Area housing market shows strength

Staff photo by Gary Stelzer A 'sold' sign sits Thursday in the front yard of a home on Roosevelt Avenue in Middletown.

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By Eric Schwartzberg, Staff Writer Updated 9:35 AM Friday, January 13, 2012

Even though Butler County had the worst foreclosure rate in Ohio last year, there’s still some good news coming from the region’s housing market.

The Greater Cincinnati metropolitan area, which includes Butler and Warren counties, was one of a few housing markets showing measurable improvement in the country, according to a recently released National Association of Home Builders/First American Improving Markets Index.

The market index is designed to track housing markets nationwide that are showing sustained improvement in housing permits, employment and housing prices for at least six consecutive months, according to Dan Dressman, executive director of the Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati.

Cincinnati and Toledo are the only two metropolitan areas from Ohio on the national list.

“I think some of it has to do with the (fact that) sellers have become very realistic,” said Tom Hasselbeck, president of the Cincinnati Area Board of Realtors.

“I think we’re seeing more people realizing that although I might be losing on what I’m selling, I’m gaining a lot more house on my next purchase, something we’ve been preaching for the last three years, and it’s finally sinking in.”

This region has always been a very stable community in terms of job growth, Hasselbeck said.

“Certainly we’re not Las Vegas, Nev.; Miami, Fla.; California and areas like that,” he said. “When we compare our average sale price to these other communities, we were lagging behind to begin with, showing the stability of our market.”

Gwen Ritchie, 2012 president-elect of Hamilton-Fairfield-Oxford Board of Realtors, said signs of the improvement are apparent.

“We have seen an uptick in sales since September of this past year,” she said. “Our area has already appeared to be stabilizing in terms of the number of sales

The relatively low cost of homes in the region factors into the upswing, Ritchie said.

“The price that you have to pay for housing compared to what people earn is very affordable compared to other metro areas,” she said.

As people move to the region for jobs, they are pleasantly surprised by the cost of a home, Ritchie said. “They can get a lot more house or they can actually purchase a home, and where they were before, they could not,” she said.

Consumer confidence is a major factor in new home construction, which continues to be burdened by overly restrictive lending policies and an unhealthy inventory of distressed properties, Dressman said.

“Improvement on both of these fronts will lead to a sustained recovery,” he said. “We still are making great efforts in Washington to improve the regulatory environment, in particular as it has to do with lending requirements.

“The federal regulators have really got a tight hold on that issue with the local banking institutions, so that’s a major problem. It’s just a lot more restrictive lending environment.”

Adding to the situation is a appraisal process in which some appraisers are still using distressed properties when they are doing their comparables, Dressman said.

“We’ve been trying to convince them there’s substantial differences between these properties and new homes,” he said.

Consumers are starting to warm up to the historically low interest rates and new home values, which have made purchases more affordable than at any other time in recent history, Dressman said.

“Of course, the employment picture is still out there, looming, and we’ve seen some encouraging news there, but it’s not where it needs to be,” he said. “We’re starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, you might say.”

Housing continued on A4

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