Columbus Housing Market Update – Rates, Bidding Wars & Buyer Opportunities

The Sell for 1 Percent team breaks down the Columbus real estate market on June 11th, 2026. Rich Cercone notes mortgage rates sitting at 6.5%-6.75% and argues this is actually a great time for buyers — less competition and time to think versus the frenzy of a 5.5% market. With 5,200 active listings in Columbus and pending sales softening, the team contrasts today’s balanced market with the COVID-era chaos of 52 showings, 48 offers, and $60K over asking. Jaime highlights that buyers can now get home inspections, negotiate repairs, and avoid appraisal gaps — a return to real estate fundamentals.

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Full Transcript

Hey there, everyone. Jaime with Self for 1 Percent Realtors. Joined, as usual, by the gang.

Head broker, Dave Barlow, Jaysen Barlow, and Rich Cercone with Highlands Mortgage. It is June 11th, 2026, and we are here for a Columbus and Ohio, really, real estate and mortgage market update. We just started our podcast, guys.

So, we’re international now on Spotify, Apple, iHeart, and about 30 other podcast outlets. So, we’re going worldwide. We’ll be as big as Joe Rogan and not too far off distance.

So, congratulations, guys. It’s a big milestone for us. Awesome.

Well, I got the right haircut for Joe. There you go. Well, people always said I had a face for radio, so it works out well.

What’s happening out there, Richard? Whole world’s going crazy. Well, we’ve got, yeah, we got war, we got inflation, we got 6.5% to 7% rate, 6% to 6.75% rate, I should say. So, more of the same, but I was thinking about something the other day.

If I were a new buyer just coming into the market, would I want to be coming in at 6.5% market or where you have a chance to make an offer on a house and have the time to think about it and maybe get your offer accepted at price or maybe slightly above or below the purchase price? Or do I want to come in at 5.5%? If that ever happens again, we don’t know. But if it ever does, do I want to come in at 5.5% where you’ve got all these bidders coming in and the house is just going up, up, up? In my mind, this is a great time to get into the market considering what could happen if rates go down into the fives, which by the way, I don’t see happening anytime in the near future. We’re looking at seven before we’re looking at five right now, I think.

Really? You think it’s going to go up before it goes down? You think the gas is coming down to a dollar and rates are coming to two? No, I’ve not ever said that. Don’t put words in my mouth now. I think gas will get back down to around $3 a gallon and I think interest rates will probably get down into the high fives like it was prior to the war there in Iran.

Anybody that doesn’t agree with that, we’ll just nuke them until we get to the point where we’re back to 2% rates. There you go. That will fix everything.

There you go. One of the things that happens and my dad had a lot of great sayings. Rich, you said there at the beginning of that little segment that you were thinking about this situation and my dad had a great saying that he would say, Sometimes I sit and think, other times I just sit.

And that’s what I prefer, just the sitting part. Yeah, thinking gets me in trouble more often than not. Depends on who you’re expressing your thoughts to.

I know one person I don’t want to express them to and she will go on nameless. Yeah, not good. We all learned that lesson.

Some of us survive, others don’t. With a little less hair, but we survive. There you go.

Well, I think it’s all good thoughts. I really do. I think that, you know, we’ve been kind of talking about that six and a half kind of being the new norm.

If it does drop down below five, it’s going to be great. I think they’re going to have to get gas prices down or they’re going to have all kinds of issues here in the November election. So I think that’s a must.

But interest rates, I think, you know, will follow. It’s interesting. You know, inflation’s up, as you mentioned.

Jobless claims seem to be down. More people seem to be employed. But the big number that is creating inflation appears to be gas prices.

Yeah, and jobless claims. When you see those jobless claim reports, they can be deceptive because after a certain point, you no longer qualify for unemployment. And so you go off the jobless claim roll.

And so, you know, you’re just like you have no unemployment anymore. You don’t count towards that number any longer. So you can’t always rely on that jobless claims number.

But one of the things I did see, I think, the other day that for the past two or three months, that they have revised the jobless claims up. Where we got kind of used to seeing revised jobless claims down. Are you seeing the same thing? You know, I don’t have that right in my head.

But I think I think you might be right, because I think that, you know, back in the previous administration, they were always trying to report a great number. Whereas I think in this one, I think that they are trying to report a number that is even stronger than necessary. And then they have to revise it back down again.

So, you know, who knows? I think it’s very political, though. I think that number sure numbers manipulated quite a bit. Jaysen, would you have any information to contradict me on that? Nope.

No, sir. I was going to be usually like I’ve seen the jobless. Can you do you see the same thing? No, I see the total opposite.

OK, I live in a totally different reality. There are 180 different data. Are you at the dinner table? There it is, by the way.

There he is. There’s my boy. Now, I’m just I’m just sitting here sitting not.

Jay gets always arguing out with me. Jay gets always arguing out with me because he can’t argue with his significant other. He’s learning.

So let me have let me have it. 5200 listings on the market. Active and coming soon.

And so our inventory is climbing. New pending numbers across Columbus are down this week and last week. And so market is starting to slow a tiny bit.

But also the one from last week is because of the holiday. And so, you know, we’ll we’ll see how the rest of the summer continues to roll here. I mean, some of these listings I and I’m going in with some buyers on some, too, right now.

And it’s like, you know, some of these sit for 30, 40 days and they pop. And then other ones, you know, they come on the market and they have multiple offers in two or three days and they’re gone. And when I say multiple offers, I mean, it’s the days of like back during COVID.

I joke with my sellers when I walk through their house is like it was the best time ever to be a realtor. You know, we put the house on the market. I put a sign in the yard and we would have 52 showings, 48 offers.

You were getting 60,000 above asking with no inspection, waiving the appraisal. Like those days are that hasn’t happened in quite a long time. Kind of to Rich’s point, you know, I think that rich it’s a good spin for a buyer agent to give is.

Yeah, you know what prices, you know, maybe a little bit higher and rates are up a little bit. But you have some time to think, you know, you can you can get a home inspection. You can, you know, make sure it appraises that you’re not getting ripped off, you know, and it.

So that was a good spin that you had there earlier, Rich. But I can tell you in those days, because I was preapproving people, they were making offers on multiple houses in one day. Like they would make an offer at eight o’clock at night and not get the house.

And then at 10 o’clock in the morning, they were making an offer on another house and they didn’t get that. And at four o’clock in the afternoon, they were making an offer on a third house. And I would like shake my head.

I tell my wife, you know, how in the world can you make a decision to buy three different houses in a 24 hour time span that you’re going to live for the next 10 or 15 or 20 years of your life? Yeah, that was that was the market then. And you had no time to think and you just had to make an offer and you just needed a roof over your head. And that was that was the mentality.

Yeah. And maybe a good segue to hand to Jaime for the buyer side. I mean, how many buyers did you have that just like dropped out because they got outbid 25, 30 times? I mean, as a listing agent, I was like a genius because everything sold in 10 minutes.

But as the buyer agent, how different is it now than it was? And you started 2018, I think 2019. How different is it now? Yeah, it went from, you know, having home warranties and home inspections and remedies and negotiating to, hey, we got 30 offers. Put your best foot forward.

And then, you know, the advice to the buyer was, you know, if we lost the offer, like, yeah, there was 30 offers. Only one of them could win. And, you know, I had buyers that win, you know, bids like that.

But your advice to them is essentially based on what the other side, the agent’s telling you. And, you know, again, 10, 20, 30 different offers. Only one of them can win it.

And typically, you know, the top three, four offers are doing crazy things to try to buy a house. You know, and a lot of those people had missed out on a few houses. So then, you know, when they find another one they really like and want to buy, they’re going crazy.

They’re going, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50, $60,000 over. And the appraisal gap, you know, that’s, I guess I think that would be the best way to summarize that entire era was the appraisal gaps. Where, well, the bank thinks it’s only worth $300,000.

You’re offering $350,000. You’ve got to come $50,000 out of pocket or you aren’t getting the house. You know, that would eliminate a lot of first-time buyers that didn’t have $50,000 sitting around.

Right, on top of closing costs, on top of down payment. You know, you saved up for, you know, 5, 10 years, whatever it is for a house. But didn’t expect that to be part of the equation.

You know, today, again, that’s not what we’re seeing. You can put the home warranty in. You can put the home inspection and remedy in.

You can negotiate after the home inspection if the roof is 12 years old and has leaks around the hat vents. Or whatever it is, you know, flashing or, you know, whatever it is. So, you know, real estate agents have to do their jobs again.

That’s kind of the way I would put it. You know, got to negotiate, got to, you know, things wrong if you’re on the buy side. And buyers are coming back into the market.

I think, you know, people settle into, you know, high 5, 6% interest rates after what were mid-sixes. People have settled into it here after a few weeks and getting towards the end of summer. I mean, it’s just a reality.

If you want to buy a house, that’s what the interest rate is. Yeah, I have a number of buyers that are out there looking now. And again, I appreciate it.

I have new buyers that looked last weekend. You know, a few of them, like you said, Jay, set up showings on Thursday for a Saturday. And out of the six we had set up, two of them fell on the market or fell on the contract within 48 hours.

It’s just like those are probably pretty decent ones. And then, you know, two of them had been on the market over 60 days. And one of them kind of in the middle.

And, you know, buyers at the end of all the showings were just like, well, we’re going to go home and think about it. It’s like, yeah, you have time to, in some cases. In a lot of cases, you know, they’re still the ones going pretty quickly.

But it isn’t anywhere close to, yeah, $20,000, $30,000 over asking price. And sellers are just happy, I think, to get their house sold in some scenarios. I am.

You know, Jaysen. Go ahead. Go ahead.

I was just going to say Jaysen had a great point. Because if you’re a first-time homebuyer and you only have 3% or 5% down, you’ve got that minimum down payment, you want to buy now. You don’t want to buy when everybody’s back in the market if rates were to drop.

You want to buy now. Because if you don’t have the money to cover an appraisal gap and this market gets hot again, you’re nosed out. And I had several, several clients who just could not buy a house back in those days that we’re talking about.

I am seeing a couple of listings go multiple offer. I just closed one here a couple of days ago. Multiple offer.

We were $15,000 over our asking price. We did get a full appraisal gap from the buyer. And I think we talked about this last week because I got a note from our friend Mark Calvary who watches these videos.

I had this appraisal came in $8,000 short. And so, you know, we show up at the closing table and the seller is like, I can’t believe you suggested getting the appraisal gap. Because it saved them $8,000 out of their pocket.

Because the buyer ended up bringing that $8,000. I just did another deal. And one of the deals I was talking about last week with the low appraisal gap FHA deal.

And the FHA appraisal sticks with the property for 90 days. And so I did a little research. It’s like, okay, we got to find a conventional buyer.

We got to find a cash buyer. Or this particular property sits right on the outskirts of Marion. And we could go USDA.

And, of course, USDA, no down payment. So the person who is having to bring 3.5% on the FHA deal could now switch that money into the lower appraisal to make up the difference. And so now we’re back in contract.

So, I mean, that’s one of the reasons why you hire a group like us is we’ve seen a lot of things. You know, I can tell you I’ve not seen it all. I’m still learning.

Even the old dog, I’m still learning. And that’s what we do. We’re problem solvers.

We figure out ways to get deals done. And that’s what we do very good. You got a guy doing mortgages now with Highlands for 28 years, 29 years.

I’m 27 years into it. Jay’s 20 years into it almost now. Jaime, well, you’re 21 going on, aren’t you now? Yeah, you just had that big birthday.

Jaime, you’re eight years into it, but you got the experience sitting behind you to ask questions and help. It’s a good day here at Sell for 1% and Highlands Mortgage. Now on podcasting.

Like and subscribe. That’s your outro cue there, Jaime. You’re all broken up.

Thank God this has become a podcast and no one has to look at this video of your choppy face with your Delaware Internet connection. I like when Jay does the outros, honestly. Here’s my outros.

I reminisce about COVID and bidding wars. I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them. Back to being a realtor full time.

Guys, thanks for watching. Hit like if you like me. Hit subscribe if you like Dad.

We’ll see who has more likes and subscribes. Leave a comment if you like Richard. If you like Jaime, give him a call.

You can reach Jaime at 614-493-8541. Guys, thank you for watching. Have a great day.

We’ll see you next week with another update on world events, Iran, Richard’s favorite conflict in the history of the world, and interest rates. Thank you all. Have a great day.

Thanks for watching.