Central Ohio Housing Market Expected to Remain Vibrant in 2016

The Central Ohio housing market has been one of the fastest in the country over the past year. Experts have debated whether the regional housing market would continue to rise for the months to come. A recent report from Nationwide Mutual Insurance suggests that the market is poised for further growth, is encouraging for the growing population.

Housing Outlook Remains Optimistic

The Central Ohio housing market was recently recognized by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) as being one of the fastest growing in the country. The NAR reported that sales fell 2.1% in 2014, but forecast that they would rise 8% in 2015. Sales data from local brokers suggests that these figures may actually exceed these predictions. housing-market-colored-homes

Nationwide Mutual Insurance tries to predict the direction of the housing market for at least a year. They have given the Central Ohio housing market a score of +2 in their third quarter report, which indicates that they expect the market to remain resilient for the next 12 months.

The scale used to rate housing markets is ranked on a -4 to +4 continuum. Nationwide uses several metrics to determine the direction of the market, which include:

Job growth
Demographic changes
Access to financing
Acceleration and deceleration of housing prices

These factors show that the market may have another record year in 2016. Only 12 regions received a higher ranking of +3, while 156 tied Central Ohio for a +2 ranking. No housing market in the country received a ranking of +4.

The rest of the country’s housing market isn’t performing quite as well, although it is still experiencing healthy growth after freefalling during the recession. A number of local factors are affecting demand for housing at the regional level. For example, the economies of a number of smaller communities are heavily dependent on their energy industries, since they are home to coal, gas and other energy producing resources. These markets received lower rankings, since energy prices have fallen in recent months.

Rising sales from the past few months appear to corroborate these predictions. The Columbus Realtors group presented data showing that Central Ohio housing sales increased by 9.8% in August. Their data shows that twice as many home sales took place over the past 46 days as average. The report also stated that housing prices have risen much more slowly, which suggests that the market may have plenty of room to grow.