Housing market in Ohio on rebound

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

The housing market in Ohio is on the rebound after a steep drop in prices during the recession that took hold in 2008. That economic decline was the result of Wall Street’s bad bets on risky subprime mortgages. The burst of the housing bubble both here and abroad triggered the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

In Ohio, housing prices tumbled starting around 2007 and had not improved by the time Gov. John Kasich took office in 2011. In 2014, prices are climbing back to levels seen before the recession in much of the state as the overall economy has improved.

The Ohio Housing Finance Agency keeps close tabs on aspects of the state’s housing market to include sales and rentals. Agency officials have gathered numbers that show the median price for homes over a 12-month period ending July 2014 was $103,000, compared with $84,000 over a 12-month period ending in July 2011.

The state’s urban counties experienced more modest increases. Prices in Franklin County (Columbus) increased 6.4 percent, while Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) prices were up about 4 percent. That’s the good news. The bad news is that sales volume is down appreciably from the market’s peak in 2006 as credit and lending standards have tightened.

While demand for houses remains tepid compared with the boom years of 2005 and 2006, the rental market appears strong, especially in places like Columbus, which is enjoying robust growth, and in Appalachian counties experiencing a boom in oil and gas drilling.

Housing affordability remains a problem for the working poor, however. The latest figures from the housing finance agency show that nearly half of renters in Ohio pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs and that a quarter pay more than 50 percent.