If you watch the news to often you hear the consistent drone that home prices are down! The real estate market is in the tank! Well that may be true in some areas but not all. The fact is that in select Cincinnati neighborhoods the average SOLD price is up 20% or more including parts of Amberley, Indian Hill, and Mariemont. The area around Symmes Township and Dry Run / Mt. Carmel have seen better than 9% increase in sold price.

On the other hand some zip codes drop in sold prices up to 25% in the same time period. There could be dozens of reasons for this including tax abatements, inflation, inventory, and normal cyclical changes in neighborhoods. Paramount is that when looking for a home or an investment property your agent has a sense of the overall market trends in that particular area. Nothing is ever a guarantee for valuation but this is the kind of information you should ask for and expect from a real estate professional.

The accuracy of information in this post is dependent on the MLS system for time periods. The analysis included 31 zip codes comparing the previous 6 months with the same six month period one year prior. The analysis is a useful tool for estimating value trends and is not guaranteed to be applicable to all properties in the areas aforementioned.

Part of what impacts home prices are the outside forces such as interest rates, supply, demand, schools, and other business and neighborhood factors. Personal perception is a major factor in the market value of a home or neighborhood, and it is valuable information for any buy looking to get a fair deal, and any seller looking to market their property at a reasonable price.

So here is Home Predict, website that is allowing people from all over predict the value of homes and neighborhoods. What is important is that market value is a function of the Wisdom of Crowds. If 90 of 100 people think that a neighborhood’s average home is worth $200,000 it is good bet that as a buyer you should be looking to pay about that much, and as a seller it would be wise to list it as such.

In the market boom what we saw collectively was a skewing of the perception of value. We all thought homes were worth more, and therefore the price tags went up. Now as the market cools, and the economy slows we collectively are correcting our perception. Potential buyer’s value perception are the most important information to have, but a community wide poll would probably return similar results. I’d like to see a group of us getting on and helping to set the value of our homes and real estate here in Cincinnati.