UPDATE: Monroe County's highest valued home is assessed at $8 million

Boris Ladwig, The Herald-Times
Updated ·3 min read
Drawings of a home to be built in the Sterling Woods neighborhood.
Drawings of a home to be built in the Sterling Woods neighborhood.

Updated and corrected: This post has been updated with information from the amended permit, and the location of Sterling Woods has been corrected.

Monroe County’s most expensive residential property is assessed at just over $8 million, but documents filed with the local building department suggested the home was about to be dethroned.

The documents indicated an Indiana University professor planned to build an 8,375-square-foot residence in Sterling Woods. The alleged estimated construction cost: $12 million.

However, owner Doug Haeberle said via email the figure is an error and “a long way from accurate.” He said the actual value of his home will be in line with other homes in the Sterling Woods neighborhood, southeast of Bloomington.

The permit for Haeberle's house was filed by contractor John Ingram Builder Inc. Documents filed with the building department indicate the house was designed by Bailey Weiler Build + Design. Neither the contractor nor the design company could be reached.

Haeberle, a clinical emeritus professor at IU's Kelley School of Business, did not reply to a subsequent email that asked how the error came about.

According to the building department, Ingram called the building department Thursday to change the projected construction cost to $1.25 million.

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Fewer homes being built

The erroneous permit was among 79 residential permits the Monroe County Building Department logged in the first six months of the year.

That's a decline of 8% compared to the first six months of last year, when the building department received 86 building permit applications.

The combined estimated construction value of the 79 homes for which the county issued permits in the first half of 2023 was $30.5 million, or an average per home of $386,000 — adjusted for the error. The construction value of the 86 homes permitted in the county in the same period last year was $33.7 million, or an average of $401,000 — though the estimate value for two properties last year was not immediately available.

The figures include single-family homes, duplexes and accessory dwelling units.

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For this year so far, the estimated construction value of four homes exceeded $1 million, compared to two homes for the same period in 2022.

So, what is Monroe County’s most expensive home?

An aerial view of Monroe County's most expensive residential property, an $8.2 million mansion at 2640 E. Mel Currie Road.
An aerial view of Monroe County's most expensive residential property, an $8.2 million mansion at 2640 E. Mel Currie Road.

According to information from the Monroe County Assessor’s Office, the county’s residence with the highest assessed value is a 14,800-square-foot mansion on East Mel Currie Road, about three miles north of Griffy Lake.

The home, which, according to the county's Geographic Information System, has 26 finished rooms, including six bedrooms and six full bathrooms, is assessed at $8.2 million.

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The home has a tennis court, two utility sheds, two pools and two greenhouses. Its main floor measures 6,720 square feet, its basement 8,080 square feet.

The property’s value has increased from about $7.2 million in 2011 to $8.2 million this year.

The home is owned by John W. and Kara J. Jacobs. The couple most recently paid an annual property tax bill of nearly $89,000.

Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: This mansion is Monroe County, Indiana's most valuable property