is taking a 2-day Teen Driving School course. We have heard nothing but rave reviews about it and Ana couldn’t be any more excited!!!
Kylie is enjoying her favorite pastime in the summer of laying out by the pool. She loves the sun and her kids love the water. They are also doing some remodeling of their house and she can’t wait until that is finished.
Patti took a vacation last week and knocked out many items on her To Do list. She enjoyed the time off to relax and unwind before our busy summer.
Thea continues to keep busy with her buyers and is doing such a great job getting offers accepted in this HOT market. If you or someone you know is thinking about buying, you need to talk with Thea as she is the best in the biz!
Thank you to everyone who attended our May Happy Hour!! We had a great turnout and a lot of fun as usual!!! Please plan to attend our June Happy Hour on June 16th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s. As always, drinks and appetizers are included. You bring the smiles!
Check our website and social media channels for our Father’s Day giveaway. We have some very cool gifts for dad, including a huge gift basket full of beer, grilling equipment, gift cards to 18|8 men’s salon and from a med spa for fixing hair loss, or wrinkles. This prize package is worth $500!!! You don’t have to call in. Just like and follow our social media channels and/or give us a great review on Google and we will enter you into the contest. We will give a review for each new follow/review.
Save the date for a brand new event called A Day in The Park. We are finalizing details now, but look for your invite. We will have food, drinks, prizes, a magician, caricature artist, Kona Ice, games, and a live band!! It is going to be so much fun!!! Reserve August 14th so you can join us!!
I was honored as the Chair-elect of the Westfield Chamber of Commerce and sponsor of one of three scholarships the chamber awards each year to present at the Westfield High School Scholarship and Awards Night. Three Westfield High School students won an essay contest we promote as to what new business you think would be a good addition to the Westfield community and why. It is always so amazing to see what these kiddos have accomplished at such a young age.
The real estate market has been making headlines yet again. Let me cut to the chase. THERE IS NO REAL ESTATE BUBBLE. There is 6-7 years supply shortage right now and too much demand. Inflation and rising interest rates have certainly tempered the market to an extent, but we are still seeing multiple offers above listing price on most houses going on the market. If you or someone you care about are thinking about selling, buying, or building, PLEASE call me-317-573-1880. I would love to talk with you and learn more about your situation so you can be armed with the most relevant and specific information tailored to your situation. I cannot stress this enough. Also, come to my next workshop on June 14th at 7pm titled, ‘The Top 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make When Selling Their House And How to Avoid Them’. Call/e-mail/text me and I will register you and give you more details. It is a great way to get all of your questions answered in a fun and relaxed environment.
Here are the latest stats from MIBOR comparing March 2022 to April 2022 for the entire Indy Metro area in all price points:
Median Sales Price-$275,000-UP 3.8%
Closed Sales-2,987 units-UP 5.6%
New Listings-3,870 units-UP 7.0%
Pending Sales-3,580 units-UP 4.6%
Days on Market-15 days-DOWN 21.1%
Price per s.f.-$162-UP 4.5%
% of Ask Received-102.1%-UP 0.9%
Active Inventory-1,979 units-UP 23.5%
Absorption Rate-0.7 months-UP 16.7%
Pay close attention to the last two lines. Inventory is UP almost 25%! That is HUGE. Yes, prices continue to increase, but so do closed sales, new listings, and pending sales. Call me if you would like to discuss what these numbers mean to you and your specific situation.
We hope that you enjoy the summer weather and are able to get out and have some fun!! Thank you for being our client and referral partners. We truly appreciate you and couldn’t do what we love without you!!!
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Thea, and Patti
Click here to read our June newsletter.
P. S. Please don’t keep us a secret.
Saturday, April 30, 2022
May Home News
Happy spring!!! We made it! Grass-cutting season is officially upon us along with seasonal allergies…however that also means warmer weather, long daylight in the evenings, schools are getting close to ending for the school year and summer activities are drawing near. The housing market is also in full swing!!!
Happy Mother’s Day to all moms!! Thank you for everything you do for your family!!! We hope you enjoy your special day.
We hope this month’s newsletter finds you well and looking forward to the spring season. For many of us, we have returned recently from spring break, which usually means going somewhere warm. Brigid and I made a promise to Ana and Tali several years ago that we would take them to Hawaii before Ana goes to college and we are running out of time!! So, we went to Kona on the Big Island for spring break and had a great time. So beautiful out there…but so far! Don’t have any plans to go back anytime soon, but we enjoyed our week there.
Last week, Brigid, Tali and I traveled to Orlando for a few days as Tali’s competitive cheer team made it to Worlds. This was their first time and they did great, accomplishing all three of their goals they set for themselves. Practicing for next season has already begun and Tali couldn’t be happier. Tali is also cheering for her Middle School in Westfield this year and hopes to also make their competitive cheer team.
Ana has prom on April 30th with Guerin. She has been looking forward to this for years and is excited to get all dressed up. She is going with a group of 18 friends-9 couples. We are excited for her and the opportunity to take some beautiful photos before their big evening.
So proud of Brigid for getting a promotion at Merck! She has been working hard for this for 2-years now and is excited at this new opportunity. We are very happy for her.
On a not-so-good note, my dad Jack who has managed to evade COVID for two years finally caught it. While he is not feeling great, he is starting to get better and is taking the new medicine to reduce the symptoms and severity of it. Hopefully, my mom Mary Anne will be able to avoid getting it and stay healthy. We sure do hope those you love are staying healthy and keep those we have lost in our prayers.
Kylie has been kept very busy with all of the spring listings we have put on the market. Her family is doing well and her kids are looking forward to the end of the school year and enjoying some time off for summer break.
Thea has been keeping very busy with buyers in this crazy market and is doing a great job in getting offers accepted in the most competitive sellers’ market in history. She is managing to enjoy some down time and loved having her family in town for Easter.
Patti has been working very hard on all of our activities and events we have had and are looking forward to this spring. They are looking forward to a vacation later this year to relax and not focus on events for a week!!
Speaking of events, we have had quite a few lately. Our April Happy Hour was a huge success and we so enjoyed seeing so many of you as we celebrated spring. We hope you will join us for our May Happy Hour on Thursday, May 19th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s again. As always, we provide the drinks and appetizers and you bring the conversation. Always a good time!
Thank you to everyone who stopped by our FREE Shred Day last Friday (Earth Day). We securely shredded thousands of pounds of documents and responsibly recycled hundreds of pounds of electronics. Look for information on our next Shred Day this summer.
We sure hope you have your calendars marked for this Tuesday, May 3rd from 10:30am-3:30pm for our Mother’s Day Giveaway!!! Call us during these hours at 317-426-6108. We are giving away a prize package of pampering worth over $800, including a massage, mani-pedi, dinner for two, prize gift basket, flowers, and much more!!! Thank you to JW Restore for co-sponsoring this with us!! The winner will be announced at 4pm via Facebook Live. For every person who calls in, they get one entry and if you call in with a referral, you get FIVE additional entries with no limit on the number of referrals you can give us. We look forward to hearing from you!
The real estate market continues to be super hot, however we are seeing signs of a shift upon us. Buyer traffic is down, number of offers received is down, amount of offer price above asking price is down and units sold is down from this time last year. Bottom line, we are in a shift. We expect a recession to follow. We do not expect it to be more than 6-9 months, nor will it be nearly as bad as the Great Recession. There is just too much of an imbalance of supply and demand for that to happen. If you are remotely considering selling your house, do it now. Interest rates are around 5-5.25%. Give us a call at 317-573-1880 so we can give you data specific to your situation and help you make an informed decision. It is our job to Guide, Lead, and Protect you through this uncertain time right now. Call us today!
Below are stats from MIBOR comparing March 2022 to February 2022. Note that these stats are trailing indicators and are from all areas MIBOR services, which is 16 counties.
Median Sales Price-UP 5.2% to $265,000
Closed Sales-UP 21.1% to 2,780 units
New Listings-UP 43.9% to 3,577 units
Pending Sales-UP 38.5% to 3,609 units
Day on Market-DOWN 13.0% to 20 days
Price per s.f.-UP 2.0% to $155
% of Ask Received-UP 1.1% to 101.2%
Active Inventory-UP 2.4% to 1,560 units
Absorption Rate-DOWN 14.3% to 0.6 months
Keep in mind this is coming off of the winter market, so we do expect to see these numbers accelerate from February. January was the best January in history for MIBOR in terms of units sold.
Thank you for being great clients and referral partners! We couldn’t do what we love to do without you!!!
Happy Mother’s Day!!
Click here to read our May newsletter
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Patti, Thea
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret.
Happy Mother’s Day to all moms!! Thank you for everything you do for your family!!! We hope you enjoy your special day.
We hope this month’s newsletter finds you well and looking forward to the spring season. For many of us, we have returned recently from spring break, which usually means going somewhere warm. Brigid and I made a promise to Ana and Tali several years ago that we would take them to Hawaii before Ana goes to college and we are running out of time!! So, we went to Kona on the Big Island for spring break and had a great time. So beautiful out there…but so far! Don’t have any plans to go back anytime soon, but we enjoyed our week there.
Last week, Brigid, Tali and I traveled to Orlando for a few days as Tali’s competitive cheer team made it to Worlds. This was their first time and they did great, accomplishing all three of their goals they set for themselves. Practicing for next season has already begun and Tali couldn’t be happier. Tali is also cheering for her Middle School in Westfield this year and hopes to also make their competitive cheer team.
Ana has prom on April 30th with Guerin. She has been looking forward to this for years and is excited to get all dressed up. She is going with a group of 18 friends-9 couples. We are excited for her and the opportunity to take some beautiful photos before their big evening.
So proud of Brigid for getting a promotion at Merck! She has been working hard for this for 2-years now and is excited at this new opportunity. We are very happy for her.
On a not-so-good note, my dad Jack who has managed to evade COVID for two years finally caught it. While he is not feeling great, he is starting to get better and is taking the new medicine to reduce the symptoms and severity of it. Hopefully, my mom Mary Anne will be able to avoid getting it and stay healthy. We sure do hope those you love are staying healthy and keep those we have lost in our prayers.
Kylie has been kept very busy with all of the spring listings we have put on the market. Her family is doing well and her kids are looking forward to the end of the school year and enjoying some time off for summer break.
Thea has been keeping very busy with buyers in this crazy market and is doing a great job in getting offers accepted in the most competitive sellers’ market in history. She is managing to enjoy some down time and loved having her family in town for Easter.
Patti has been working very hard on all of our activities and events we have had and are looking forward to this spring. They are looking forward to a vacation later this year to relax and not focus on events for a week!!
Speaking of events, we have had quite a few lately. Our April Happy Hour was a huge success and we so enjoyed seeing so many of you as we celebrated spring. We hope you will join us for our May Happy Hour on Thursday, May 19th from 5-6:30pm at Matt The Miller’s again. As always, we provide the drinks and appetizers and you bring the conversation. Always a good time!
Thank you to everyone who stopped by our FREE Shred Day last Friday (Earth Day). We securely shredded thousands of pounds of documents and responsibly recycled hundreds of pounds of electronics. Look for information on our next Shred Day this summer.
We sure hope you have your calendars marked for this Tuesday, May 3rd from 10:30am-3:30pm for our Mother’s Day Giveaway!!! Call us during these hours at 317-426-6108. We are giving away a prize package of pampering worth over $800, including a massage, mani-pedi, dinner for two, prize gift basket, flowers, and much more!!! Thank you to JW Restore for co-sponsoring this with us!! The winner will be announced at 4pm via Facebook Live. For every person who calls in, they get one entry and if you call in with a referral, you get FIVE additional entries with no limit on the number of referrals you can give us. We look forward to hearing from you!
The real estate market continues to be super hot, however we are seeing signs of a shift upon us. Buyer traffic is down, number of offers received is down, amount of offer price above asking price is down and units sold is down from this time last year. Bottom line, we are in a shift. We expect a recession to follow. We do not expect it to be more than 6-9 months, nor will it be nearly as bad as the Great Recession. There is just too much of an imbalance of supply and demand for that to happen. If you are remotely considering selling your house, do it now. Interest rates are around 5-5.25%. Give us a call at 317-573-1880 so we can give you data specific to your situation and help you make an informed decision. It is our job to Guide, Lead, and Protect you through this uncertain time right now. Call us today!
Below are stats from MIBOR comparing March 2022 to February 2022. Note that these stats are trailing indicators and are from all areas MIBOR services, which is 16 counties.
Median Sales Price-UP 5.2% to $265,000
Closed Sales-UP 21.1% to 2,780 units
New Listings-UP 43.9% to 3,577 units
Pending Sales-UP 38.5% to 3,609 units
Day on Market-DOWN 13.0% to 20 days
Price per s.f.-UP 2.0% to $155
% of Ask Received-UP 1.1% to 101.2%
Active Inventory-UP 2.4% to 1,560 units
Absorption Rate-DOWN 14.3% to 0.6 months
Keep in mind this is coming off of the winter market, so we do expect to see these numbers accelerate from February. January was the best January in history for MIBOR in terms of units sold.
Thank you for being great clients and referral partners! We couldn’t do what we love to do without you!!!
Happy Mother’s Day!!
Click here to read our May newsletter
Your Friends in Real Estate,
Steve, Kylie, Patti, Thea
P.S. Please don’t keep us a secret.
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