Local Value City store to lay off 13

COLUMBUS — American Signature plans to lay off 13 employees from its Value City Furniture store at 1780 Morse Road.

American Signature, the Columbus-based parent company of Value City Furniture, said the layoffs will occur by Dec. 2, according to a filing with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. The company did not respond to additional questions about the layoffs.

Between American Signature’s two brands — American Signature and Value City — the company has more than 120 locations in 18 states east of the Mississippi River. row that the Columbus area has landed outside the Top 10 after spending several months ranked in the single digits.

Seven of the nation’s 10 hottest markets are in California, led by the San Jose area.

At No. 8, Detroit is the only Midwestern city in the Top 10.

Realtor.com bases the ranking on a handful of statistics, including how many times an average property is viewed in each market and how long listings typically are on the market before being sold.

In San Jose, for example, listings stay on the market a median of 30 days, compared with the national average of 73 days. In Columbus, the median age of inventory was 51 days in October, up from 47 in September. time in a decade. But on Thursday it posted its biggest quarterly cable-customer loss since 2014.

Research firm MoffettNathanson predicts that industrywide, traditional video subscriptions fell 3.4 percent in the third quarter. That would mean that people ditched their TV subscriptions at the fastest rate since online streaming started eating into cable’s business.

Partly to blame in the JulySeptember quarter were the hurricanes that struck Texas and Florida, damaging poles, wires and other infrastructure and interrupting service for millions.

But Comcast and other cable and satellite TV companies also say competition from online sources of video is taking a toll.

Comcast is still making more money per customer, however. shortage of homes being listed for sale.

The National Association of Realtors says its pending home sales index was 106 in September, the same as August’s revised number. It’s the index’s lowest point since a 104.7 reading in January of 2015 and 3.5 percent lower than a year ago. It has fallen on an annual basis five of the past six months.

Regionally, the South saw a decline of 2.3 percent while the Northeast, Midwest and West all saw slight upticks. However, all four regional indexes are down at least 2 percent from a year ago, with the South down the most at 5 percent.

Homebuyers — particularly those searching for homes on the lower end of the price scale — are being stifled by rising home values, a limited selection of properties on the market and a shortage of savings. First-time buyers in September were 29 percent of sales, the lowest share in two years, the Realtors said.