As the home-selling season winds down, local realtors say this year's market has been the best one for several years.
Monthly market data released this week indicate the median price for Cass County home sales increased to $69,500, more than 19 percent greater than the median price for the same period last year.
The number of new listings and closed sales increased somewhat as well. On average, sellers received 92 percent of their asking price, the data indicate.
The median price was probably distorted somewhat by a few high-end sales, one real estate broker says. Still, he said this has been his best year ever in 27 years of selling real estate.
"It's unbelievable," Tom Scheetz said. "Everything has been moving and people have been buying. We don't understand it and we're not going to ask why."
Scheetz, who's part owner of Logansport firm Galloway, Murray and Scheetz, believes the threat that current low interest rates may rise spurs people to lock in their loans while they're less costly.
For those who qualify for loans, buying is also cheaper than renting, Scheetz said. "With 4 percent interest on, say, a $70,000 house, their payment, without taxes and insurance, is probably going to be $350," he added.
However, he estimates local property values haven't increased significantly compared to last year. Scheetz is a member of Cass County's property assessment board.
Continued low home prices are "a little frustrating to me," Scheetz said, "but [homes] are selling and that's the main thing."
He said he'll even have at least four to five closings in December, which is usually a "dead month."
Manufacturing activity in the Kokomo area has boosted the housing market in southern Cass County, a Galveston real estate broker said.
"A lot of the people that work at Chrysler live out here," Tom Hayes of Tom Hayes Realty said. As they become established in the Chrysler workforce, they have started buying residences around Galveston and Walton, he said.
This year wasn't quite as good a market as seasons Hayes remembers from a couple decades ago, he said, but it has improved over the last few years.
"There's been more buyers this year," Hayes said. "Overall the confidence is better, and the employment's better and the interest rates are tremendous."