Local home sales are holding steady, Hanna says

By Don Shilling

A real estate executive expects prices for local home sales to increase slightly this year.

YOUNGSTOWN — The chairman of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services expects a solid year for local home sales and warns against focusing too much on national trends.

Howard “Hoddy” Hanna said Tuesday that he expects home sales in the Mahoning Valley to fall about 2 percent this year but the average selling price to increase by about 1 percent to 3 percent.

Both numbers would be an improvement over 2007. Last year, home sales in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties dropped 8 percent to 4,817 and the average selling price fell 7 percent to $93,465, the Pittsburgh-based real estate company reported.

Hanna provided an overview of the real estate market for about 50 company agents at Youngstown State University. He congratulated them on their year so far, saying Howard Hanna’s sales in the Mahoning Valley are up 9 percent this year, compared with last year’s pace.

He encouraged agents to think local, especially amid the national news stories about overpriced homes and the collapse of the subprime lending market. He compared such stories to coverage of the national weather.

“It doesn’t make any difference to you what the national average temperature is, and it’s the same with real estate,” he said.

Locally, the real estate market has not experienced the surge and crash that markets on the East and West coasts have, he said. Houses in some parts of the country became too expensive for people to afford so the prices have fallen between 15 percent and 20 percent annually in the past two years, he said.

In the Mahoning Valley, he predicted the housing market will perform better this year than last year because fewer people will be scared away by the national news on credit markets. So much attention was focused on subprime lending last year that many potential buyers chose not to enter the market, he said.

Hanna assured agents there is plenty of money available for buyers who have good credit.

He also said he sees the local economy as being more stable this year and noted some manufacturers are earning large profits because they have increased exports as the value of the dollar has fallen.

He acknowledged one large factor is holding people back from buying a home: concern for their economic future. He said consumer confidence is at a 10-year low. A large number of potential first-time buyers are choosing to remain in apartments rather than buy a house because of this uncertainty, he said.

The company said its market share in the Mahoning Valley increased from 12.8 percent in 2006 to 15.1 percent last year. In its Ohio and Pennsylvania territory, the company said it had a 21 percent market share last year.

shilling@vindy.com