Re-finance boom, casino hiring could impact Beloit housing market

BELOIT — Homeowners are beginning to cash in on the rapidly rising home values and hiring is about to begin for the massive $705 million Ho-Chunk casino project, part of which is expected to open in September.

How those trends play out may drive the Beloit real estate market in 2026.

"It could go both ways," said Shelly Cronin, a Realtor for Century 21 Affiliated for more than 20 years. "The falling interest rates should bring more buyers into the market, but if we don't get a lot more listings, it's just going to drive prices higher."

According to U.S. Federal Reserve data, the average 30-year mortgage rate has been slowly declining since May 2024 when it was 7.22%. In the first week of December 2025, the average 30-year rate had fallen to 6.19%.

In 2025, according to statistics from the Realtors Association of South Central Wisconsin, Realtors sold 2,072 houses in Rock County. That was up 1.1% from 2024. The number of listings increased by 5.2% to 2,433. Despite new listings outnumbering sales, the average home sale price soared 8.2% to $307,313.

Home prices have gone up so much — just in Rock County the average sale price of a home has soared 33% from the $205,027 average sale price in 2020 — homeowners appear to finally be cashing in on the equity even if they are trading in lower mortgage rates for higher ones.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, refinance applications were up 183% year over year for the first two weeks of January. It's a trend that has been building. According to Realtor.com, the U.S. housing market turned an important corner in the second half of 2025. In the third quarter, the percentage of homeowners carrying mortgages above 6% surpassed those with rates below 3%.

That shift means the "lock-in effect," where people stay in homes they've outgrown because they don't want to give up their historically low mortgage rates, finally may be easing.

Still, Cronin said it's unlikely that the real estate market will see a flood of new listings.

"Some people are still going to stay because the buying cost has gone up so much you still may not be able to get much more of a house than what you have," Cronin said. "Plus, there's still a lot of uncertainty. Gas prices are still high. Food and utility costs have gone up."

Cronin said how the new Ho-Chunk Casino affects the market is going "to be super interesting."

"The management jobs, they are going to be able to afford houses and we have some higher-priced stuff that needs to move," Cronin said. The Ho-Chunk Nation has been accepting resumes for several weeks for the top level employees who will run the casino, hotel and convention center. The first of several job fairs is scheduled for Feb. 3-5 at Beloit College.

"When they start hiring the lower-level jobs, most of those will be in the market for rentals, and we'll need more than what we have now."

Ho-Chunk has estimated that it will eventually employ 1,500 people at the casino, hotel convention center when all three are operational.