At certain times in early afternoon on Fall days when the sun is at the right angle, portions of the City County Building’s exterior along Market Street is bathed in a coppery glow shinning from a nearby building on Delaware’s highly reflective copper-tinted windows. The patterns created also add a noticeable amount of heat if you are walking through or sitting down in one of them, which actually feels kind of good if it’s a cool day.
Just a shot I liked of a stained glass panel hanging in a window that I took recently. Colored glass windows like these are similar to any other kind of art displayed on a wall, but different in that they change dramatically in brilliance depending on the light coming from outside. The light as it passes through also changes, coloring the interior with the hues of the glass. Art that functions.
If you read some of the articles in the newspaper you’d think that the local residential real estate is in the tank. Right? Well, that’s far from the truth actually. What’s really going on is vastly different. The best way to explain what is actually going on is just to tell the truth, quantifying the amount of activity to put things in perspective. There were over 1600 homes with sales that pended last month in the nine county, central Indiana, greater Indianapolis metropolitan area. That’s a lot of homes for a September. A five percent increase over last year at this time. And the total number of homes on the market is declining. That means inventory is tightening with fewer homes competing for more buyers. Whenever that happens, prices should edge upward, which they have. Funny…supply and demand really works. This has not been a one month occurrence. The market has been on this same path for a number of months now. So what’s going to happen down the road? Well, that’s always the big question isn’t it. We’ll see.
For more in-depth analysis of last month’s residential real estate activity, including real numbers, charts and graphs, take a look at my latest Market Watch Newsletter.
One of the truly outstanding annual events in our community, the Heartland Film Festival begins tomorrow and continues through Saturday 10-22. The festival provides an avenue to view movies by independent film-makers that main-stream theaters often miss. Here’s the film schedule. There’s something for everyone.
This is one of those times when my words just get in the way. Just take in a movie or two. You’ll have fun.
One of the ways to get a read on the residential market is to track the number of home showings on listings. Over time it’s proven to be a fairly reliable indicator of future sales. It stands to reason that when showings are down, then there are less potential buyers out there looking. Conversely, an increase usually means there are more buyers actively considering a home purchase. In the Indianapolis area, our market is seasonal, so when trying to understand the market, it makes sense to compare a time period now with the same time period in previous years. Showings in 2005-2006 were record years, but had fallen off somewhat in recent years due to the economic climate. That’s been swinging back the other way this year though. For instance, the number of showings this last week, were up 33% over this same week last year for my office. We all have a sense that there was a general increase in activity, but it’s interesting to see a measurement that supports it.
