The Sell for 1 Percent team unpacks a market in flux, with Central Ohio inventory climbing past 4,900 homes and 779 listings seeing a price reduction in the last week. Despite mortgage rates in the high sixes, pending sales are actually up year-over-year—the key is that sellers who price their homes correctly are still seeing multiple offers and selling for tens of thousands over asking. For Columbus-area sellers, this data shows that an aggressive pricing strategy is the clear path to a fast sale, while buyers have more leverage than they’ve seen in years.
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Full Transcript
Hey there, everyone. Dave Barlow here with the gang from Sell for 1 Percent. Minus 1.
And we won’t talk about that because it’s just making Jay mad. I just wish I was so important and so loved by daddy. He is.
That I could skip all the important meetings. I’m trying to figure out, where’s your new Highlands with an S shirt, Rich? I’m still working on that. I got to close a few loans before I get through this.
They’re appropriated by the number of deals you’re doing. And Jay, where’s yours? Well, apparently I’m no longer the favorite son, so I had to wear unbranded clothes too, just like Rich. You’re out.
No, let’s go. It is, what, today’s Thursday, May 21st. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but it seems like May is kind of dragging a little bit.
I don’t know. The first four months felt like they flew by, and then May seems to be slowing down a hair. Rich, what do you think about that? Well, if May is slowing down, inflation is speeding up.
Oh boy, here we go. There’s that. So maybe there’s some sort of a yin-yang or something to the universe.
That could be. And yeah, it’s possible. But all things being equal, we have inflation roaring.
We have bombs flying, and we have blockades. And of course, Dave can tell us about gas prices later. And so basically, the 30-year treasury bond right now is at its highest point since before the financial crisis in 2008.
I saw that. So if that puts any context to where we are. So anybody thinking that we’re going to see lower rates, I think, is sadly mistaken here in the near future, at least, unless something turns around.
Which one thing that could turn it around is the Supreme Court today is deciding on whether or not it’s legal to remove Lisa Cook, the Fed governor who was committing mortgage fraud. So if we can get Lisa Cook out of there and get another pro-rate cut, maybe we can cut rates right into an inflationary environment and really book the economy. Who knows? But that’s kind of where we are right now.
Rates are high sixes now, 6.5 to 6.75, a little higher even if you’ve got the wrong credit profile. And we’re roaring into the summer with a little bit higher rates. So what’s going on? I did see an email, it didn’t go in depth, from the realtor.com that said the number of contracts written in April was one of the highest in the last 10 years as well.
So it’s kind of a weird, and maybe like we’ve talked about, Rich, we have that the new normal is 6.25, 6.5. Yeah, I mean, I think maybe people are resigning themselves to the fact that they need a house and the rates are in the sixes and that’s where we are. And so that’s the only answer I could give to that.
But I do see, I have a lot of interest. I have a lot of people buying. I have a guy that’s calling me now, as a matter of fact, that he’s been trying to get in contract for three years.
He’s one of those three-year tire kickers that finally went into contract yesterday. So things are still happening out there. It’s still a good time to buy.
It’s still a good time to sell, I think. Well, I got to think that somebody’s been looking for three years, whatever his pocket is, but let’s just say he’s looking in Dublin. Three years ago, the average sales price in Dublin was $375,000, $400,000.
Today, it’s now $500,000 to $550,000. So you keep waiting for those rates to drop so you can save $50 a month or $100 a month, and you just lost $150,000 in equity. So it’s got to drive you crazy.
I would love for you to ask him, do you remember when you started looking, the price range that you were looking in? And then compare to what he goes in the contract. Just to see, has that number changed? Or is he still looking in whatever he started three years ago? Yeah, that would be interesting. But I think it wasn’t so much he was waiting for rates to go down as he just couldn’t find the right house.
That was his case. That was the situation. But he did have a couple of houses he liked, and he didn’t bid high enough on them.
And that $20,000 or $30,000 that he didn’t want to offer on that house back in 2023, he’s lost much more than that and buying the same house now, as you point out, for much more. Yeah, interesting. I think the longest that I’ve ever had a client go is just around a year or thereabouts.
Jay, buyer’s side, and you used to do a ton of buyers way back in the day. You ever have anybody look for three years? Oh, yeah. I’ve got people that would forever, it feels like.
So yeah, definitely. Okay. So what’s happening out there in the world of real estate? What do you see in there? Looks like you’re looking at the numbers and digesting them.
I’m playing with a new feature that I got added on to the account here to put in pending data. What’s interesting is, am I able to share my screen or no? Let me see if I can do that here. While you’re setting that up, the market count today is 4,928 houses on the market.
So inventory is still climbing, which we would expect to see during the peak seasons here. And then let me share my screen. You’re going to see all my billions of tabs that are open.
So this is showing time, and this is Ohio’s data. The orange line is this year, and the dark blue line is last year. So we had more showings last year across the board in Ohio.
Right now, 2026 is the second highest. You can see here on this overlay, we’re plus 42% above the 0% yearly averages. But then we’re trending not in the best direction.
And my personal opinion is, and you can kind of see it flatten out here. This is where we’re on this come up. When I do this, I point this out.
This is the snowstorm. We’re showing it’s kind of fell off. Then we’re on this come up.
And then right here is when it should explode back up, and then it just kind of flattens. And I think that is your Iran gas prices, all that is my personal opinion. And then let me flip over to where I was just at.
This is the new data that we have with the pendings. There’s more pendings right now than there were last year. So even though showings are down, the pending sales are up.
And also, I know that mortgage applications are up. The biggest thing that’s helping everybody right now is mortgage spreads. And I think part of that is the government helping to buy those down a little bit.
They started, I forget it was Fannie and Freddie announced they were buying mortgage-backed securities. If mortgage spreads were where they were last year, year before from the people I listened to, we’d be up near 8% right now on mortgage rates, but we’re not. So that helps a lot.
The one I’m trying to kick back on here is this new price median. The prices are down this year compared to where we were last year. So I think that you’re seeing the market kind of correct itself that sellers that are overpriced, they’re not selling.
But ones that come on priced aggressively, and this is stuff that I’ll use in my sellers and listing appointments, is if you come on the market and you’re really reaching for a high price, you’re probably not going to have the best time right now. But if you come on and you’re priced a little on the aggressive side, when you’re looking at comps, the last couple of years you’ve priced a little bit above the comps, well you probably want to be in line or maybe even a little bit less than what they were going for last year, and you’ll sell quick. And depending on how long that person’s owned the house, they bought it last year, well that’s not great news.
But if you bought it 10 years ago, 20 years ago, price it right and it’s going to go. So I’m seeing sellers about 20 days typically, 28 days and it starts to pop. So it can take a little bit longer.
Home inspectors are driving me crazy right now. Buyers are getting freaked out, getting cold feet. So collect your deposits.
Other than that, market seems to be much better off now than it was a couple of years ago when it was just 50 offers and no inspections. I don’t think that’s the best situation for buyers and sellers. Yeah, we had, how many listings did you say, I’m sorry? We’re around 4,900.
Okay. So we’re climbing up, about to break through 5,000. And of that, in the last week we’ve had 779 price reductions.
That’s about, right now, in a typical market about a third of listings dropping is kind of normal. So again, this points to like, it’s a healthy market. It’s not a, when everyone is going in multiple offers, I mean, that’s great for sellers, but that to me is not the healthiest place to be with things going up 80,000 over asking everybody, waiving everything.
I mean, best time ever to be a realtor, but I think this is more balanced and a better market overall. Yeah, I listed two last Thursday night. Both of them, the sellers listened.
We put them in, like I say, Thursday night, competitively priced. Both went multiple offer. One went for 35,000 over asking and the other went about 22,000 over asking.
And so I think the point being is that kind of dovetailing into what you’re talking about there, Jay, is if you price the house correctly, we are going to see buyers. The buyers are there. The one house up in Delaware, I had five offers on.
The other one down in the Clintonville area, North Clintonville, Beachwalt area, we had three offers on. So, you know, it’s just, it’s an interesting time. I am very intrigued with that mortgage spread that you’re talking about.
Rich, as you mentioned, we have the highest 10-year in a long time. But interest rates aren’t following that. So there’s a little disconnect there.
Yeah, we haven’t seen interest rates go up as much as would be the case. I agree. And there is a little bit of the quantitative, excuse me, quantitative easing happening right now.
But, you know, we still have seen quite a big move from pre-war right at the end of February where we were high fives and now we’re trending towards high sixes, mid to high sixes at least right now. All right. So are you guys want to talk gas prices? Yeah, let’s hear about the gas and talk to your gas as well.
I was out in the middle of nowhere and coming back from a, I was shown some property up on Indian Lake and then I had to go look at some land over near Raymond, which is north of Marysville. And so I’m cutting across, you know, all these farm fields and out in the middle of nowhere, there’s a marathon gas station with very good gas prices. I mean, normally, you know, out there in the middle of nowhere, if you’re the only thing going, you’re charging about a dollar more a gallon because where are you going to go get gas? But they were super competitive.
And so I pulled in, needed some gas, started to fill up and lo and behold, right there on the old gas tank was the top tier sticker. And so I think I sent you guys a copy of that because I’ve never seen that before. It’s like, you know, I bought a red car.
Now every car on the road is red. Yeah. That’s right.
Now that you’re aware. Yeah. I’m going to see that sticker everywhere.
Okay. Well, at least I’m putting good gas and I got it for a decent price. So I was, I was very pleased.
I got it for $4 and 34 cents a gallon is what the price was. And that seemed to be kind of the price through the weekend. But I did notice yesterday about every gas station I went by was back up to around $4.79, $4.89.
So Memorial Day weekend coming. Well, I think that you might be right. I think, you know, maybe with the president talking about, you know, possibly, you know, starting the war back up, you know, that, that pushed it up.
There’s all kinds of factors, but I do think, and I’ve said this for a long time, whether it’s a Republican president or a Democrat president that, you know, I think gas prices do impact people. I think it’s one of the reasons why Trump got reelected, that, you know, gas prices were about where they are now, maybe just a little bit higher, but I think people were unhappy. And if they don’t get this mess cleaned up in, in Iran here and get gas prices back down to where they were a couple months ago, I think it might be a long road to hoe for the Republican party come November.
But I don’t want to digress into the political world, but I think gas prices, if you’re putting, you know, $15 or 15 gallons a week in your car to get back and forth to school or work or whatever it may be, and it’s costing you a buck 50 more to do that, I mean, it’s 25 bucks out of your pocket. This is peanuts. This is peanuts, guys.
Well, um, but for most people, you know, they’re living kind of paycheck to paycheck. He’s mocking Trump. It just, it just, you know, it, it takes its toll.
And then those prices do impact shipping. The plastic wrappers, the plastic bottles are all made from oil by-product. Everything goes up in price.
I got the major screw. I went from $25 to fill up my Honda Civic to $85 to fill up this stupid pilot because somebody decided to come left to center and smash into me and break up my rib cage. 11 ribs.
Total madness. Crazy. Plus a car payment.
You know, the whole thing, thanks. The whole thing is, um, it’s one of those things called peace of mind. And so you’re in a brand new car, a Honda pilot.
It’s bigger. There’s no peace of mind when I make the car payment. The technology, uh, safety technology is great.
And so. The government’s tracking is every move. They can shut him off any minute if they want to now.
Yep. Nope. There’s no real positive.
You can try and spend it all you want. My insurance is up. My car, I have a car payment.
Didn’t have one before. Gas. I just got, I got the major screw job.
Well, as the broker of sell for 1%, we like to have you indebted. Yes. Yeah.
You better sell a lot of real estate and that’s what music to my ears. Head broker talk there. There you go.
That’s what I remember working at the radio station and became a general sales manager. And my, my boss who then became, you know, my business mentor and one of my dear friends over the years, uh, told me he was the owner of the station. He told me, he said, you want to encourage the sales guys to go out and buy new homes, buy new cars, have lots of kids because their incentive will be to go sell a lot of radio airtime because they got to be able to pay for it.
So Jay has two of the three now, three of the four. I got a very nice home. I just bought a new car and has four children.
A new kid. Yeah. Yeah.
So I’m out of my retirement plans are coming together very nicely. So now I need to get Jaime on, on the stick. So we’re going to get him hitched.
That’s right. Have a half dozen kids. Just so he doesn’t have a head-on collusion.
Yeah. Work until you’re 95. Make sure everybody’s taken care of.
So it’s all good stuff. All right, guys, we are well into it here. Any final thoughts as to, uh, we head into the Memorial Day weekend? I, uh, this chart thing’s pretty cool.
I’m building out different charts. Our video next week will be even better than this week. Chart heaven.
Here we go. All right. Sounds like fun guys.
They’re big, beautiful charts, and we will have them for you next week. Sounds good. All right, guys, I appreciate your time.
If you like the information, the fun banter, like, and subscribe. So you don’t ever miss an episode of the days of our lives. In real estate.
What is wrong with you? Yeah. Ring the bell. All like stand through the hourglass.
There you go. And my mom and her stories. There you go.
Actually, Maria and her grandmother have to stop and watch her stories. Don’t call her between two and three. So, all right, guys, I appreciate your time.
Look forward to seeing you next week. We’ll hope for the rain to stop. So people can get out and go look at houses without the umbrellas and rain jackets and whatnot.
So get that fertilizer on your yards. And maybe Jaime will be good enough to join us. That’d be great.
Yeah, there you go. Even build a shoes on a Wednesday, even better. All right.
Have a good one, fellas. See you later.