INDReporter

Market Watch: Residential real estate still climbing

by Amanda Jean Harris

Lafayette Parish’s residential real estate market shows no sign of slowing.

When Keller Williams Realty team leader Walter Campbell describes the state of real estate in Acadiana, even entering summer months that can slow after spring sales, the market is thriving and healthy.

In Lafayette Parish, 688 homes sold in the first three months of 2015 compared with 644 for the same period last year, an almost 7 percent increase. New construction sales and sales of existing homes experienced similar first quarter percentage increases of about 7 percent.

Likewise, the average sales price in Lafayette Parish increased almost 4 percent in that three-month period, rising from $214,400 to $222,500.

In March alone, however, the number of closed sales in Lafayette Parish reported to the Multiple Listing Service jumped a healthy 14 percent.

“That’s why we had such a banner month in March,” Campbell says.

March was the best month in 13 years, while the new April stats show Keller Williams had its third best month overall in the last 13 years.

“That says a lot about the market,” Campbell adds.

As we enter the summer months, it looks to be a seller’s market in Acadiana with far fewer houses on the market than other cities of comparable size. Campbell recently spent time in Mobile, Ala., a city that has two times as many homes on the market as Lafayette. Lafayette has roughly 2,000, while Mobile has a comparable number of agents and around 4,000 homes for sale, he says. — AJH