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A record 20,782 real estate transactions were recorded in 2015 for Franklin county in the state of Ohio. Central Ohio market has fully rebounded from real estate crash of 2007-2009. Columbus Business First – Record 2015
Good news, foreclosures in central Ohio fell drastically in 2013. In the eight county central Ohio region (Franklin, Delaware, Licking, Union, Fairfield, Pickaway, Madison and Knox counties) foreclosures are nearly 15% less than the previous year. Statewide foreclosures dropped 12 percent to the lowest level since 2006.
Columbus Dispatch Newspaper: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2014/01/16/foreclosures-fall.html
Low foreclosure rates is great news. But, overall inventory levels are now really low. It looks like the upcoming Spring and Summer season will be a real estate market that will favor Sellers and not Buyers.
HomeBuyer Advocate Mike
The Commerce Department reports that new home sales in June rebounded 24% from the previous month. You would think this would be good news, but this is very misleading data. March and April homes sales exploded because of the tax credit rush. May was an all time “stinker” month. So, it is not too hard to have a big increase over a previous terrible month. Plus, the June sales pace is the 2nd slowest ever on record since Commerce Department began tracking the data in 1963. Also on Monday, The National Association of Realtors reports that existing home sales fell 5.1% in June.
So what does all this mean? On the same day, we get conflicting data on the real estate market. Home buyers and sellers are frustrated. They don’t know what to think.
So is the real estate market improving? Who knows the answer?
How about Bernanke, Buffett, Geithner or Greenspan….do they know the answer?
The answer is……nobody knows, not even the so called “experts”.
In my opinion, I think we’ve definitely hit the bottom months ago and the market has been slowly improving. But my opinion or “guess” is no better than any other market expert.
But, the 2 things that I definitely know about the Columbus Ohio real market are:
- The real estate market is extremely turbulant and volatile. This is not always a bad thing for home buyers.
- We are still in a Buyer’s market.
Good luck out there!
Please feel free to contact me if you need help or have questions
Representing People, NOT Property!
Last week, Andy Show, owner of Buyer’s Resource was a guest on the top rated AM radio station in Central Ohio. WTVN Radio (610) interviewed Andy on two good topics:
1. How does Federal Fund rate adjustments affect local mortgage rates.
2. Builder incentives on new build home artificially inflate prices of homes.
This is my first attempt at posting sound to my blog. AKA, podcast.
You can listen to the short interview here:
Forbes.com just released their top 10 “up and coming” tech cities in the USA. Columbus, Ohio was ranked as the #1 up and coming high 
technology city in the USA. I’m sure many people were surprised to see Columbus at the top of the list. Two major reasons why Columbus leads this list. Number one, Columbus is home to one of the largest universities in the world – The Ohio State University (Go Bucks!). Number two, Battelle Memorial Institute has been based in Columbus, Ohio since 1932. Battelle Memorial Institute is the state’s largest research center. This is great news for Central Ohio.
Central Ohio’s largest home builder announced on Friday losses in the 4th quarter and for all of 2007. M/I homes is one 
of the nation’s largest home builders. M/I builds a quality a home and is a well managed company. But, even the best, well- run, new home builders were not immune to the recent real estate market crisis. M/I Homes has been in business for 30+ years and I’m sure they will be in business for another 30+ years.
It is still a great time to be a home buyer in the Columbus, Ohio area. But, in my opinion, the real estate market has now started to turn in Central Ohio. The market will gradually start shifting back to a normal market which is typically a Seller’s market. There are 3 to 4 reasons why the real estate market in Columbus, Ohio is finally starting to change. 
Reason number 1: Mortgage rates bottomed out at a few weeks ago at a low of 5.125% – 5.250%. We have seen the end to flat, low home prices and super low mortgage rates. Everything will start to rise (interest rates and house prices) from this point forward. I predict, in the next six to nine months will still see rates in the range of 6.00% – 6.75% and home prices just modestly increasing. As home buyers we can’t really complain, mortgage interest rates in the “6” range is still really good.
Reason 2: President Bush will sign the economic stimulus package in a few days. In financial terms, the 170 billion+ package will not actually do that much to improve the economy. But, it will help a little. The main benefit of the economic stimulus package is that the consumer confidence in the economy and our government will increase because we were able to get something accomplished, even though that “something” was very small.
Reason 3: My personal buyer activity has increased dramatically in the last 10 – 14 days. I’ve been receiving a lot of phone calls and emails from interested home buyers with questions and looking for help.
Reason 4: It’s all about supply & demand. The inventory in the last 9 months has continued to drop drastically. The end of last Summer we had 21,000+ listings on our multiple listing service(MLS) system. As of right now, we have a little more than 16,300 listings. Granted the drop in the listings is mainly due to the slow winter and holiday season. But, it is still a significant decrease. Even with the listings going down, we are still at insanely high inventory levels. The key months to watch inventory levels will be May, June & July. How these three months go will probably predict the rest of 2008.
This is my prediction on where we are headed in 2008 for the real estate market in Columbus, Ohio. Back in September of 2007 (about 5 months ago), I correctly forecasted in 2008 that we would see all mortgage programs with rates well under 6%. Review my 5.99% or Lower blog post. I did receive a few emails and phone calls from lenders that didn’t think I knew what I was talking about. These lenders didn’t think rates would go that low. I guess I got lucky on that forecast. Again, I could be wrong or I could be right on my latest prediction for 2008. I still think 2008 will be a great year for home buyers. But, the buyer’s market is sort of over. Good Luck!
Another builder is leaving the central Ohio market. Beazer announced on Friday, February 1st that they will stop building new homes in the Columbus, Ohio market. New home builders have really been affected by the real estate slow down. Beazer is the second major new home builder to pull out of our market in the last year. Last Summer, Centex homes stopped building in our area.
As an Exclusive (true) Buyer Agent since 1996, I have had to consistently deal with the false manipulation of real estate statistics by real estate agents that is often encouraged by our local real estate board and multiple listings service (MLS). Recently the “days on the market” (DOM) statsitic has been in the news lately because multiple listing services in other 
parts of the country (for example, Southern California) are debating on removing DOM from reports that home buyers view.
A quote from the SoCalMLS (Southern California Multiple Listing Service) online newsletter, “the bottom line is that you, the real estate professional are in the best position to explain to your customer-buyer or seller-what the true DOM figure is and what it means”. Part of this quote is true, you need to use an exclusive buyer broker that you trust to help explain the pros and cons of ALL real estate statistics. But one thing I’ve learned from being a buyer broker is that you have to be able to “read between the lines” or “filter out the garbage” when disseminating information. In my opinion, the MLS systems and real estate boards will ALWAYS favor the Seller, and not the Buyer or the consumer in general. The above quote from the SoCalMLS is a perfect example of what I am talking about. It does make sense to have a qualified, experienced agent help explain the DOM statistic to a Buyer or Seller. So, WHY hasn’t this been SoCalMLS policy from the beginning? Isn’t it strange, that they now want to implement this change in a slow real estate market that is now cosidered a BUYERS MARKET? In my opinion, the real estate boards feel that the depressing DOM stat is making it harder to sell homes in this slow market. Why are their so many people out there that have their heads so far up there $%&*@#.
I agree that many times consumers are “bombarded” or overloaded with a lot of information and statistics. Sometimes the information and statistics are meaningless. But the solution to the problem is not to limit, delete or “hold back” information from the consumer. The best type of market for any industry is where the products, services and information are totally open and available to all consumers. That’s my opinion!
Last week, National City Bank announced that they will lay off 900 employees from their National City Mortgage division. National City has decided to shut down their wholesale mortgage department. The wholesale department was responsible for originating first and second mortgages with other mortgage brokers. National City will still originate 
mortgages to the consumers through their branch office networks.
National City Bank is the the state of Ohio’s largest bank. The layoffs can be directly tied to the problems in the sub-prime mortgage crisis. This is another example of Banks “circling the wagons” and tightening credit options. As an Exclusive Buyer Agent I am actually more concerned with the trend of banks restricting or tightening credit options then with the layoffs. Tightening credit options & layoffs are both terrible for our economy. But, in my opinion, the bank management decisions to tighten credit and make it harder for the consumer to obtain mortgages will be a lot more detrimental to our economy and recovery in the long run. Contact me if you have any questions or if you are looking for a lender.
My Buyer Broker Advocate! 
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