ThomasGoodwin.com

I just posted a blog entry about the latest in the national real estate news, as reported by Yahoo! Finance. It’s only fair that for comparison purposes we look at how the local market in Cincinnati, Ohio is doing as well.

September Home Sales Off 15% (Adobe .pdf version of the Cincinnati Enquirer article)

While the market is pretty slow here in Cincinnati, it’s not as bad as the national average. Of course, the national averages are being driven more by the larger markets and areas that are experiencing much sharper declines - such as many parts of California and Florida. The Cincinnati Enquirer article does a good job of summarizing the softening in sale prices and the supply of homes on the market.

The recent withdrawl of some prominent and national home builders from various new subdivisions in and around Cincinnati (namely Ryan Homes as mentioned in an earlier blog entry) has increased the supply of homes available in the short term through the sale of the already constructed model homes and any speculative construction - or “spec” - homes. The fact that these builders have stopped building new homes here will help ease the 10+ month supply of homes that are currently on the market. This is a much better scenario for the local real estate market in the long term.

It would be mostly through the sale of model homes though, as not many builders have been undertaking speculative construction in the past year. Speculative construction is when the builder will start to build a home before a buyer is found, in contrast to the pre-order scenario where a buyer picks out a plot of land, signs a contract with the builder and then has the home built.

As always, I appreciate your comments and feedback…