If you’re looking to buy, sell, or invest in Cincinnati in the near future, you wanna know what is the current Cincinnati real estate market. And so, we’re gonna do a Cincinnati real estate market update, looking at all the numbers diving in doing a review of 2021, and also looking forward to 2022. My name is Eric Sztanyo from Keller Williams Realty and Team Sztanyo.com, where we are helping you find your home and strengthen your family.
It’s super bowl week right now in Cincinnati. The city is on fire. It’s orange. Everything’s lit up orange. All the fans are going crazy . If you’re reading this, the game’s already over. So I don’t know if we won or lost, but as of now, the city is having a blast after 31 years of not winning a playoff game. We’re now here in Joe Burrow, hopefully took us to the promised land here. Wanted to say thank you to all you guys who have watched and liked and subscribed to this channel and have reached out personally to me.
I brought a little hardware back, so I don’t know if the Bengals have won hardware yet, but I won a Gary. This is our annual Keller Williams event. We have this Gary Keller awards, which have the little mustache that Gary Keller has, and I won second highest production as a 2021 KWA individual agent. So, yay. Thank you all who have watched the channel. Thank you all who have chosen me to be your agent. It couldn’t happen without you. So thank you so much.
Understanding The Current Cincinnati Real Estate Market and what it means for Buyers and Sellers
All right, let’s jump right in. First, we’re looking at a document from 2021 from the Cincinnati area board of realtors. Looking at some of the Cincinnati real estate market statistics from 2021. First of all, looking at December specifically of 2021, the median sold price was $230,000, which was up 7% and up 13.5% year to date. So 7% over the previous month. 2,209 units sold in December, which was down 3.8% from November. The total amount sold was 604 million year to date. It was 7.785 billion. Which again was up 17.6%. Over the previous year. The active inventory on the market was only 1,592 units. That was down 20%. The median days on market was six days, that went on up slightly and the new listings were down about 10%.
So here’s a paragraph kind of summarizing how 2021 ended in the Cincinnati real estate market: The 2021 Cincinnati housing market ended on a strong note. Median sales price might have gone down from the month prior, but it broke records for December. Inventory numbers are still sitting at record lows, but December, 2021 saw more new listings than December of 2019, 18 or 17.
This is a quote from Kate Edwards, who is the president of the Cincinnati area board of realtors. She said that “With 604 million in total sold volume, 2021 was the highest volume sold December that the Cincinnati area has ever seen.”
The total volume sold for the year on 2021 was 7.78 billion. This was a 17.6% increase from 2020. What does all this mean is probably a typical story with what you’re seeing in a lot of cities nationwide, where inventory is down, very low, sales prices are up high and overall sales volume because the demand is so strong is maybe breaking historic records. So that’s a look back at 2021, but if you’re looking to buy or sell in 2022, let’s dig into those numbers so you can know what to expect if you’re looking to buy or sell home this year.
The first chart we’re gonna look at here is median price sold. We’ve looked at these in past videos. When we’re trying to give a, a market update in the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky area. We’re dating back two years now, it’s early February, but we’re looking at January of 2020 through January of 2022. And we’re looking at the median price sold back in January of 2020. The median sold in the Cincinnati area was $186,000. In January 2022, that number has risen all the way up to $237,000. That’s about a $51,000 increase in the median price change or about a 28% change. You average that out over the past two years, you’re seeing about 14% increase in median sales price over the last two years.
In a minute, I’m gonna try to interpret all of these numbers for you, but let’s keep diving into the data and these charts.
Second chart we’re gonna look at is the supply and demand of units for sale and the amount of units that have sold. Again, looking at a two year period from January of 2020 to January of 2022. So back in January of 2020, the amount of units that were for sale were 4,418. Fast forward two years, and the amount of units for sale in January of 2022, 2,759, a steep decrease in the amount of inventory that’s actually for sale on the market down 38%.
Now what’s really interesting about this is even though the amount of units is for sale is down 38%. The amount of units that actually sold was up 10%. So back in January of 2020, the amount of units that sold were 1047 in January of 2022, the amount of sold units was 1,154, a 10% increase. It’s really baffling to try to understand what’s happening here. But over the last few years, supply has continued to get tighter, tighter, smaller, smaller, smaller, and demand has stayed steady, demand has stayed strong.
What does that mean if you’re a buyer or seller for the current Cincinnati real estate market? If you’re a seller, that’s great because the prices of homes just keep going up and up and up. If you’re a seller who needs to buy another home, you’re gonna feel that on the other end, cuz buyers keep getting squeezed right now. That’s what’s happening is prices are going up. Inventory is still remaining tight. So you see something that hits the market. It’s gone in one day, it’s gone in two days. Anything that’s in decent condition and price fairly well is still in multiple offers. We’re not quite as hot as we were in where we kind of hit our peak was in that June, July of last year, 2021, in terms of, you know, the greatest amount of demand and the least amount of inventory. It’s certainly not uncommon in the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area for January and February to be the month where you see the least amount of inventory, because you’ve got the holidays, plus it’s just really cold. Most sellers wait until the springtime or at least you see usually about a 30% to 40% bump and the amount of inventory that comes on the market. But right now buyers are feeling that pinch because if they’re looking for something it’s tough. They’re going really fast and there’s just not a lot of options to choose from.
All right, let’s look at one last chart, which I think helps paint the picture of what the real estate market in Cincinnati is looking like right now. It’s the month’s supply of inventory going back two years. Again, what this chart means is if no new inventory came on the market, how long would it take to sell all the properties that are the market? So going back to 2020 January, that number was 1.8 months. So if you didn’t add any other houses to the market, every house would be gone in 1.8 months, which back then that was a crazy number. We were like, oh my gosh, the inventory is historically low. And we just kind of keep saying this as realtors inventory is historically low or inventory is historically lower and that’s what’s happened in the last two years. If you look now at January, 2022, that number dropped all the way from 1.8 months to 0.7 months.
And again, probably what you saw in December of 2019 was higher than 1.8, more like a 2.2 or something like that. Cause in this chart, if you look at both 2021 and 2022, there’s a pretty big dip between December and January. And again, that’s common because of the colder months, the shorter days here in the Cincinnati area, not a lot of sellers like to put their house on the market. Then they tend to wait for those spring months, but still to dip from 1.8 in 2020, January 2021, it looks like that number was around one. And then January 2022, that number is 0.7 of month supply for inventory, which is just a crazy low number.
So let’s try to sum it all up. How does this impact you as a buyer or seller? Really, as a seller, it’s been kind of the same story the last few years. If you wanna sell your house in 2022, you’re probably gonna get a great price. People are probably gonna line up at the door. If your agent does what they should be doing in terms of pricing, and the condition of the home. You should have a lot of showings. You should have multiple offers and you should probably be able to leverage those offers against each other and get a really good price on the sale of your home. If you’re a buyer, when there’s this low of inventory, it’s gonna be a struggle. You’re gonna be fighting against other buyers still. You’re gonna have to have strategies around maybe escalation clauses. Maybe you’re gonna wanna shop slightly under your budget so that you can put in an offer over your budget. One thing I’m seeing out there in the marketplace is sellers are getting greedy and they’re saying, Hey, we want you to wave the appraisal contingency.
Another thing I’m seeing from sellers is they want buyers to put in their offer that they will cover any appraisal shortage. What that means is if you have really low supply and multiple buyers and multiple buyers bidding up over the price of the home and over for what the comps might say. Let’s say that house should is gonna appraise for $200, but you’ve got an under contract at $220, the sellers are gonna say, “Hey, we want you to cover 10 grand of that, 15 grand of that.” So you have to get really competitive as a buyer, but you also don’t want to overpay. So another option, you know, a lot of buyers, if they don’t want to go in that route and fight against a bunch of other buyers, a lot of buyers are potentially looking in new construction.
Builders, continue to build in the area. They’re trying to keep up with demand as well. Generally, as soon as they’re opening up new lots and new areas of their neighborhoods that they’re building in, they’re getting snatched up pretty quickly as well. But that is one option for you as a buyer is to go that route in terms of new construction if you don’t wanna fight against the buyers.
One thing to keep in mind, and we’ve mentioned this in our 2022 predictions video is the fed is going to be raising interest rates this year. We’ve already seen interest rates hike a little bit, and I’d love to do some video soon with some lenders who can speak to this more intelligently than I can. But when you see interest rates rise, what does that mean for you as a buyer? It means that you’re buying power Decreases. Because the amount that you can afford in a monthly mortgage goes down because your interest rate is higher.
I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily good news for you as a buyer because you kind of can afford less house with an interest rate hike. But what that might do potentially is lessen some of the other demand of the buyers out there. If interest rates go up, you might see a little bit less demand from buyers overall, which might loosen this inventory supply demand issue just a little bit in 2022.
All right, guys, my inner nerd is coming out here with charts and graphs and numbers and data. But if you’re looking to buy or sell in the next year, it’s good to know this at least have a general idea of the market. The general idea is, look, supply’s still low. Demand is still high. If you’re a seller, that’s great. If you’re a buyer that’s difficult. But hopefully this video was helpful for you.
Team Sztanyo Is Your Trusted Guide in Buying and Selling Houses!
If you’re looking to buy or sell in the Northern Kentucky or Cincinnati area, give us a call at team Sztanyo (513) 813-6293, or email me directly at Eric.sztanyo@kw.com, would love to help you out. Thank you Sztanyo clanyo. I appreciate you guys so much and we’ll see you in the next one.