Realtors harbor housing concerns ahead of major St. Joseph County development

 

ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind.-- Indiana home sales and listings are on a downturn, and mortgage rates are at an all-time high. This is concerning for local realtors, especially with one of the largest developments in Michiana history coming to St. Joseph County, the General Motors EV battery plant. 

“There’s a lot of unknowns with this big plant coming and all these people and how the town is going to be affected,” said Dana Groves, the director of Historic New Carlisle.   

St. Joseph county will soon be the new home of General Motors' next electric vehicle battery plant, but people who live in New Carlisle, like Groves, say there’s no room for the hundreds of employees expected to flock to the area.   
 

“The million-dollar question, where are these people going to live?” Groves said. “We just don’t have a lot of housing stock available.”   

Local realtors say there simply aren’t enough homes.   
 

“The old saying is, if you build it, they will come. We already have people coming, so now we need to build it,” said Beau Dunfee of the South Bend Area Realtors. “We have an inventory shortage, as anybody knows that’s been looking for a home. There’s very few for sale, the lowest amount of inventory we’ve had in decades.”   
 

Thursday, Indiana U.S. Senator Todd Young held a roundtable discussion with local realtors to push his agenda to improve housing affordability.   

“The need is massive, a lot of businesses that are growing can’t grow, because they can’t get enough people to locate to this area and take the jobs that are available,” Young said.     

Without homes freeing up, the solution now is to build.   

“Building new construction is going to be the key, out towards New Carlisle, in between New Carlisleand South Bend,” Dunfee said.   
 

“We’ve got good-paying jobs. We want people to be living here, as opposed to Michigan, especially after we’ve attracted these once-in-a-generation opportunities,” Young said.   

Still, New Carlisle neighbors are cautious.   

“We’re working on a comprehensive plan to identify areas for housing, and where that would go, and what that would look like in the future,” Groves said.   

However, realtors remain optimistic.  

“I see South Bend really on the up and up over the next 10 years, and this EV plant is just another great example of that,” Dunfee said.   

Senator Young is pushing three measures as part of his housing affordability tour and agenda. This includes the yes in my backyard act, the neighborhood homes investment act and the affordable housing credit improvement act.