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Published: 5/22/2011 - Updated: 1 year ago

10 years of tumult in area housing

Census offers snapshot of area ownership, vacancy rates

BY LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE
BLADE BUSINESS WRITER

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On the surface, a U.S. Census snapshot of the housing market across six metro Toledo-area counties looks like the last decade was relatively quiet, with only small changes in the key measurements that help define the health of one of the region's most important economic sectors.

But longtime observers of the local market say figures released this month are more like drawing a horizontal line across a tidal wave, not capturing the slope of what's going on.

The proportion of housing units in which the owners live fell 2 percentage points from 2000 to 2010 in Lucas, Fulton, Ottawa, and Wood counties in Ohio and Monroe and Lenawee counties in Michigan, and the median vacancy rate rose 1 percentage point.

GRAPHIC: Click here to view housing trend data from area Ohio, Michigan communities

But those who make their living buying and selling houses know the local market was anything but quiet during that decade. And some areas were affected more than others.

"You're comparing a low point, then a very high point, and then a low point," said Dave Browning, a longtime local real estate observer and principal of Wells Bowen Realty. "An argument could be made that the economic conditions in 2000 aren't all that different than they were in 2010.

"We saw the first four or five years of the new millennium of good solid productive real estate; the end of 2004 through 2006 was crazy, with people doing things that didn't make any logical sense, and from 2007 on, we've seen the other side of that knife."

A Blade analysis of the Census data on local housing indicates that some communities in the six closest counties to Toledo, such as Monclova Township and Holland, have fared better than others, such as Toledo and Dundee, during a tumultuous period.

Others, such as Maumee, seemed to remain about the same in owner occupancy and vacancy rates, two key measures of housing market stability and housing affordability.

The housing units in the Census report included houses, condominiums, and apartments, but owner-occupied units would be houses or condos. Vacancy rates include all types of housing.

National housing figures have yet to be released for the 2010 Census. About 90 percent of Ohio's 5.1 million housing units were occupied as of the 2010 census, including about 68 percent of the total that were owner occupied.

About 85 percent of Michigan's 4.5 million homes were occupied, including 72 percent that were owner-occupied. In Michigan, 14.6 percent of housing units were listed as vacant, and in Ohio 10.2 percent were listed as vacant, according to Census figures.

No community in Lenawee or Monroe County had an owner-occupancy rate above 90 percent, but four communities -- Monclova and Harding townships in Lucas County, Wood County's Middleton Township, and Ottawa County's Allen Township -- in the four-county metro Toledo area achieved that level.

More than 70 percent of communities in the metro Toledo experienced a drop in percentage of owner occupants between 2000 and 2010, but 93 percent of communities in Monroe and Lenawee counties had such a decline.

In Dundee village, for example, the proportion of owner-occupied housing units dropped to 59.2 percent last year from 61.1 percent a decade earlier. And its housing-unit vacancy rate jumped to 11.7 percent in 2010 from 6 percent in 2000, the Census figures show.

David Duvall, a longtime resident and homeowner in Monroe County's Bedford Township, said he has seen his share of neighbors losing their homes to foreclosure or being unable to sell when they needed to.

"It's still a concern. Bedford's always been a pretty good area to live in, and it commands a little higher dollar than some of the other places that are close, but our property values went down when the market went the way it did," he said. "The house is paid for. Our taxes didn't go away, but our value went down."

With few exceptions, Lenawee County communities experienced the largest declines locally in the percentage of owner-occupied dwellings over the 10-year period, but among municipalities with 1,000 housing units or more, Hudson, Adrian, and Woodstock Township in Michigan and Fostoria and Perrysburg Township in Ohio had decreases of more than 6 percentage points.

In the city of Toledo, the largest municipality in the area, the owner-occupancy rate dipped by over 4 percentage points during the 10-year period and its residential vacancy rate remained largely unchanged. The city lost about 1,800housing units during the period.

Vacant housing appeared to be more of a problem in some areas than it is in actuality, in part because of the large numbers of cottages and vacation homes.

The largest percentages of vacant housing units in the six-county region were along the Lake Erie shoreline and the island communities in Ottawa County, where vacancy rates were as much as 78 percent.

Growing numbers of vacant housing units are a much greater issue in communities in Monroe and Lenawee counties than in Lucas, Fulton, Ottawa, and Wood counties.

Of the 56 municipalities in the two Michigan counties, only Madison Charter Township -- outside Adrian -- had a drop in vacancies between 2000 and 2010.

In the four Ohio counties, 13 of the 104 municipalities had an increase in vacancy rates during the period.

Realtor Mark Goedert of Goedert Real Estate in Adrian has handled thousands of distressed and foreclosed properties as the primary listing agent for lending companies with properties across 17 counties in southeast Michigan over the last several decades.

The last decade had several peaks, and then a massive crash in home values, and Lenawee County properties were hit harder than those in neighboring Monroe County because Lenawee lacks the bedroom communities and economic diversity of its eastern neighbor, he said.

"Some of these prices [in Lenawee County] have dropped 50 percent," Mr. Goedert said.

"The hard part is talking to sellers. The buyers? They're ecstatic. It's really sad, and it's very hard."

George Mokrzan, chief economist for Huntington Bank in Columbus, said metro Toledo's changing housing market isn't much different from the national trend and escaped the large impact of the boom-and-bust housing markets in places such as Miami, Las Vegas, and southern California.

"I would expect the owner occupancy rates are going to continue to go down, so we've made really a turn in trend," he said. "I think, over the long term, you'll see fewer and fewer people buying a house with the expectation of prices going higher."

The six Toledo area counties added a net total of 31,287 housing units between April, 2000 and April, 2010, although most of the construction took place in the earlier part of the decade.

About a third were in the two Michigan counties, the rest in the four Ohio counties.

Sylvania Township added the most new housing units in metro Toledo over the last decade, with 2,653, followed by Monclova Township at 2,314 and Bedford Township at 1,841.

As a percentage of existing housing in large communities over the last decade, Monclova Township was the growth capital of metro Toledo, nearly doubling in the number of housing units in 10 years.

In the village of Holland in Lucas County, owner-occupied units increased to 56.6 percent last year from 54 percent 10 years earlier, and the housing vacancy rate dropped to 4.2 percent from 6 percent.

In the city of Maumee, though, owner-occupied housing and vacancy rate stayed nearly unchanged at about 73 percent and 6 percent, respectively, over the 10-year period.

Bowling Green in Wood County had a drop in owner-occupied housing to 39.9 percent last year from 42.2 percent a decade earlier, not surprising in a town filled with college students and rental housing. Its vacancy rate dropped to 8.2 percent from 9.5 percent.

Fast-growing Middleton Township, Jerusalem Township, Metamora, Monclova Township, Springfield Township, Walbridge, Waterville and Waterville Township, and Whitehouse had improvements in owner occupation and vacancy rates over the decade, the Census figures show.

Delta, Genoa, Harbor View, Lake Township, Northwood, Oregon, Ottawa Hills, Perrysburg, Perrysburg Township, Swanton, Sylvania, Washington Township, and Fostoria each had decreases in owner-occupied housing rate, the Census figures show.

Not all of these are new stick-built single-family homes, however. Apartments, mobile homes, and groups of rooms or a single room occupied are counted by the Census as a separate living quarters within another housing unit.

Mr. Browning said that one thing the Census figures can't show is that Toledo's local housing market continues to evolve, and he said it may take some time for the market to return to a more fundamentally sound and sustainable trajectory.

"Every December for the last four years, I've said it can't get worse, and every year, I've been wrong," he said.

"We're working through those excesses, and I don't think the foreclosure thing is over yet."

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

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