Columbus Housing (Delaware, Franklin: for sale, home sales, purchase)

[NewToCA]

In looking at the monthly sales statistics, Columbus metro area home sales are way of their historical norms. However, prices seem to be holding for those homes that sell, which is a bit of an aberration from the national story.

My own observation when living in Columbus was that the area has an extraordinary number of upscale homes, which surprised me based on both the amount of space available for construction, average household income, and fairly high property tax rates.

I was also a bit surprised the area could support this, based on the rather moderate metro growth rate.

What do you think housing will do over the next few years in Columbus? Do you see a rebound in sales numbers, or do you see prices declining?

Do you think there will be a shift towards construction of more modest priced homes?

[Tenzo]

Originally Posted by NewToCA

In looking at the monthly sales statistics, Columbus metro area home sales are way of their historical norms. However, prices seem to be holding for those homes that sell, which is a bit of an aberration from the national story.

My own observation when living in Columbus was that the area has an extraordinary number of upscale homes, which surprised me based on both the amount of space available for construction, average household income, and fairly high property tax rates.

I was also a bit surprised the area could support this, based on the rather moderate metro growth rate.

What do you think housing will do over the next few years in Columbus? Do you see a rebound in sales numbers, or do you see prices declining?

Do you think there will be a shift towards construction of more modest priced homes?

More modest?
The average house is under $200K.
What is modest to you?

[NewToCA]

Originally Posted by Tenzo

More modest?
The average house is under $200K.
What is modest to you?

Are you looking at just the new homes under construction? My sentiment originated from looking at the overall market, focusing on homes for sale today.

Taking a brief look at Realtor.com, I saw that between Franklin County and southern Delaware County, metro Columbus had over 1,000 homes for sale priced at more than $500K. Factoring an average property tax bill of about 2% of purchase price, and the payments would be rather steep even with a 20% down payment.

Looking at the monthly or quarterly sales totals, it appears that homes are selling at about 30-40% of the rate from a couple of years ago, leading me to wonder if the market may have too many large and expensive homes relative to income.