Oct. 5, 2005

Columbus Ohio Housing Bubble Bursts

Contrarian Chronicles on MSN.com Money Central  featured our fair city on Tuesday October 3, writing in part: "You can see how the housing bubble is bursting in places like Columbus, Ohio, where builders and lenders threw common sense away and enticed people to buy homes they couldn't afford."

The information in the MSN aracticle is what was in the Columbus Dispatch September 16 to 19, 2005 series.  

I must have missed the housing bubble.   A housing bubble is when values go up like they have on the east and west coasts.  We have not had double digit appreciation in Central Ohio.   Wikipedia   defines "bubble in economics, a bubble is a situation where speculation causes the price of goods to rise to unsustainable levels, usually followed by a crash."  Real Estate Bubble

I must have missed the bubble bursting too as 'Contrarian Chronicles'  told the nation about "Empty houses, falling prices: A boom dies" referring to Columbus Ohio.  The majority of the 'Contrarian Chronicles'   article was about foreclosures in the market and Dominion homes as reported by the Columbus Dispatch in their series. 

End of Summer Home Sales Sizzle according to the Columbus Board of Realtors: Homes sold for an average of $183,572 in August which is 5.7 percent higher than homes were selling for in August of 2004. The average sale price year to date (January through August) is $179,551."

The Columbus Dispatch article was about aggressive building, agressive mortgage lending,  "flipping"  and mortgage fraud but I don't remember the bubble where local home values increased to unsustainable levels and then dropped in value.  Yep I will agree with the "where builders and lenders threw common sense away and enticed people to buy homes they couldn't afford"  part though.