Home sales dip in Northeast Ohio, across the state

April home sales faltered in Northeast Ohio and across the Buckeye State, as scant inventory and rising costs hampered buyers.

In the 18-county region, sales of new and existing homes were down 3.3% from a year before, according to data from MLS Now, a real estate listing service. Meanwhile, statewide sales fell by 2.5%, the Ohio Realtors trade association reported Thursday, May 19.

Demand for housing isn’t slowing, said Candice Eberhardt, an Akron-area agent who serves as president of the Akron Cleveland Association of Realtors. Her clients still are cashing out retirement accounts, waiving inspections and, in some cases, filling appraisal gaps.

But the persistent listings shortage is holding back the market.

“Inventory is even lower now than it was last year,” she said, “so it’s extremely competitive as far as buyers are concerned.”

New listings are down 2.8% this year, based on MLS Now’s data.

Amid that scarcity, prices keep on climbing.

The average sale price for a house in the region was $224,976 last month, up 6.1% from April 2021. Condos, a small slice of the local market, commanded an average price of $196,262 — a 16.5% annual increase.

In a news release, the Ohio Realtors said the frenzied sector is stabilizing. Rising interest rates and the widespread lack of supply are beginning to bring the market “back into balance,” said John Mangas, the organization’s president.

The average buyer in Ohio paid $257,486 last month, 9.3% more than a year before, the trade group said.

The trends are similar across the nation. In a Thursday report, the National Association of Realtors said that existing-home sales were down 5.9% in April, when compared to the same month of 2021. Sales also slipped from March, based on seasonally adjusted data.

“It looks like more declines are imminent in the upcoming months, and we’ll likely return to the pre-pandemic home sales activity after the remarkable surge over the past two years,” said Lawrence Yun, the group’s chief economist, in a news release.

It’s unusual, he added, to see sales fall while homes are changing hands quickly and prices are rising. Nationally, the median — or middle — sale price for a previously owned home was $391,200 in April, up 14.8% from a year before.

Cash buyers accounted for 26% of purchases, the national Realtors said, and 88% of April’s sales involved properties that were listed for less than a month.

Eberhardt sees some clients, at the lower end of the market, getting priced out. But most of her buyers are swallowing interest-rate hikes and continuing to shop.

The cost of borrowing eased slightly last week, but mortgage rates are still well above 5% for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan. Rates have risen by 2 percentage points this year.

“I’ve had buyers that are very concerned about the interest rates,” Eberhardt said, noting that it’s taking so long to successfully bid on a house that buyers are seeing their mortgage pre-approval windows lapse and having to renew on less attractive terms.

But, she added, “I have not had anyone say ‘Well, the interest rates are going up, so I’m going to stop.'”