OHIO — The housing market is known to fluctuate, but new numbers show that the Midwest has not been following the same trends as other parts of the country. 

What You Need To Know

  • Year-over-year home prices are down across the country for the first time in more than a decade

  • The Midwest region and Ohio have remained fairly consistent 

  • This is partially because of the Midwest not seeing the sharp increase like other places did last year 

The National Association of Realtors revealed numbers that show home prices have decreased from one year to the next, for the first time in more than a decade. Ali Chapin, a realtor in the Cleveland area, further explained these numbers:

“Nationally, that number is down because markets like California, Texas, the west, the northwest, the southwest their numbers were so high last year. Their sale prices were up almost 40%, year on year, so they just haven’t been able to keep pace, so those markets are down,” she said. 

Chapin said Ohio has remained relatively steady throughout all the change. 

“What we’re seeing year to date in Ohio is that median sale price is actually up about 4%,” she said.

She said that this is because the Midwest did not see a sharp increase in home prices, the type of increase that other parts of the country experienced.

“Because our average sale price last year, while those markets were up almost 40%, our market was up in the Midwest 7% last year. So, it really, we don’t see those big swings in price change,” she said.

This is part of what led Luke Rohlke and his wife to begin their search for buying a house. 

“So keeping things steady around here was definitely a big advantage and a big help for us,” she said.

Rohlke and his wife bought a house in Avon Lake at the end of 2022, which is around the same time that rent prices in bigger cities had increased. 

“We knew we wanted something that we could own ourselves and we kind of felt like spending more money on rent for something we had no control over wasn’t in our best interest going forward, so we were pretty set on buying,” he said.

The question now remains of what happens next, and Chapin said the warmer weather will probably bring another increase in home prices.

“As we’re heading into spring market, which just tends to be traditionally our busiest time where there’s the most buyers looking, the most transactions,” she said.