Area’s popularity means higher costs

The South Side’s residential home market is booming, and Mike Alcock is worried.

Alcock is a librarian and has owned a home on Hanford Avenue for three years. He sees what’s going on around him, namely a long-awaited revival of South Side neighborhoods that have become attractive to home buyers and renters. But that renewed interest is pushing prices higher. In some cases, much higher.

Alcock and others wonder about the future for longtime South Side residents.

“The city is only interested in development and economic growth insofar that it doesn’t reflect poorly on the city,” said Alcock, 32, who works nearby at the Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Parsons Avenue branch. “The city needs to think long and hard about the right way for everyone, not just folks who have a disposable income or the wealthy or developers not living down here.”

The quandary is one that many transitioning neighborhoods face, across the country and now, increasingly, in Columbus. Neighborhoods that not long ago were struggling, or were simply middle income, are becoming more pricey as newcomers discover them.

That’s what’s happening on the South Side. With German Village houses now much too expensive for most people, homebuyers and renters are looking east toward neighboring Schumacher Place and Merion Village, on the west side of Parsons Avenue. And now, more are heading farther south, to the southern edges of Merion Village into Hungarian Village.

What has that meant for housing costs? Jodee Gallagher, a real-estate agent

who lives in Merion Village, said that average home prices there have jumped from $149 a square foot to $177 a square foot, or 19 percent, in just one year. That means a 1,400-square-foot home that sold for $208,600 last year is now going for $247,800.

She said that in the past four months, 10 houses south of Thurman Avenue in Merion Village sold for between $266,000 and $388,000. In Merion Village north of Thurman, 21 houses sold for an average price of $462,043.

North of Thurman includes the development around and including the former Barrett Middle School, where 51 apartments are renting for between $899 a month and $2,899 a month, and 22 single-family homes on the property sold for between $399,000 and $515,000.

“I live in Merion Village and am excited by the increase in home values,” Gallagher said, adding that she and her boyfriend love the walkability of the area and the proximity to Downtown.

“People are moving back to the inner core,” she said.

Andy Conti is busy fixing up South Side homes to sell or rent to meet demand. Last week, he was working on a 105-year-old East Morrill Avenue house on the outskirts of southern Merion

Village. The wood siding had been stripped of paint. He bought that house, a duplex with 2,478 square feet, two years ago for $37,500.

He started by buying homes on nearby Welch Avenue, where he said he once owned a dozen houses. He is installing granite countertops in the houses and “selling them to the yuppies” with two incomes and no kids who want the houses in move-in condition.

“They don’t want to fix nothing,” he said.

But Gallagher said she hopes that gentrification doesn’t result in displacement. “I see organizations like Homeport and the South Side Renaissance who are working hard to provide affordable housing,” she said.

Homeport is a nonprofit developer and South Side Renaissance is an arm of the nonprofit, faith-based charity Community Development for All People, which also is developing homes. Earlier this year, the Columbus Realtors Foundation contributed $300,000 to the group.

Some are struggling with the higher costs to live in the area. Kayla Merchant leads the Schumacher Place Civic Association, and her rent has more than doubled from $450 a month in 2010 to $965 today. Her landlord plans to raise her rent to $995, she said.

“It is partially demand,” she said of the rent spike. The millennials want to be closer to jobs.

So Merchant is moving to a house east of Parsons in the Southern Orchards neighborhood south of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, which she is buying for $140,000. Her monthly mortgage payment there will be less than her rent.

Jim Griffin, who leads the Columbus South Side Area Commission, said rents are getting high even on the east side of Parsons where he lives. Griffin said the owner of a house with falling gutters near the corner of Sheldon Avenue and Wager Street is charging $800 a month.

He is concerned about longtime residents of Hungarian Village and the Reeb-Hosack neighborhood west of Parsons, and areas east of Parsons, who might feel forced out if home values drive property taxes higher.

Scott Woods works at the Parsons Avenue library branch with Alcock. “I definitely talk to people about concerns,” he said. He said some believe that the city isn’t doing enough to make sure that affordable housing is being maintained.

Alcock said city officials have to listen. “We need to give people an actual say about what’s happening in this city.”