Housing market in metro Toledo area shows signs of stabilizing

Average sales prices locally have started to rebound, close to exceeding the levels from early last year. Enlarge

The number of home sales in Lucas County and in northwest Ohio has started to show a rebound, just at the the beginning of what is typically the prime sales season. Enlarge

THE WORLD of real estate has a vocabulary all its own, but one word that was thought to be banished in recent years seems to be quietly slipping back into the lexicon: recovery.

After years of being plagued by a horrible economy and a flood of foreclosures, both home prices and sales figures appear to have stabilized in metro Toledo.

And although experts say it may be a decade or more before real estate values locally return to where they were just five years ago, the region's market at least appears to have arrested its free fall.

Andrea Cardinal and Graham Johnson did their part to help out.

The Detroit couple, who are expecting their first child in July, closed Thursday on their first home together, on Maxwell Road in West Toledo.

“It was the third house we looked at,” Ms. Cardinal explained as she measured the windows of the three-bedroom house, which they bought for about $110,000. “It's a pretty complete house. All we have to do is paint a little bit.”

The house had been on the market for more than seven months, real estate agent Heather Smith-LaPoint said. “That's about typical for a home like this. But actually, the market has become very aggressive in recent weeks.”

Sales statistics released last week by the Toledo Board of Realtors showed a spike in sales activity in April, with the average selling price in Lucas County climbing almost 15 percent over that in March, to $102,577.

Across the multicounty northwest Ohio region, the average selling price rose 8.5 percent to $106,863 last month.

Meanwhile, the total number of sales last month in both Lucas County and the wider northwest Ohio region climbed more than 16 percent from where they were a year ago and roughly the same amount from where they were in March.

On an annualized basis, figures indicate that the local market is at least keeping pace through the first four months of 2010 with where it has been at the same point in recent years.

Toledo's April increase wasn't an aberration.

Sales of previously occupied houses surged in March after a three-month decline caused in part by harsh winter weather.

The median selling price for previously occupied homes rose from a year ago in 91 out of 152 metropolitan areas tracked in the January-March quarter, the National Association of Realtors said last week.

Twenty-nine cities had increases of at least 10 percent. Toledo was one of those areas, with a price increase of 13 percent.

Much of the spike can be attributed to a tax credit — up to $8,000 for first-time buyers and up to $6,500 for current owners — that helped drive sales this spring before the incentives expired at the end of April.

In all, about 2.2 million households had received the first-time-buyer credit as of late March, at a cost to the U.S. Treasury of $16 billion, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

But local real estate agents say that the momentum gained through the final month of the program has not entirely dissipated this month, even though the credits are gone.

“The activity is still brisk, and there doesn't seem to be any sense of a slowdown,” said John Fesh, who oversees Danberry Co. Realtors' office in Temperance.

“We were worried that we were going to see a huge dip, but right now, it appears to be staying consistent.”

Craig Thomas, a regional economist from Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group, issued short-term and long-term forecasts for Toledo's housing markets several weeks ago.

He predicted that metro Toledo “will see a small drop in house prices this year, but sustainable appreciation should return in 2011.”

He also indicated that the bursting of the housing bubble — which is expected to shave 6.6 percent per year off home values nationally between 2006 and 2011 — would turn out better in metro Toledo, with home values falling a total of 3.1 percent per year during that same period.

Dave Browning, co-owner of Toledo-based Welles-Bowen Real Estate, which has offi ces across the region, said he is not yet ready to declare metro Toledo's housing market out of the woods, despite what he said are “lots and lots” of deals his agents made last month that he is processing.

“In comparison to last year's numbers, the April, May, and June numbers this year are going to look good,” he said.

“What I don't have a feel for is what's going to happen in July when all of this incentive stuff is off the table. What I'm hoping is going to happen is prices are going to stabilize, but what I worry about is that housing inventory is as high right now as it's ever been.”

Indeed, according to figures from the Toledo Board of Realtors, the number of active listings in both Lucas County and metro Toledo has steadily climbed since November.

Like unemployment statistics, some of those listings probably are attributable to formerly discouraged owners who may have removed their houses from the market during the last two months and are again testing the waters.

It probably also includes owners who were waiting for prices to stabilize across the market before listing, Mr. Browning said.

Although the foreclosure crisis seems to be easing slightly in Ohio — consulting fi rm RealtyTrac Inc. said last week that Ohio ranked ninth nationwide in the number of properties with foreclosure filings in April — foreclosed homes on the market continue to hold down values and pricing.

Nearly a quarter of all U.S. homeowners with a mortgage still owe more on their loans than their homes are worth, according to CoreLogic, a California realestate data tracking agency. In metro Toledo, the figure is closer to a third.

But Jim Loss, of Loss Realty Group, said the worst is over locally, in large part because of an improving auto industry that is still so economically important to northwest Ohio.

He cited recent area investments by both General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC as the underpinnings for a “more confident” consumer.

“I think it's going to continue to slowly get better, even though the tax credit is over, because we're starting to hear good economic news,” he said.

“When somebody decides whether to buy a house or not buy a house, their No. 1 concern isn't how big it is or what school district it's in; it's about their job.

So I do think we're going to be fi ne now.”

Contact Larry P. Vellequette at: lvellequette@theblade.com or 419-724-6091.