Louisville isn’t simply Louisville. Here, let me clarify. Metro Louisville is basically Jefferson County, which, by the way, holds many, smaller home rule cities within its borders. But people here in Louisville still think of places across the county line as still part of Louisville. At least, that’s how we see things.
Because that’s the way we think, it’s helpful to take a look at all the counties that surround Jefferson County when it comes to Louisville real estate. Annually, on this website we check and see how the year has performed and update this chart below. That way we can all get a better feel of how Louisville home values by county have changed.
As you can see at the beginning of the chart, home values were moving higher, especially in Oldham County. Then values declined and remained somewhat flat until 2012. It’s at this point where average home sale prices for each county really started to move!
Here are the changes in value from 2002 to 2017.
| 2002 | 2017 | Change | |
| Jefferson | $149,553 | $199,947 | 33.70% |
| Oldham | $216,197 | $316,941 | 46.60% |
| Bullitt | $123,543 | $182,383 | 47.63% |
| Shelby | $188,318 | $243,463 | 29.28% |
| Spencer | $160,000 | $223,654 | 39.78% |
These are some fairly dramatic numbers, all things being equal. Bullitt County came out on top in terms of change in prices. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, I’ll leave up to you.
The annual appreciation of Louisville homes is around 4% going back decades. But the housing recession changed that when we actually had home values decline for three straight years.
But the growth we’ve seen in the past three is unprecedented and dramatic. Looking at only the past year’s change from May 2016 to May 2017, here are our numbers.
| 2016 | 2017 | Change | |
| Jefferson | $186,965 | $199,947 | 6.94% |
| Oldham | $286,139 | $316,941 | 10.76% |
| Bullitt | $168,342 | $182,383 | 8.34% |
| Shelby | $201,590 | $243,463 | 20.77% |
| Spencer | $205,571 | $223,654 | 8.80% |
These are the average price of homes sold, year-to-date through May. Using a full 12 months of sales would get us more accurate numbers but the calculations would be far more time-consuming. (Plus the first time I did one of these used May data so I guess I’ll just keep sticking with it.)
As you might expect, the bulk of properties exist in Jefferson County with smaller quantities in the other neighboring counties.
Lastly, just in case you are familiar with our Louisville Housing Reports for the MLS areas, the data I use in those reports is the median sale price rather than the average. We want to make things as clear as possible when you are viewing these Louisville home values by county.
If you have any specific questions, please feel free to contact us.
