Record-low listings hampered February home sales across Northeast Ohio

Northeast Ohio home sales stagnated in February, as record-low inventory frustrated buyers and winter storms disrupted the market.

Sales fell 5.7% from January and barely budged from their February 2021 levels, according to data from MLS Now, a listing service that tracks transfers of new and previously owned homes across an 18-county footprint.

“It is wholeheartedly an issue of inventory. It’s not even a question,” said Seth Task, an agent with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Professional Realty in Moreland Hills and immediate past president of the Ohio Realtors trade association.

The residential real estate industry is grappling with a severe supply crunch.

Existing owners are reluctant to list their properties for sale, since they can’t find anything to buy. First-time buyers are struggling to compete as scarcity drives prices higher. And homebuilding is not easing much of the pressure.

In February, fresh listings of houses and condominiums in Northeast Ohio were down 6.7% from a year before, MLS Now found. New listings were off by 8.2% in Cuyahoga County and 7.4% in Summit County, when compared with February 2021.

Early this month, there was only seven weeks’ worth of inventory in the Cleveland metropolitan area, according to Redfin, a data-centric real estate brokerage based in Seattle.

A year ago, that figure was 8.4 weeks. Two years ago, it was closer to 13 weeks.

Task is bracing for a hectic spring, as rising mortgage interest rates prompt more buyers to jump into the fray.

“Interest rates are going to go up,” he said. “I very rarely will say to you that I’ll bet my license on it, but I’ll bet my license on it.”

Houses in the region are spending an average of 46 days on the market. The typical condo sale is closing after 39 days, based on MLS Now’s data.

And prices continue to climb. In February, the average sale price for a house was $210,132, up 11.2% from a year before. The average sale price for a condo was $166,787, an 18.5% annual gain.

Buyers paid anywhere from $7,000 for a two-bedroom manufactured home in New Philadelphia to nearly $2.5 million for a sprawling house in Hudson.

Listings are starting to creep up as temperatures rise, said Task, who pointed out that February tends to be an unpredictable month because of weather. Snowstorms swept through the region in late January and early February, disrupting traffic and leaving behind drifts that lingered for weeks.

“Whether listings in March beat last March, we’ll see,” he said. “But I expect there will be a lot of people taking advantage of the equity in their homes.”