The Northridge area near Springfield ranked No. 1 in Ohio and No. 3 nationally, based on the average number of years residents spend in their homes, housing prices, ease of sale and home ownership costs, according to SmartAsset.
“Northridge is a very popular area,” said Lisa Smedley, president of the Springfield Board of Realtors. “It has a fantastic school district that people love. The location is very convenient. And it’s a neighborhood that’s family friendly, where people like to walk and talk.”
Chances are, many of those neighborly conversations have been going on for years. The average homeowner in Northridge has lived in their residence for 16.7 years, incurring home costs equal about 16 percent of their annual household income, the study found.
Meanwhile, the median home value in Northridge is $120,900, and home values have gone up 4.5 percent over the past year and are expected to rise 2.8 percent over the coming year, according to the online real estate listing service, Zillow. At the same time, only about 10 percent of Northridge homeowners have negative equity in their homes, and 12 percent of Northridge homes are declining in value, according to the SmartAsset study.
Joining the Top 10 healthiest housing markets in Ohio from the local area were Oxford, ranked No. 7, and Beavercreek, ranked No. 10. Both markets are places where homeowners “can easily sell their homes with a low risk of losing money over the long run,” according to SmartAsset.
“The housing market in the local area is definitely coming back,” said Suzie Roselius, a Realtor and manager at the Beavercreek office of Irongate Realtors. “I listed a house about a month ago, and it sold within a couple of weeks very close to the listed sales price. We’re definitely in a very healthy market here in Beavercreek.”
The SmartAsset study underscores recently reported housing data that shows the Dayton-area housing continues to bounce back from the housing crash that precended the Great Recession.
The Dayton Area Board of Realtors reported home sales for November 2016 — the most recent month for which figures are available — increased by double digits, helped by rising mortgage interest rates and spurred by the results of the presidential election, local real estate agents said.
The number of sales reported totaled 1,201, up 27 percent over the same month in 2015. There were more sales in November than the past four years at the same time, according to the DABR.
The average price of homes also jumped about 9 percent to $149,014, compared to 2015. The home sales activity generated $179 million in the Dayton area, a significant increase of more than 39 percent versus compared to the same month in 2015.
But the local area isn’t out of the woods yet. While sales and prices are up, foreclosures remain stubbornly high in the local area, according the latest report from ATTOM Data Solutions (formerly RealtyTrac) — the Irvine, Calif.-based real estate data provider.
While foreclosures fell to their lowest level in more than a decade in Ohio and across the nation, the Dayton area in 2016 still ranked as one of the highest in the nation for foreclosure activity.
The Dayton metropolitan area ranked 31st highest out of 216 U.S. metro areas in 2016 for foreclosure activity, according to ATTOM Data Solutions.
“There’s this long tale of distress,” said ATTOM’s Daren Blomquist. “It’s still reeling many markets in Ohio.”
Staff writers Kara Driscoll and Thomas Gnau contributed
‘Healthiest’ Ohio housing markets
A new report lists three Dayton-area markets among the Top 10 healthiest housing markets in Ohio, or markets where homeowners can easily sell their homes with low risk of losing money. The list in order of ranking:
N0. 1, Northridge
No. 2, Worthington
No. 3, Westerville
No. 4, Munroe Falls
No. 5, Kent
No. 6, Upper Arlington
No. 7, Oxford
No. 8, Hilliard
No. 9, Gahanna
No. 10, Beavercreek
Source: SmartAsset
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