Cincinnati Area Board of Realtors®

January 20, 2011

Home sales last month -- at 1,197 units -- displayed two positive trends:

“Home sales are headed in the right direction,” said Pete Kopf, president of the Cincinnati Area

Board of Realtors. He cited these reasons:

1) Home prices have stabilized;

2) Interest rates are beginning to trickle up, encouraging would-be buyers to become actual

buyers in order to still obtain an interest rate near 5%; and

3) Pent-up demand for home ownership is on the climb, since some rents have increased, making

home ownership the more viable choice.

Average home sale price for December, at $160,554, was up 4.94% from the same month a year

earlier, and for the entire year the price was up 4.90%. Some of that price increase was based on a greater

number of higher end sales, at higher average prices, in December 2010. The $500,000-and-up homes

sold last month increased 9.8% compared to the same month a year ago.

Kopf said the upward trend in average home selling price points out that more persons are seeing

the advantage in buying at today’s favorable pricing levels. For many, that means buying now at value

pricing instead of later at higher prices.

“Granted, it’s still a buyer’s market,” said Kopf. That’s because the inventory of unsold homes at

Dec. 31 was 10.51 months. That’s how long it would take to liquidate the existing inventory of homes for

sale at the current sales pace. A year ago it stood at 8.81 months. A balanced market for buyers and

sellers is about 6 months.

Nationwide, December home sales were up 12.3% from