August 11, 2007 Indy-area home sales rebounding By Jeff Swiatek, The Indianaolis Star Home sales in the Indianapolis area picked up in July, with pending closings down just 1 percent from the same month last year. That's welcome news to the real estate market, which in June was sent reeling by a 9.2 percent decline in pending home sales. "We've reached a plateau where things are not getting worse," said Gary Warstler, executive vice president at F.C. Tucker Co. "I think we're OK. I think we're back to normal." The July data, released Friday by Tucker using numbers from the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors, show 2,597 pending home sales in the nine-county metro area, a slight drop from 2,633 in the same month last year. For the first seven months of the year, sales are off 5 percent from a year ago, to 18,531, according to a preliminary count by Tucker, the largest local residential broker. Some buyers may have been lured into the market by lower prices, which have fallen on average 2 percent to 3 percent this year over last, Warstler said, as well as by slightly lower interest rates. Using the same Realtors data, Landrigan & Co. Realtors reported a less rosy performance for the 13-county metro area, which is larger than Tucker measures. Landrigan estimated July sales in the 13 counties were down 4 percent from a year ago. "The market continues to be erratic," said company President G.B. Landrigan. He said "the uncertainty of the property tax issue" has hurt sales in some areas. Meanwhile, the inventory of homes for sale in the nine-county area is 5 percent higher than a year ago.