Despite a slight pause when the pandemic first hit our shore,
the real estate market in Northwest Indiana continues to be
robust.
“I listed a $130,000 house in Griffith and
within three days we had 20 showings, four offers and it sold for
cash,” says Joe Rogowski, a broker with McColly Real Estate
Schererville. “I put up a listing on a $170,000 townhome in
Merrillville and we had 14 showings and four offers in 3
days.”
Rogowski, who has been in the real estate business for
34 years and previously managed a real estate office for two
decades, says he’s never seen a market move as quickly as
this one is currently doing.
“The average time a house is on the market,
depending on price range and location is weeks even days compared
to months which is what it used to be,” he says.
“Multiple offers are pretty much the norm if the house is
priced correctly. It’s the law of supply and
demand.”
Indeed, he says, if a house has been on the market for
ten days without an offer, Realtors often wonder what’s
wrong.
Lynn Watkins, a broker with McColly Real Estate Crown
Point, is seeing the same continuing surge in the demand for
housing.
“When I look at sales of homes during the last
quarter of the year compared to the first quarter of this
year,” she says, “It hasn’t slowed down as far as
I’m concerned. People are calling constantly.”
The market is very hot right now, says Cathy Higgins,
a broker with McColly Real Estate in
Schererville.
“There are multiple contracts on most
properties,” she continues. “Inventory is down
and most buyers are paying list price or above to be able to buy
the home. If the home is in excellent condition and updated,
they can sell in a day or so.”
Part of the increase says Rogowski is driven by
the number of Illinois residents crossing the state line to hunt
for homes.
“I put another home in Schererville on the
market for $395,000, the owners thought that was too much but I
said I can get that for you,” he says. “In a
short time, we had four offers, two were $10,000 over the asking
price and all four were from people living in Illinois. That home
sold for cash as well.”
According to data from the tax year 2017-2018, 4,300
residents moved from Cook County to Lake County.
“One reason is that real estate taxes across the
border, regardless of where it is, are triple what the taxes are in
Northwest Indiana,” says Rogowski. “The hottest markets
are Lake and Porter counties and they’re unbelievable. I
haven’t had a day off since February. Of the last 30 or so
offers I’ve looked at for homes, 75% or more are from
Illinois.”
Cities just across the Illinois state line are also
popular.
Higgins, who is a licensed broker in Illinois, says
she’s seeing an increase in sales in Lansing and Lynwood.
Like the housing market in our area, McColly Real
Estate continues to grow. More than 45 years ago, Ron McColly
opened a four-person office in Merrillville. Now, McColly
has 490+ broker associates, 100 employees and 23 offices. According
to the RealTrends® Top 500 Broker Report, McColly Real Estate
ranked no. 161 nationally for its closed transaction sides for
year-end 2018.
Businesses relocating to Northwest Indiana also add to
the growing demand for housing says Watkins.
“Businesses draw new people into an area who
want to live near where they work,” she continues, noting
that two new companies, HTI Logistics Company, Inc. based in
Louisville and Manhattan Mechanical of Manhattan, Illinois are
setting up shop in East Chicago. That’s one of the reasons
the city has opened Fitzsimmons Redevelopment. A
19,000-square-foot multi-use residential and retail space located
in the North Harbor district at 137th and Main Street right across
the street from Unity Plaza and close to such amenities as the
beach, I-94, two casinos, shopping and medical facilities.
“It has two commercial units and seven
residential units,” says Watkins about the four 3-bedroom,
2.5 bath condos and three 2-bedroom, 2.5 bath townhomes that vary
in size from 1,881-square-foot to 2,063-square-foot. Retail space
encompasses 4,042-net square-foot and is ready for development.
Watkins notes now is the time to buy in order to take
advantage of East Chicago’s first-time homeowners’
program that provides $25,000 for those buying one of the condos or
townhomes.
But though new projects like this help provide more
home buying options, there’s still a significant scarcity of
housing stock.
“Developers can’t build fast enough to
keep up with the demand,” says Rogowski.
The iconic Marktown, listed on the National Register
of Historic Places, in East Chicago has ended its decline says
Watkins, noting that she has a new listing there and that investors
are moving into what is a unique urban planned worker community
dating back to 1917.
Higgins offers recommendations for both buyers and
sellers.
“As a buyer, expect to pay full price or over if
it's a home you want,” she says. “As a seller, make
sure your home sparkles! To get top dollar, it must look top
dollar. It must be clean and updated. It must be free
of clutter. Homes with clutter tend to look smaller & not
taken care of. It must have some curb appeal. Trim the
bushes, edge the walkway.”
Rogowski says even though people talk about the real
estate bubble bursting at some point as it did in 2006 and 2007
leading to the 2008 bust, he sees the situation today as being very
different.
“Back then, people were purchasing homes with
100% financing and no down payment, which left several homebuyers
upside down / with no equity,” he recalls. It’s
different this time around.”