Everyone I know has been asking us “So how is the market doing … really.” The honest answer is that it is not as bad in Cincinnati as other place but of course, we would like it to be better. When we pulled up numbers and took a statistical look at both sale price and units sold the number show a decline, but not the catastrophic drop some other parts of the country have seen.

Cincinnati saw a decrease in sales of 14% (3137 to 2697) in the first five months of 2008 compared to the first five months of 2007. In the same time period sale price fell slightly by 11% ($169,617 to $152,360).

The challenging part about these numbers, particularly the sale price is that there are so many bank owned homes being sold now at a fraction of their market value. With fewer overall sold properties, the higher volume of bank sales is having a greater impact on the average sale price in Hamilton County.