Columbus and Central Ohio April 2012 Home Sales Strong

Posted May 22, 2012

Columbus Board of Realtors reported April home sales numbers today and its looking good. Unsold inventory is down and has been falling for the past 18 months, units sold are up and prices are up sharply. Unsold inventory is down 30.7% from this time last year.

The number of new listings are down 4.2 year to date versus last year and sales for April were up 5.7% over March and up 2.6% from last April. Average price was up 8.4% over last year and 7.7% up over last month. Homes are selling for an average of 91.7% of original asking price, up from 89% last year. Keep this up and it will soon be a seller’s market.

Even the local Housing Market Confidence Index (by the Ohio Association of REALTORS®), 95 percent of central Ohio REALTORS® say the current market is moderate to strong and 97 percent expect it to be moderate or strong in the next six months. And 95% expect prices to rise in the next year.

One big reason for this is that there has been a dramatic decrease in Central Ohio’s unemployment rate to 6.4% from this time last year at 7.5%. As always, Columbus had the lowest unemployment rate of Ohio’s major cities with Cincinnati at 7.5% and Cleveland at 9.1%.

Looks like nice sailing weather ahead with a tailwind.

http://www.10kresearch.com/sortable/Columbus-OH/2012-04/Entire-MLS.pdf

http://www.10kresearch.com/sortable/Columbus-OH/2012-04/main.htm

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