HOUSINGNEWS REPORT
STATE SPOTLIGHT
CLEVELAND AREA HOME PRICES ON WINNING STREAK Median YoY Pct Change Median Home Sales Price
$160,000
50%
40%
$140,000
It’s a tale of two cities. There are areas that are doing extremely well. There are areas that are not doing well.”
30%
$120,000
20%
$100,000
10%
$80,000
0%
$60,000
-10%
$40,000
-20%
$20,000
-30%
$0
-40%
Jim Rokakis Vice President, Western Reserve Land Conservancy
worth — as of the third quarter of 2016, the third highest among 88 major metro areas nationwide and behind only Las Vegas and nearby Akron. Additionally Cleveland’s vacancy rate is the sixth highest in the nation among 82 metro areas with at least 200,000 people, according to an analysis of real property and postal data by ATTOM. “It’s a tale of two cities,” said Jim Rokakis, former county treasurer with Cuyahoga County, the central county in the metro area where the city of Cleveland is located. “There are areas that are doing extremely well. There are areas that are not doing well.” The Fight Against Blight As vice president of the Western Reserve Land Conservancy , Rokakis now helps lead the charge in removing
“The significance is where they are located. Because the 7,500 that are worse off tend to be in the east side neighborhoods that are predominantly African-American and the close-in suburbs on the east side that are heavily African-American,” said Ford, who chairs a countywide housing policy group involving more than 20 agencies that has been meeting monthly over the past 11 years to address foreclosure, blight and abandonment challenges in Cleveland. “I view myself as part of a market recovery coalition,” Ford explained. “We have housing market recovery in the outer suburbs and a handful of the hottest inner city areas. But those are the exceptions. … How do we deal with the remaining vestiges of the foreclosure crisis? … The tsunami wave receded but it
blight resulting from vacant, abandoned properties still scattered across the city.
“We had this huge oversupply of housing. We have focused on removing a lot of this housing,” said Rokakis, who noted that hundreds of millions of dollars from various sources, including the foreclosure robo-signing settlement, U.S. Treasury Hardest Hit Fund and Cuyahoga County, has been spent to demolish vacant homes across the region. “And we’ve done it. …We’ve taken down 11,000 already (in the city of Cleveland alone).” About 15,000 vacant structures still remain across all of Cuyahoga County, with about half of them requiring demo, according to Frank Ford, senior policy advisor with the Western Reserve Land Conservancy.
ATTOM Data Solutions • P17
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