Lexington’s housing market is crazy right now to say the least. But what we want to know is this — will buying a home get any easier in the near future?
We sat down with Mike Inman — the president of the Kentucky Realtor’s Association — to try and get a better understanding of Lexington’s current housing market.
Mike has been selling real estate in Lexington for 15 years + the Kentucky Realtor’s Association has been working with local government to advance homeownership and advocate for private property rights for 100 years.
If someone is currently interested in buying a home, what are the most important things they need to know?
- Interest rates are historically low, ~4%.
- The cost of housing is not going to go down. If anything, it’s going to keep going up.
- If a house is priced correctly, statistics show that it will be sold in ~20 days.
Can you give us your State of the Union on Lexington’s housing market?
The housing market is booming. That is the only way to describe it. We are selling more houses than we’ve ever sold. Some people try to complain about a shortage of listings, but the fact is, we’re listing more houses than we ever have also. The demand is just extremely high.
What has caused this boom?
During the Great Recession, builders + developers went broke. So for ~10 years, we were building a fraction of the homes that we were building before. Over that time period, demand built up — leading us to where we are now.
Is Lexington’s housing market unique?
The housing market is booming everywhere, but central Kentucky is particularly attractive to people from out-of-state. I don’t know an agent out there right now who is not working with someone from out-of-state who is looking for property in Kentucky.
Have you ever experienced anything like this in your career?
We had a booming real estate market in the early 2000s, but it wasn’t anything like this because they didn’t have the shortage of inventory that we have now. January is usually my slow month, and January of 2021 was the best month I’ve ever had in my career. And then the whole rest of the year continued like that. I was up about 40% in sales last year compared to anything I’ve ever sold before.
Is the current state of Lexington’s market the result of a perfect storm?
The combination of labor costs, materials costs, and high demand is causing a huge problem right now. The entire market is driven by supply and demand. And right now, the demand is far greater than the supply.
What kind of other work is the Kentucky realtor Association doing in the state?
April is Fair Housing Month. We’ll have some events going on during that time because we have a lot of efforts going into that area right now.
One of the other things that is going on is the tornadoes that hit Western Kentucky. We’re administering a $1.5 million grant from the National Association of Realtors to try to help people with their temporary lodging. If you have a lot out there, and the house blew away, you still have a mortgage on it. We want to help with that situation.