Marion County home values are down 1.5% over the last year, to a median of $293,990. That is the kind of number that gets repeated at every dinner party, but on its own it does not tell you much. Sellers are still collecting about 95.5% of their asking price, which is not a market in free fall. It is a market that has slowed down and gotten a lot more neighborhood-specific.
Indigo East is down 22% right now. Cherrywood Estates is down 18%. Meanwhile Marion Landing is up 14% and Saddle Creek Phase 2 is up 13%. Those are not typos, and they are not random noise. They are four different neighborhoods in the same county telling four completely different stories about what buyers want right now.
Why one street is cooling and another is still hot.
New construction is 64% of recent sales in Marion County, and it comes with incentives resale homes cannot easily match, like builder-funded rate buydowns and closing cost credits. A neighborhood full of resale homes built in the 2000s or earlier is now competing directly against a brand-new subdivision down the road offering a lower effective payment. That is a big part of what is really behind a number like Indigo East's 22%. It is not that the houses got worse. It is that the competition got better.
What this means if you're selling.
If you're in a neighborhood that's cooling, pricing against last year's number is how a house sits for 68 days instead of selling quickly. The fix usually isn't dropping the price blind, it's figuring out what the new construction down the street is actually offering and either matching the effective payment or pricing to reflect that you can't.
What this means if you're buying.
A cooling neighborhood is not a red flag, it's negotiating room. 5.3 months of supply is a genuinely balanced market, not a buyer's dream or a seller's nightmare, which means preparation decides who actually wins the house, not luck. That starts with being fully underwritten before you ever write an offer, not just pre-qualified, and knowing which specific pocket you're buying into, not just the countywide headline number.
If you're watching a specific Marion County neighborhood right now, whether you're buying into it or trying to sell out of it, I'd be curious which one, and what you're actually seeing happen there.
Scott Shannon · Neighborhood Loans · 352-282-3020
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