We hear a lot of negatives about the housing market from the national news. While I would not portray the information they share as completely inaccurate, it is deceptive because there is not a single, national, real estate market but many local markets.  The Dayton market is comprised of many smaller markets. While Oakwood and Kettering are side-by-side geographically, they have different characteristics that cause prices and values to vary. Englewood, Clayton and Trotwood are also contiguous municipalities that, in the Salem Mall area, are intertwined to the point it is difficult to know where one begins and the other ends. Yet property taxes and property values vary. Preble county and Darke county share similarities yet have unique characteristics as do the communities located within. We see more so now than ever before that there are markets within markets and individual homes standing out within markets.

I decided to revisit one of my blogs from 2007 and the reported statistics to see what has changed.

2007 saw the terms “credit-crunch” and “sub-prime” become commonplace when referring to the national housing market. Across the nation, sales of new and existing single-family homes saw declines in numbers of home sales and in home values. Today we see this same news. The politicians are blaming the sub-prime fiasco each on the other side while values continue to fall off. We hear new terms like “buy and bail”,  “walk-away”, “upside down” and “under water.”

Locally, in 2007, while the Dayton Metro market was certainly not un­touched by the downturn in sales activity, we were clearly affected to a lesser degree than many other markets, especially in terms of our local home values. Today we see a different picture with more significant impact in many of our area markets.

During 2007, single-family sales activity, for Dayton and 15 of the surrounding suburbs, as reported to the Dayton Area Board or Realtor’s Multiple Listing Service we saw average home values and sales widely varied from community to community. Taking an average of these areas reveals a reduction of 29% in total sales, decreasing  from 7,076 in 2007 down to 5,477 in 2010. We also saw a 7.9% decrease in average sales price dropping from the 2007 average of $163,216 to $151,289 in 2010.

With the exceptions of Englewood/Clayton, where the highest sale price for a single home nearly doubled from $369,000 to $700,000 and Miamisburg where that highest single home sale price rose a mere $9,000 from $411,000 to $420,000, every market saw a decrease. That decrease averaged just short of a 16.3%.

While, statistically, this can be very discouraging, there is hope. Ultimately your home is the one that matters to you. For more information on this or other Real Estate related topics Jim can be contacted at jamesljones@kw.com or get information on thousands of homes in the Miami Valley at http://www.TeamJonesRealEstate.com. I will be glad to assist you.