Housing market offers bang for the buck

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Wanda Wyatt is photographed at her Schererville, Ind. home Thursday January 26, 2012. Wyatt and her husband Charles Wyatt purchased their two-bedroom duplex home in December. | Stephanie Dowell~Sun-Times Media

Updated: March 1, 2012 8:10AM

For potential homebuyers like Wanda Wyatt, the housing market provides a variety of options at a good value.

Wanda and her husband, Charles, moved into a Schererville duplex on Dec. 1 after touring 22 houses. Wyatt previously owned a townhome in Illinois, and she said the buying experiences were like night and day.

“I definitely feel like we got more for the money this time around,” Wyatt said. “It seems like there are a lot more houses on the market, and they’ve been on the market a longer period of time.”

The housing market remains down due to the fallout from the mortgage crisis, but Realtors are starting to see signs that sales may be on the rebound.

Peter Novak, CEO of the Greater Northwest Indiana Association of Realtors, said that home sales increased over the last six months of 2011. GNIAR — which covers sales in Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Newton and Jasper counties — reported 6,881 sales in 2011, compared with 6,873 in 2010.

“We finished up 2011 very similar — in terms of units sold — to 2010,” Novak said. “Since half of 2010 was driven by (federal) tax credit incentives, we take that as good thing. We’re hoping to carry that momentum into 2012.”

Market shake-up

Novak said local Realtors started to notice a problematic trend in 2006, when the number of houses sold began declining. By mid-2007, prices started to decline and the mortgage crisis was starting to affect the economy as a whole.

In Northwest Indiana, sales dropped 11.3 percent (1,278 homes) in 2007, and 2008 was even worse with sales down 22.9 percent (2,309 homes), according to GNIAR. In Lake County, sales of existing single-family homes were up in December 2011 — 321 compared with 269 in December 2010. In contrast, Porter County saw a dip — 121 in December 2011 compared with 135 in December 2010.

In the Midwest, sales are up in houses priced under $250,000, according to the National Association of Realtors. Nationally, sales of existing homes increased by 1.7 percent in 2011.

But the housing market isn’t out of the woods yet. Novak said he doubts if there will be a significant rise in housing sales until the market gets through glut of foreclosed and distressed unit sales.

Realtor Rose Dobbins of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage said investors are starting to gobble up foreclosed homes.

“(The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) has waived the 90-day transfer of title, so buyers are jumping in there and cleaning up properties for resale,”

Indiana has one of the lowest median home prices — about $140,000 — in the United States, Novak said, so it hasn’t see the precipitous declines that states like Nevada, California and Florida experienced.

“I read a statistic that said the average sale price versus list price is about 90 percent (in Indiana),” Novak said. “So in other words, if it’s listed for $100,000, it sold for about $90,000. The buyer still has most of the leverage, but I think as prices continue to stabilize, that will change.”

Dobbins said sales were pretty bad at the start of 2011, but she’s seen some bright spots emerging.

“It has picked up, particularly for homes that are priced right and that show well,” Dobbins said. “I just had a closing on a house in Hammond that sold within five days of going on the market.”

But she admitted it’s still tough sledding for sellers.

“We always look back at comparison (house prices) over the past two years, which have been so different,” Dobbins said. “A lot of sellers didn’t want to hear that they would have to lower the price due to the market.”

Choices galore

Wanda Wyatt originally is from Hinsdale, Ill., but higher taxes persuaded she and her husband to focus their home search in Griffith, Highland and Schererville after they got married in October.

“Our Realtor made everything easy, and the places we looked at weren’t wastes of time,” Charles Wyatt said.

Wanda Wyatt agreed.

“Every time we felt that we’d found what we needed, she’d advise us to keep looking,” she said.

The couple had several requirements, but having a fenced-in yard for their three dogs was top on their list.

“About 30 (percent) to 40 percent of the houses we looked at, we could have moved into,” Wanda Wyatt said. “But some would have required a lot of work. This is the only place we looked at multiple times. So much had been done to this house — recessed lighting, etc — and this was it.”

With a positive buying experience under her belt, Wanda Wyatt said now is a good time for potential buyers to start looking, particularly with interest rates so low.

“I’d advise people to buy now because the rates are real low,” Wanda Wyatt said. “(Charles’ adult) daughter is looking for a house now with the same agent.”