In a recent edition of Time magazine there is a featured article about some services that help home owners negotiate new rates with their banks, or even walk away from their homes.  Some of these services package information for homeowners in distress and in some cases help advocate for the home owner.  Other services simply repackage and sell publicly available information.

Companies like the Walk Away Plan provide home owners who are in distress some counseling as well as assistance in negotiating with their bank for a new loan at a current interest rate, or renegotiating the loan all together. Other services, like Short Refi Me,  try to work with your bank to refinance your home based on current value.

We have written here about the changes in Cincinnati’s property values over the last two years. A part of the real estate downturn that is being overlooked is the assessments for property taxes. Locally we have seen our home value decline between 5% and 11% depending on where we live but it has not been as bad as California. Their property value has declined so much that there is now a company that will help homeowners obtain a break on their property tax reasons.

Prop8.org takes advantage of a California proposition that allows for homeowners to get a reduction in their property taxes. Prop8.org charges a fee to help homeowners navigate the legal paperwork, and submit the necessary papers. We do not have this luxury in Cincinnati but it is important that the next time your property is assessed that you pay attention and gather the recent sale data for your neighborhood so you understand you new property assessment.

Nation wide it seems like the drop in home values is slowing. According to a recent Standards and Poors report on home values, 18 of the 20 index cities lost less value over th last quarter than in previous quarters.

In looking at the chart the most critical piece of information I see is data out of Cleveland and Chicago. Both large mid western centers show a significant slowing in depreciation compared with previous quarters and in aggregate if you look at those as leading indicators for the region our decline may be slowing as well. We have reported before on Cincinnati real estate price trends and this is another report that makes us confident that the overall depreciation will most likely end with the calendar year especially if the summer sales season sees absorption of some of the foreclosed properties currently on the market.

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.

Hamilton County 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.

CNN Money published a study today on the future value of homes all over the nation. After looking through the home value tool, the outlook for Cincinnati is fairly similar to that of Ohio.  The state will see about a 5% drop in home values over the course of 2008 with the depreciation slowing to a less than 1% fall in 2009.

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What this means to the average home buyer is that if you are looking to move up market, it is time to take a look and make a move. Moving upmarket in a housing slowdown is a financially rewarding thing if you are in a position to take advantage of the value changes.

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If you are moving from a $150,000 home to a $250,000 that is a $100,000 jump. If both homes sell for 5% less due to the market you are moving from a $142,500 home to a $237,500 home in a $95,000 jump. Same homes in question. $5,000 savings. Moreover the new house property tax will be assessed at the 5%  lower sale price.