Home prices have been climbing in Northwest Indiana, including at the high end of the market.
About three to five million-dollar homes were listed on the MLS Multiple Listing Service in the seven-county Northwest Indiana region before the pandemic, Lighthouse Realty CEO and Owner Jennifer Parham said. More than 50 homes were listed for more than $1 million in Northwest Indiana last week.
Northwest Indiana real estate agents said the rise in million-dollar homes in the Region was largely due to the appreciation of home values. The median price of an existing home in Northwest Indiana has more than doubled from $100,000 in 2004 to $250,000 last year, according to the Northwest Indiana Realtors Association. But they also said it was the result of skyrocketing land and construction costs. Affluent homebuyers at the high end of the market who would have built new homes before are now often finding it cheaper to buy million-dollar-plus homes.
The first million-dollar homes to sell in Northwest Indiana were beach houses along the lakefront with views of Lake Michigan. But now they can be found all across Northwest Indiana, Parham said.
"It's inflationary," she said. "We're seeing million-dollar houses all over, from Long Beach to St. John to Valparaiso to Crown Point. It's not always secluded on the dunes anymore."
Most of the million-dollar homes are spacious and sitting on multiple acres, Parham said. The buyers often come from Illinois, where wages are typically higher, and have more money to spend, she said.
"Most of the Northwest Indiana market is working class with a median home value between $250,000 to $350,000," she said. "This is a select market for discerning buyers with higher-paying corporate positions."
In February, 100 homes were listed over $1 million statewide with 32 sales above $1 million, Indiana Association of Realtors Vice President of Public Affairs Chris Watts said. A total of 1,530 homes were listed above $1 million in Indiana over the past 12 months with 894 closed sales.
Hamilton County, the collection of suburbs northeast of Indianapolis had 345 million-dollar sales last year with a high of $6 million.
Over the past year, Lake County had 56 listings over $1 million, Porter 72 listings over $1 million and LaPorte County 39 listings over $1 million, Watts said. Lake had 17 home sales of more than $1 million, Porter 21 and LaPorte 23.
The highest-priced sale in Lake County over the past year was $2.05 million.
In 2017, Lake County only had three $1 million home sales. That climbed to 8 sales of $1 million or more in 2019 as the housing market started to heat up statewide.
"In 2019, 76% of all home sales in Lake County were for prices at or below $250,000. Just 2% of sales were over $500,000. In 2024, 53% of sales were below $250,000 and 6.5% of sales were above $500,000," he said. "So price appreciation has shifted the market in general."
Home prices in Northwest Indiana have almost doubled over the past decade, Northwest Indiana Realtors Association President Pete Novak said. An influx of residents from Illinois has driven up prices across the market.
Houses that would have been listed for $600,000 or $700,000 five to 10 years ago are now being listed for more than $1 million.
"It's for what is essentially the same-sized house," he said. "But $1 million remains a magical, mystical number in a sense."
Inventory has not kept up with demand, especially when interest rates were at historic lows, Novak said. Northwest Indiana only had had about 2,000 homes on the market in the entire seven-county region for the last few years. That's a third or fourth of the normal inventory.
"Our inventory is even tighter than the national average," he said.
Most of the million-dollar sales take place in gated communities like Park West in Munster or Briar Ridge in Munster and Dyer, Novak said. Others are nice homes that either sit on bodies of water like Lake Michigan or one of LaPorte's lakes or sit on huge tracts of land.
The MLS listings do not fully reflect all the million-dollar homes that are sold, as affluent individuals sometimes prefer private sales to maintain their privacy and they don't want pictures of their home splashed all over the internet, Novak said.
"They aren't necessarily looking to expose their property to the widest audience," he said. "It might be security where they don't want pictures of their home blasted out. They have nice things and don't want people casing their house online."
Lake County had two sales over $1 million at the end of January, and two more over $1 million in December, Novak said.
Realtor Matt Maloney with the Matt Maloney Real Estate Group said the rise in million-dollar homes was partly tied to the rise in construction costs. He estimates it now costs $400 a square foot to build a luxury home, which would end up costing $3.2 million for an 8,000-square-foot mansion.
Land values also have skyrocketed amid the general appreciation in housing prices. A lot in Munster's Park West subdivision cost $250,000 a decade ago and now costs $400,000 for just the land to build on.
"A lot of these homes you're seeing for $1 million or $1.5 million you couldn't buy new for that price," he said. "It's a product of overall inflation. Everything's gone up. When I started in 2014, it was rare to see a million-dollar home but now houses that were selling for $750,000 are selling for $1.1 million."
A million-dollar home still has a little mystique circling around it, but $2 million has become the new $1 million in the luxury home market, Maloney said.
"The million-dollar barrier has been purged and broken through," he said. "It isn't even a psychological barrier for buyers anymore. The real bad part of the inflation is that a $250,000 home is now selling for $400,000. That's pricing a lot of younger people out of the market. That's the biggest concern but I don't have the answer for that."
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