The Observation Deck

According to public records:

Housing (single family)* sales in the last 6 months for:

Lakewood 248

Avon Lake 48

Single family houses for sale:

Lakewood 357

Avon Lake 249

Months supply:

Lakewood: 8.7

Avon Lake 31

I got the info from Zillow and SmytheCramer. Feel free to check my numbers. I did this on the fly.

Which city has the healthier housing market?

*According to the federal government it is discriminatory to say single family, two family etc because the characterization might sound discriminatory. Come and get me copper!!!!

Bill

Is this one of those Friday afternoon trick questions?

Well, I've got a 50/50 shot......

the winner is Lakewood.....

Even though there are more units, they sell faster

All of ours will be gone two years before Avon's. Am I right!?

SO...it really is Lakewood's Time.

Jeff

sorry I do not have official source but I have heard many times within the last year or so that Lakewood property values increased more %-wise than many other places around over the past several years - despite the problems often mentioned on this board, Lakewood has a lot of good things going for it.

Doug

Jeff Endress wrote:All of ours will be gone two years before Avon's. Am I right!?

SO...it really is Lakewood's Time.

Jeff

That is how I look at it.

I have noticed some houses at the higher end ($250,000+) are starting to move.

Houses in this market have to be well cared for. You just can't sit in a house for 10 years, make no improvements and expect a quick sale. My neighbors house was priced high and sold in a week. He had it really laid out.

Generally, Lakewoods values are reasonably strong. If the City had a housing policy they would be even stronger.

Here are some additional statistics:

Housing Sales for the last 90 days:

Fairview Park 98
Lakewood 180
Avon Lake 0
Avon 1
Rocky River 101
Westlake 178

I am a little skeptical of the numbers from Lorain County. It could be that there is a greater lag time between the transfer and the recording of the transfer.

Westlake seems hot.

Lakewood home sales seem good. Values are still increasing.

I know personally of at least two Avon Lake houses that have closed in the last two months, so those numbers are at the very least, incomplete.

Also, the fact that Rocky River, with less than 30 percent of Lakewood's housing units had nearly 60 percent of its sales makes the whole list very suspect.

did these numbers come from Barbara Byrd-Bennett? just kidding

Doug

See today's Plain Dealer for some great news about Lakewood Housing.

Bill Call wrote:See today's Plain Dealer for some great news about Lakewood Housing.

This link might be helpful.

http://www.cleveland.com/business/wide/ ... l0824.html

Tell me again why it's great news that Lakewood housing is selling for less (in the first six months of 2006) than it sold for in comparable times in 2004 and 2005 and yet our valuation and property taxes are rising?

The PD article clearly shows that all the hand-wringing over the plethora of For Sale signs in Lakewood is overdone.


A home in Lakewood spends less time on the market than in Rocky River or Bay Village. Imagine that.

The housing slow down should have been anticipated after all the record setting activity when rates were so low. It's a natural downturn in the real estate cycle. Not great if you need to sell your home right now, but that's the way it works. Friends in PA and Mass. have complained to me about non-existant home sales in their neck of the woods.

There are plenty of people with modern homes in "nice" suburbs that can't sell their home any faster than an old Lakewood home.

dl meckes wrote:Tell me again why it's great news that Lakewood housing is selling for less (in the first six months of 2006) than it sold for in comparable times in 2004 and 2005 and yet our valuation and property taxes are rising?

Shut up and sing!!!

We aren't worrying about home sales in Lakewood.

It's nice that we can sell our Lakewood homes in a softening housing market in a short period of time, but that has nothing to do with my questions about the county's higher valuation in the face of the softening real estate market.

It makes no sense to say that a home's value has increased x% when the market doesn't support that increase. Is the county the only entity that does not recognize that the housing market is softening?

First, remember that the revaluations we just received are for 2004, 2005, and 2006, not just this year. They have to consider a fairly strong growth and demand from 2004. The average over the last three years is what they look at, not just the last few months.

Second, any given home could go up even if all the homes around it stay level or even go down. Why? Because if the home had not been being brought up over the last 6 years, then it may need to be brought up to be closer to the values of the homes around it.

The values the county assigns are not supposed to be a snapshot of current conditions, they are supposed to reflect a multi year trend. Lakewood's is up.

Do you really believe that the valuations will go down in three years as a reflection of a slow market? Never going to happen.

But forgive me for grumbling. I just think some of the valuations are out of line and have been out of line in the last two or three periods. And I hate high property taxes. They are onerous for those living on a modest or fixed income. And they are REALLY bad for our neighbors who have lived in some sections of town for many years.

In our neighborhood, we've watched houses sit on the market for many months, one house was foreclosed upon (later sold), and one sold in eleven days. Right now, only one house has been awaiting a buyer for a while. All the rest have found new buyers.

To have a house valuation go up 19.5% in six years really does look GREAT on paper (and that's much less than some valuations)! And it's great that we not only have new people moving to Lakewood, but we also have a lot of people who have moved from one Lakewood house to another.

Part of Lakewood's valuation also reflects building permits being taken out and we know that in Lakewood, over the past three years, building permits are flying out the door!

So, I'm grumbling, (but singing!) and I promise only to grumble twice a year for the next three years.