Today's Plain Dealer has a story showing the astonishing annihilation of home values in Cuyahoga County, Ohio's largest county. In a table showing home sale prices for 2007, 2008, and 2009, we see that almost all cities within the county have lost value as measured by home sales. And in some cases, the losses are unbelievable. It is as if the city and county had been bombed by a nuclear weapon or destroyed by volcanic eruptions or earthquake.
Here are some examples. In 2007, in Euclid, my home town, the city where I grew up, the average price of homes in 2007 was $108,250 (197 units)--an incredible bargain. In 2008, the average was $59,450 (198 units). And so far in 2009, with 235 units sold, the average is $33,700. The value this year is less than 1/3 of the value two years ago.
Other inner-ring suburbs of Cleveland show similar or worse losses. In East Cleveland, the value of homes went from $25,700 in 2007 to $4750 in 2008 to $3988 dollars in 2009. These figures are almost beyond belief.
Here are the figures for the city of Cleveland: 2007: $62000; 2008: $17,000; 2009: $17000.
There are a few prosperous suburbs where the decline has been less precipitous (with even a small rise in home prices from 2008 to 2009 for Westlake).
It's hard to know what to say about this. Cleveland and Cuyahoga County and the surrounding metropolitan area are in deep, deep economic depression!
[The story on home values in Cuyahoga County begins on p. A-1 of the Cleveland Plain Dealer for Sunday, May 31, 2009. The home value chart is on p. A-12.]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment