AREA HOME SELLERS REAPING THE REWARDS
Rising home prices allowed central Ohio homeowners to make more on the sale of their homes last year than ever.
The average Columbusarea home sold last year for $195,000 —$50,333 more than it cost, according to a new study by the real estate service Attom Data Solutions.
“It was a great year to be a seller,” said Todd Teta, chief product officer at Attom.
Despite being a central Ohio record, the average return for Columbusarea homeowners was still below the nation’s average gain of $65,500, the biggest Attom has recorded since 2006.
The numbers are good for sellers, but they are more discouraging news for buyers, who continue to see home prices rise farther beyond their grasp.
“The nation’s housing boom kept roaring along in 2019 as prices hit a new record, returning everhigher profits to home sellers and posing evergreater challenges for buyers seeking bargains,” Teta said.
He noted, however, that the nation’s average return of 34% was only slightly above that in 2018, suggesting that “the market was losing some steam last year.”
In its study, Attom considers only purchase and sales prices, not money spent on improvements, maintenance, interest or taxes.
Central Ohio homeowners sold their home for an average of 34.7% more than they paid for it, or 4.4% a year based on the average eight-year length of homeownership. Although that was the highest return in the state, it pales in comparison with the 16.7% annual return that the Dow Jones Industrial Average yielded over the same period.
West Coast homeowners got the nation’s biggest returns in both dollars and percentages. Leading the way were homeowners in San Jose, California, who sold their homes for a gain of $487,000 — or 82.8% — over what they paid. Nexthighest were San Francisco (72.8% return), Seattle (65.6%), Merced, California (63.2%), Salem, Oregon (62.1%) and Bellingham, Washington (61.7%).
On the other end of the spectrum, homeowners in some Southern and Appalachian communities actually sold their house for an average price below what they had paid for it, despite having lived there for years.
Homeowners in Columbus, Georgia, sold their home for 8.2% below their purchase price. Other cities to lose value were Montgomery, Alabama, (down 5.7%), Lafayette, Louisiana (down 3.1%), Macon, Georgia (down 2%), Charleston, West Virginia (down 1%) and Shreveport, Louisiana (down 0.7%).
No Ohio city posted a bigger return than the national average, but all were in the black: Akron homeowners sold their home for $22,300 more than they paid (an 18.9% return); Canton, $27,000 (25%); Cincinnati, $35,000 (26.9%); Cleveland, $23,000 (19%); Dayton, $22,000 (20.4%); Toledo, $15,000 (13.6%); and Youngstown, $12,050 (16%).