Johnson County housing market was stable in 2014, data show

Johnson County homeowners, house hunters, realtors and builders didn’t have much to complain about in 2014.

The final tally for the year, provided by the County Economic Research Institute, painted a fairly stable picture for the county’s real estate market.

The average price of homes sold — both new and existing — was $271,572 in 2014, up about $10,000 on average from 2013 figures, the research group said. It was the third consecutive year of price gains.

For the final month of last year, the average price of new and existing homes climbed 8.3 percent to $283,700.

However, the total number of homes sold in 2014 fell 2.6 percent to 9,982 from 10,245 in 2013, the institute said. In December, home sales fell 6.1 percent from the previous year.

Still, home sales have trended upward since the end of the recession about four years ago.

As for construction activity, the total number of residential building permits issued in 2014 fell 5.4 percent to 1,586. That’s down 91 permits from 2013’s total. In December 2014, 85 permits were issued, down nearly 29 percent from December 2013.

Building permits for apartments and other multi-family units fell 2.7 percent in 2014 to 1,460 permits. But 2013 marked a major turnaround for multi-family construction as activity reached levels not seen in the county since 2005.

This story was originally published March 10, 2015 at 3:00 AM with the headline "Johnson County housing market was stable in 2014, data show."