“In order to rebalance the market, we either need the inventory to decrease, or the number of buyers to increase.”
A bloated inventory of houses for sale coupled with waning buyer interest sent Central Ohio home sales tumbling 28 percent in September, the Columbus Board of Realtors reported Monday.
The board said 1,441 single-family houses and condominiums were sold last month, down from 2,012 sales in September 2009, a banner month for the area’s real estate scene. Sales a year ago had increased for the first time in more than two years, buoyed by first-time homebuyer tax credits offered by the government to promote sales and construction.
Homes sales around the state and across the nation fell last month, too, but at a slower pace than in the Columbus region. The Ohio Association of Realtors reported a 20 percent drop in sales in the state, while existing home sales nationwide fell 19 percent.
Regional home sales have faltered in the summer months following the April 30 expiration of government home-buying incentives, resulting in a rise in the backlog of unsold houses. Residential listings in the region totaled 16,728 last month, up 18 percent from a year earlier and representing a nearly one-year supply of houses. A more balanced market resembles the seven-month’s supply seen in September 2009.
“In order to rebalance the market, we either need the inventory to decrease or the number of buyers to increase,” board President Sue Lusk-Gleich said in a release. “And since the tax credit incentives brought many buyers into the market earlier than we would have seen otherwise, we have a smaller pool of potential homebuyers to absorb the inventory now.”
The average sale price of a house sold in the region last month slipped 2 percent to $156,897 from $160,094 a year earlier.
Despite the recent monthly declines, sales for the first nine months totaled 15,523, up 4 percent from 14,911 for the same period last year. The average sale price was up about 3 percent in that period to $161,204 from $156,728 last year.
The board’s statistics include market information from most of the seven-county Central Ohio region, along with parts of nine nearby counties.
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