What I Predict in the Cleveland Housing Market for 2012

There are a million statistics we could follow to give you historical information about what happened in the past, so I'm going to give you my calculated predictions for the year to come in the Cleveland real estate market.

1. Downtown and "City Living" will continue to flourish. With thousands of new service and construction jobs downtown and hundreds of current job openings requiring college education expecting to be filled this year, it's a pretty safe bet that downtown living is going to continue to flourish and grow. I've been selling condos downtown for a while now (before it was fashionable) and I can tell you that if you don't pay attention to downtown and the urban neighborhoods such as Ohio City, Tremont, University Circle, and Gordon Square/Battery Park, you're missing a big part of the market for 2012.

2. Ranch-style homes will depreciate dramatically as demand continues to diminish. Let's face it, the predominant occupants of ranch-style homes are people who prefer to live a life free of stairs. That age-demographic is not moving right now, and if they are, they're not staying in a single family home in Cleveland. What we're finding right now is an over-supply of ranch-style homes in the suburban areas, especially Lake county, the greater Parma area, and the near east-side suburbs. Over 80% of the moves in Cleveland are people in Generation X and Generation Y. Until that trend changes, we will continue to see the supply exceed the demand for ranch-style homes and those values will continue to drop.

3. The urbanites are starting families... and they still value good schools and safe neighborhoods now that they have children to take care of. While I have no doubt the new generations of young professionals will fill the vacancies by this "echo" effect of urban families moving to the 'burbs, I am predicting that many "cool" suburbs will start to see an uptick in sales and a leveling of home values. "Cool" suburbs that are already beginning to attract this generation of proud urbanites include Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, Rocky River, Brecksville, Hudson, and Shaker Heights.

It's not going to be a booming market anywhere in the USA this year, but in C-Town, there is some reason to be hopeful in a few areas and I expect that 2013 will continue this positive trend!