ThomasGoodwin.com

Yet another article in the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper (online edition of course!)… the number of homes sold in the Greater Cincinnati area fell once again in May compared to the same time last year in 2006. This continues the trend of more homes being listed for sale and staying on the market longer, thus leading to a bigger supply of homes available in the Greater Cincinnati area. Interesting enough to note that the average sale price has still increased. Perhaps sellers are offering enough added perks to deals to make buyers still feel comfortable paying more than this time last year. Here is an Adobe PDF copy of the article:

Home Sales Fall Again

I know in my own deals I have seen more seller-paid closing costs, home warranties being provided by sellers, and other incentives used by sellers to get the edge on other similar homes on the market.

I myself am not above resorting to incentives to sell property, as long as it is fully disclosed in the deal of course. I recently sold a condo (in May - same timeframe that the above newspaper article is referencing) that included the 55″ big screen HD TV with the deal. I’m guessing that is something that other comparable condos in the area did not have!

In looking at the real estate market nationwide, the macro level,… the news that came out today is more grim. We had price appreciation of 3.7% with 8% fewer homes sold (according the Enquirer article) here in the Cincinnati area. The following link to the Yahoo! Finance article indicates a 2.1% drop in average sale price nationwide and a 10.3% drop in number of homes sold since this time last year. The nationwide trend is fewer homes sold and a lower average sale price. Here in Cincinnati the results are rather mixed, fewer homes sold but at a higher average sale price. Even our drop in number of homes sold (8% less) is not as bad as the national average, although that is not too much to boast about considering it is still a substantial decrease. Here is the Yahoo! Finance article:

Home Sales Hit Slowest Pace in 4 Years

It will be interesting to see what the new home sales figures are that will be released tomorrow morning. If the existing home sales are any indication, I would expect to see worse results than the same time last year. As always, your feedback and comments are welcome…

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.