New numbers suggest housing market cooling off, but the value of homes continue to rise

TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) - Northwest Ohio Realtors recently released June’s numbers.

The numbers indicate that home sales are down nine percent and the total volume is down four percent. But the average sale price continues to rise, last month by almost six percent.

So what does that mean for local buyers and sellers?

“I’d say we don’t get as many offers as we had before, but they’re still as good as they were before,” said Michelle Nieman, a realtor with Danberry in Toledo. “There were times when people were waving inspections and waving appraisals, and that has diminished just a bit, but still getting multiple offers over full price.”

And Nieman said that trend is just now happening in Toledo.

“People have come back from vacation and realized it’s still time to buy a house. They’ve heard the rates have kind of stabilized and the market, they feel, is not as much of a frenzy and they still have a shot at it. So things have picked up in the last week,” she said.

13abc spoke with a woman who just moved into a house they spent months looking for.

“In March we started looking for a house and we lost, like, a dozen homes,” said Kylie Hannighan. “It was crazy. We were outbid by a lot of money, and we’re like it’s not worth it at that point because we wanted to stay within budget.”

Hannighan and her husband married earlier this year, and the couple expressed difficulties with finding a home.

“My husband actually kept getting his hopes up a lot, and I was thinking maybe we’ll get it, maybe we won’t. If we don’t it’s okay, but we’ll just keep looking for houses. It was really stressful hearing the rejections one after another,” said Hannighan.

Finally, they closed on a home in June. Their new house was on the market for around $159,000 and they offered $180,000. But all the stress made it that much sweeter for the newlyweds when they moved into their home last Saturday.

“He keeps saying every night how excited he is to be in this house, and he always has little ideas to make it a better home for us too. It’s really fun here,” Hannighan said.

The realtor’s advice for buyers? Use a local lender, don’t get too excited about one specific house, and continue to search for a home even if you have an offer out there. She said a backup plan is necessary for today’s housing market.

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