Total new-home closings: 4,362
Population: 2,149,449
The good: Overall market share of single-family detached homes rose in early 2015.
The bad: Steep drop offs in closings year over year in February and March 2015 parallel price increases.
The bottom line: While single-family detached builders may have grabbed some additional market share, they’ll need to contend with rising prices and a market that showed overall weakening in early 2015.
While Cincinnati closed out strong in 2014, the early 2015 market slowed in everything but pricing. Prices rose by 12% year over year in January and 16.2% in February, as the number of new-home closings fell year over year by 61.5% and 64%, respectively. Meanwhile, the overall market share for new homes was cut in less than half over the same period, from 2.3% to 1%, not helping matters for builders. If there’s any good news from early 2015, it’s that the overall market share among single-family detached homes rose from 82% in February 2014 to 94.4% in February 2015. Those increases, however, will need to contend with square footage decreases of 20.2% year over year. Year-to-date single-family permits were down by 4% year over year in March, possibly as a consequence of early indicators.
