Mark Dietel Joins!

**Nigel** (0:04)
You're listening to The Hammer and Nigel Show. My name is Nigel, Jason Eber, right over there with a very special guest on the hotline.

**The Hammer** (0:13)
The official realtor of The Hammer and Nigel Show is Mark Dietel.
He joins us now, full disclosure, Mark Dietel, of course, is an advertiser here on The Hammer and Nigel Show. But we're talking about the housing market, so we wanted to bring in the expert. Mark, how are you?

**Mark Dietel** (0:32)
I'm doing well, guys. How are you?

**Nigel** (0:33)
Excellent.

**The Hammer** (0:34)
We are doing really well. So Mark, I've got, maybe this is a dumb question for you, but I saw the inflation.

**Mark Dietel** (0:41)
From you guys, it's never a dumb question.

**The Hammer** (0:44)
I saw the inflation report earlier, and it's really good. This is the best things have been inflation wise in about six years.
Does this have any sort of correlation to the housing market at a national level, and then ultimately here in Indiana?

**Mark Dietel** (1:03)
I would say yes, except for, I just want to check to see if you guys have heard about what's going on in Iran. Have you heard about this little conflict that's going on over there?

**The Hammer** (1:13)
Yeah, there's a little dust up. Yes.

**Nigel** (1:16)
I'll look that up later. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

**Mark Dietel** (1:18)
Yeah.
I hate to say it. I mean, inflation is actually, yeah, we've gotten some good reports. But the challenge we have right now is obviously interest rates. That's what nationally probably most everybody's looking at, and I would say even, I always talk about real estate type or local, but when it comes to interest rates, it's all pretty consistent across the country somewhat. That's what's probably on most people's mind right now, how much interest rates have actually moved since earlier in the year before this little conflict got started.

**Nigel** (1:51)
How much have they moved?

**Mark Dietel** (1:55)
They were down below six. I mean, you were able to get some FHA and VA loans down in probably the mid-five.
Per my little mortgage app that I look at right now, conventional, sitting at about, this is an estimate for 30 years, not a quote of an interest rate, but it's about 6.7 and FHA, VA is maybe six and a quarter. So they're a good 50, maybe even sometimes depending on where some of these credit score is, it could be 100 basis points up versus where they were earlier in the year. And we had that momentum going and then obviously, they've jumped and they just really haven't. It's been on again, off again, and now it's on again, obviously. And it's interest rates are kind of hovering. And that's what's causing, I think that's what's causing 2026 to be more of a damper than what a lot of the pros, and let's say, forecasters were looking at in 2020, what they were looking at towards the end of 2025, what 2026 might be.

**The Hammer** (2:50)
Mark Dietel.

**Mark Dietel** (2:51)
We're still in a good market. I want to qualify that because Central Indiana, we're still very fortunate, and I like to say we're blessed for being in this Central Indiana market because we still are considered a good market, good consistent market.

**The Hammer** (3:04)
Mark Dietel with us talking about the housing market here in Indiana. You say we're in a pretty good place here. Compare Indiana to some of our neighboring states in terms of the market affordability, things of those nature.

**Mark Dietel** (3:21)
Well, medium sales price, people look at that, you know, they do look at when nationally speaking, they look at regions. So when you talk about our immediate neighbors, you know, let's just go to Louisville, let's go over to Columbus, you know, since I think we're all kind of in a pretty similar, let's just say state of affairs when it comes to the real estate business. I'm so pro Indiana because we got a great university south, we got a great university north, we got a pro football team, we got a pro basketball team, we got a pro women's basketball team. We have a lot to offer here, a lot of good here central Indiana jobs too. So I think oftentimes we stand out a little bit above maybe our neighbors in surrounding areas.
But it wouldn't be drastically, you got to get down in the areas like Texas, Austin, Southwest, Phoenix, New Jersey is crazy right now, but you're talking average purchase price over there, a million dollars plus. I have a friend who has a business over there, real estate and it's just crazy.