Sales of existing homes take November slide

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The Indianapolis-area existing-home market is heading toward a disappointing year in 2014.

The number of home-sale agreements for the nine-county area in November fell to 1,766, a 2.8-percent decline compared with the same month in 2013, real estate agency F.C. Tucker Co. reported Tuesday morning.

Year-to-date, with only December’s figures left to report, agreements are down 3.8 percent.

Area sales had risen slightly the past two months after 12 straight months of declining deals on a year-over-year basis.

Meanwhile, the average sale price for homes in the nine-county metro area in November climbed 6.5 percent, to $176,863, as inventory declined. The number of homes on the market last month fell to 10,285, down 3.7 percent from last November.

The shrinking inventory bodes well for sellers, F.C. Tucker President Jim Litten said in a written statement.

“We expect the shrinking inventory to continue driving up prices, which will keep contributing to the seller’s market that we’ve been experiencing in recent months,” he said.
 
Average sale prices for Marion County homes increased 6.9 percent, to $137,257, and Hamilton County homes rose 6 percent, to $267,635,

In Marion County, the metro area’s busiest market, pending sales climbed 2.7 percent, to 787 homes. In Hamilton County, the second-busiest, deals fell 12.5 percent, to 342 homes.

The drop in Hamilton County was the biggest in the nine-county area next to Shelby County, where pending sales fell 27.8 percent. But there, only 26 homes were put under contract last month.

Besides Hamilton and Shelby counties, Boone, Hendricks and Madison counties saw pending sales decrease.

One pending sale in the area in November topped $2 million. Four more exceeded $1 million, and 49 were priced between $500,000 and $999,000. Forty-two percent of the month’s deals—736—were in the $100,000 to $199,999 range.
 

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