Bloomington-Normal home sales were unchanged last month compared to last year with 221 homes being sold. That comes despite the loss of a major employer.
Karen Stailey-Lander is president of the Bloomington-Normal Association of Realtors. She says layoffs at Caterpillar in Peoria, and the closing of the Mitsubishi plant in McLean County are having minimal effects.
"We have been very pleasantly surprised because we have not seen a huge drop in activity," she said. "In fact, you would think, by people going out of the area, we might have an abundance of inventory and we do not have that," she added.
In fact Stailey-Lander says inventory bottomed out over the winter and is just now building back up. She says there are just over 1,000 homes on the market.
The average price of a new home so far this year in Bloomington-Normal is just over $480,000. Re-sales are running at about $161,000 per unit.
