Rents keep climbing, but units take longer to place. Sales remain relatively healthy on paper, yet real-time sentiment points to slower traction post–summer peak.
Rental Market Snapshot
Key KPIs
What’s Driving It
- New-build saturation + owners pricing to “cover costs.”
- Strong YoY rent gains, but slower absorption = longer vacancies.
- Early Sept read suggests a pullback that could help normalize DOM.
Actionable Moves for Landlords
- Price to clear in the first 10–14 days; consider a $100–$200 cut if tours lag.
- Use 8–10 or 16–18 month terms to land a May–July renewal window.
- Prefer incentives (e.g., 1–2 weeks free, small move-in credit) over deep headline cuts.
- Monitor weekly: inquiries → tours → apps; adjust quickly to stop vacancy burn.
Sales Market Snapshot (≤ $500k)
Key KPIs
What We’re Seeing
- Post–June/July timing matters—listings missing peak need faster price discipline.
- On-the-ground sentiment is softer than the lagging KPIs imply.
- Buyers can leverage concessions (credits, rate buydowns) as activity cools.
Tactics by Audience
- Sellers: If no showings in 10–14 days, take a meaningful cut (1.5–2.5%) and/or advertise a rate buydown or closing credit to revive traffic.
- Buyers/Investors: Hunt value in the sub-$400k bracket; negotiate appliances, credits, or buydowns over headline price where comps are stubborn.
Bottom Line
Westfield still pencils as a strong long-term hold—demographics and amenity momentum are intact. Near-term, expect longer lease-ups unless you price/structure aggressively, and a cooler sales tape outside the summer window. Use lease timing, modest incentives, and faster feedback loops to offset today’s friction.
Transcript Here
Westfield Rental Market Update — 0:00
Westfield, you can take over. Do I have to take on this nightmare? Oh, this is the sore spot for me. All right. Active homes 83—continues to go up. I mean, I guess I should just start with days on the market. We’ve been talking about it—talk about it every time. It’s 79 days on the market. Actually, that’s down. It’s down month over month.
Positive news. Only at 79.
But it just defies logic because we’ve got 79 days on market and then look at this: average rental price—call it $2,000—up 5.5% month over month and up almost 12% year-over-year. That is unbelievable. So it’s like this rocket ship, but it takes a long time to rent a place.
Yes. Crazy, crazy.
That’s why—we’ve talked about it for a long time—you have this new construction, a lot of people picking up new construction, and then they want to rent them and they’re trying to cover costs, which you’re not going to be able to do right out of the gate. I guarantee you, primarily due to saturation in the market, you’re needing to reduce those prices. And whether they’re with a property management company and they’re not informing them properly on market activity, or they’re trying to rent themselves and are not coming to the conclusion that they need to make adjustments to put a butt in the seat—that’s contributing to the average days on market in this market.
Yeah. Anyway, rent price keeps going up. It’s unbelievable.
Apartments: 21 on the market. Average rent significantly less expensive for affordability—$1,495 average, $1.72 per square foot. Townhomes: only 11 of them, not too far behind in price—$2,270 average rent. Average days on market, interestingly, is pretty reasonable and in line with other markets at 43. Maybe because there are only 11 on the market.
Bottom graphs—price over time—started off below last year and then since March has taken off with a huge increase. Let’s hope that sneak peek into September is not true because that is not good.
That’s a death dive.
That is a death dive. We’ll not focus on that quite yet until all the data is in.
You know what? I hope it is true. I hope it is true because that’s going to drive our average days on market back to a realistic, affordable figure. So yeah, I hope it is true. That’s the correction this market needs right now. Now, if you’re new here and thinking, “Oh my gosh, avoid Westfield,” or “I’m closing on a property in Westfield”—you’re fine. Westfield is a fantastic long-term play over the next 5–10 years. I want to move to Westfield, honestly. It’s going to grow—my kids are in youth sports and it’s the youth-sports hub of America. You have nothing to worry about. But if your property is about to go on market, check that bottom-left graph and hope you’re right where that little dark-blue bubble is for September—you’ll place a tenant much sooner. So I hope it is true.
Just go in eyes wide open. We have no reason to believe that in the long term these rents aren’t going to increase. We pulled this a few months back—we’ve been doing this three or four years—and when we started, Westfield’s average rent was like $1,600. We should do a side podcast pulling a year-ago or multi-year data—funsies. What’s the appreciation rate in Indy over the last 3/5/10 years?
Yes, we should totally do that—fun and informative (and I’m sure I can find plenty of ways to pat us on the back).
Yeah. Yeah. All right. You ready for sales?
Yeah. Let’s go to sales data.
All right. Here we go.Westfield Sales Market Update — 4:34
I’m interested to see this because I currently have a house on the market in Westfield—for sale. We had it as a short-term rental; the HOA changed guidelines, so now we have to sell it. We decided to ride out the meat of the market—July is the best time for STRs, great rates—so we waited and listed in August. We looked at the pricing; I felt like I nailed it—knew exactly what it was worth. Boom—on the market.
We’ve been on the market for three weeks. We’ve had zero showings.
No—not you! You thought you had it nailed.
I did. From the sales numbers, I nailed it. But that just shows: when you look at sales comps, you’re in the rearview mirror. The market is telling me it’s overpriced. We’ve done three price reductions in three weeks—still zero showings.
There you go. Mike’s own experience backs the insight I had months ago.
And timing matters. In retrospect, I should’ve listed in July, not waited for STR income. To cement it: another home in the same neighborhood—similar house/price—sold in ~7–10 days because they were in June/July. One month can make a huge difference, especially in the sales market (same logic we use for rentals).
Crazy. Apples to apples?
Similar enough. Their home was a bit bigger and pricier.
So that speaks to the other side of the equation too—fascinating.
Seasonality and market changes. Also, when you evaluate data, you’re looking backward—and by the time it hits the average consumer, you’re looking in three rearview mirrors. That’s why you stay tuned here so you can anticipate. Honestly, Mike, you should’ve been ahead of this one, buddy.
I got greedy with July income. Now it’s hitting our sales outcome. What’s interesting is this data doesn’t fully match my personal experience. Look: days on market shows 37. That is up 23%, but still nothing crazy. We’re not at 37 yet, but with zero showings, it looks like we’re headed there.
And the rest of the numbers are relatively positive except YoY: MoM average price per sq. ft. up; YoY it’s $197. Average sales price $374,638—up MoM, down 4% YoY. Number of homes sold: 88—up 23% MoM and 25% YoY.
Again, maybe that’s rearview mirror stuff and what I’m experiencing is more real-time. The numbers say Westfield sales are continuing along, though down vs. last year and July fell off a cliff.
Boots on the ground: sales has stalled out. I see it continuing into fall/winter for sure.
Yeah—seasonality even more of a factor. So I assume it doesn’t make sense to pivot to a long-term rental?
We ran the numbers; not a fit here either.
Dang. Okay, next market report.
