Cincinnati is one of the top 20 cities in the country when it comes to increasing home prices, a report released in June found. Despite that spike, the region is still one of the more affordable in the country for homeownership.
Home prices in the Queen City jumped 19 percent between March 2017 and March 2018, according to a study by real estate website GOBankingRates.com.
That was the eighth-highest jump percentage-wise (tied with Indianapolis) in the study, which looked at median home listing prices in cities across the country on popular real estate website Zillow. The median price of a house in Cincinnati went from $160,000 to $190,000 in that time, according to the data.
There are some limitations to the study. Every house for sale doesn’t end up listed on Zillow, for example. And cities on the list with exceptionally low home prices— such as Cincinnati and Evansville, Ind. — could see big jumps in the percentage rise of home costs due to smaller spikes in actual dollar values of homes. Seattle, for example, saw a lower rate of increase for its homes. But in actual dollars, the median Seattle home price determined by the study spiked by more than $100,000 over the last year to roughly $726,000.
The city with the highest increase in real-dollar home sales was Sunnyvale, Calif., where the median value of a home for sale on Zillow jumped by almost $300,000 last year. Another California city, San Jose, ranked second, with an $184,000 increase. When considering real-dollar increases, Cincinnati ranks 16th on the list.
Still, a $30,000 jump is a big one and could put home ownership out of reach for some in Cincinnati, where the median annual household income is around $35,000.
On the other hand, Cincinnati’s homes are still relatively affordable compared to other cities, and sales of million dollar homes are relatively rare here. The city ranks 41 out of 50 cities considered by another study undertaken by Lending Tree that looked at the number of homes sold for more than a million dollars. Only .43 percent of houses in the Queen City reach the seven-digit mark, according to the study. Cincinnati is the highest-ranked city in Ohio for million dollar homes, however, researchers found. Columbus ranked 44 on the list and Cleveland came in at 47.
