Is Columbus a Buyer’s Market or a Seller’s Market?

The gang from Sell for 1 Percent breaks down the Central Ohio market, where active inventory has climbed to 6,658 homes for sale. While the general consensus points to a balanced market, the reality on the ground is hyperlocal, with areas like London leaning towards buyers while high-demand spots like Dublin remain a seller’s market. For Columbus-area buyers, this means more leverage and time to negotiate things like closing costs, while sellers must price their homes correctly for a market where the average days on market has stretched to 75 days.

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Full Transcript

Hello there, everyone. Jaime with Sell for 1 Percent Realtors. Hey, Jaime.

As usual. I thought you could try to figure out how slow you could say that. Hello.

October 16th, 2026 is the date. Rates are going up. Inventory’s going up.

Inflation’s going up. The whole world’s falling down around us. We are here to give you guys a real estate market update for Central Ohio.

Joined, as usual, by the gang. Jaysen Barlow, Dave Barlow, here at Sell for 1 Percent. And Rich Cercone at Highlands Mortgage.

If you’re looking to get refinanced or get a loan to buy a house, a mortgage, give Rich a call. He has all the knowledge in the world. 30 years in the business.

And, Rich, what are you seeing October 16th, 2026? Well, Jaime, actually, I’ve got a sliver of good news, actually, in the sea of negative news that I’ve imparted in the last six weeks or so. But, actually, interest rates have gone down a little bit this week. We’ve actually seen the 10-year Treasury, which was last week up in the mid-530s, it’s currently, last time I looked this morning, 508.

So we’ve seen a retreat in the 10-year Treasury. That’s led to a little bit of a retreat in mortgage rates. Now, I don’t mean over 2 percent or anything, but, you know, we were pushing over 8.

Now we’re pushing more towards the 7.5 range. So we have seen a modulation in rates a little bit, which is great news. I think it’s led mostly a couple of factors.

First of all, the expectation that the Fed is going to raise rates has cooled a little bit with the markets over the last couple weeks. They don’t as strongly believe the Fed will raise rates in the upcoming meeting or two. We have seen inflation numbers continue to be high.

CPI and PPI came out this week hotter than expected, which is not good news for interest rates. However, a lot of it, they feel, was led by the higher-priced gas. Hopefully we can get this conflict under control, come down.

And then there’s been a flight to quality, a flight to safety in the bond market out of tech stocks. If you look at your 401K, the NASDAQ has not done well this week. Money has moved out of AI and out of tech stocks, and the flight to safety is into the bond market.

So all those things are leading to slightly lower interest rates. For the folks out there, time to go out and buy a house. I agree.

Hopefully when AI crashes, much to Dad’s chagrin, that it’ll bring lower interest rates, much to Dad’s happiness. I think the interest rates would be everybody’s happiness. All of our sellers, all of our buyers, everybody.

Actually, Dave is actually an AI figurine back there, in case you guys were not aware. He’s actually in Cabo or somewhere like that, but he’s got his AI bot talking for him here. And so if the AI bubble really crashed, Dave will just go.

There you go. I’ll start to glitch. That’s true.

He programmed it to be as stubborn as he is in reality. Yeah. As I get beat up over a $1 bet that you actually lost, but somehow I paid off.

Don’t worry. Don’t worry, Dad. You’ll get your dollar.

I don’t understand all this, but it is what it is. I’m turning 65 in a little more than a month, Rich. And so I spent the day yesterday with my insurance guy trying to figure out my Medicare plan that I want to get onto and this and that and all the other stuff.

So old age is creeping up on me. Yeah. I can relate, Dave.

Yeah. And you know what the fun part is? Jay, you’re muted. The fun part is is that one of these days Jaysen and Jaime will be having the same conversation and they’ll be thinking, oh, Pops was just right.

He was right. Sorry. Did you say something? No response.

I wish I read about what? To argue about a dollar bet. I’m not arguing about anything. Jaime.

Jaime, take it away. As Jaysen tears down AI wearing his AI glasses. I just use these for the speakers.

When you’re talking, I can listen to podcasts. I see. No one knows.

Well, we got that all settled. Interest rates coming down. That’s the good news.

Hopefully this election gets over here in a couple. Well, we’ll get over here in a couple. What, three weeks, two and a half weeks? Not so fast, my friend.

Could have foreign interference. Ooh. It could drag on for quite a long time.

There you go. We’ll be counting votes into February, March. Yeah.

I mean, it’s so bad. I think I mentioned it last week. It’s so bad that my kids are noticing it, Lino.

It’s like every other commercial. Well, but they’re advertising like on the Cartoon Network, you know, that your kids are watching, you know, their favorite show. It’s like they’re nine and 10.

Well, it’s like, you know, commercial one, you know, John Husted is a piece of crap. You know, commercial two, John Husted is the most glorious politician of all time. And then, you know, Harvard is watching it laughing.

She’s like, what is going on? No, you know, the elections, I mean, like, rates have come down. I updated my sellers a couple days ago and was going through and saw the rates were coming down. But this week is slower, at least for me, on showings than about two weeks ago.

And so we’ll see what happens this weekend. Hopefully it picks back up a little bit. The inventory levels continue to climb.

We are at 6,658 as we record this video. We are on the march to 7,000. We will see if we get there.

I don’t know we’ll get there before end of the year, but it’s possible. Usually after the elections, you know, we expect to see the market kind of open back up. So I would expect it won’t get quite that high, but I would say coin flip right now if we get to 7,000.

The number of homes that are new on the market in the last week, 963, and less than 500 in contract. So that’s where that inventory keeps growing. We’re not having a huge spike of new listings, but we are seeing less homes go into contract.

And so that’s where that inventory is building up week after week, you know, slowly but surely. And the average days on market this week has climbed up to 75, a number that was unheard of during COVID. Homes back then sold in 75 hours.

Now they’re selling in 75 days. But you throw all the high and the low and that median is about 50. And, you know, for some perspective, you know, when I was starting as a young buck being trained by my dear old dad who taught me everything I know and is always right, those homes back then, I mean, dad’s marketing campaigns were, I’ll sell your house in 90 days or less guaranteed.

90 days was fast back in 2004, 5, 6, 7. So we’re, you know, keeping things in perspective, 50 days really isn’t too bad. You’re under two months.

So not the end of the world. Could it be better? Could it be worse? Oh, buddy, you better believe it. I come from the hot home days.

And the nice thing is if you take 75 days to get in contract, Rich will close your loan in five days. So it’ll only be 80. Whoa.

That’s pretty quick. Yeah. I’m actually.

You’re about two weeks. Is that right? We can go faster in two weeks. You just got to know what buttons to push on Rich.

That’s what Jaysen says about me. There you go. I would appreciate three weeks.

Jaime, on the buyer’s side, do you concur? Yeah. I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but yeah, I mean, I would concur. Buyers have more options.

You don’t have to rush into anything. You have time to really analyze the deal. You know, look at what your mortgage payment’s going to be and negotiate things like closing costs.

I’m seeing a lot of home warranties renegotiating at the inspection period and remedy period. So I think, you know, buyers have, I wouldn’t call it a buyer’s market, but they definitely have more leverage than they’ve had in years. So, you know, now’s the time to make a move.

There is going to be some pretty good deals out there to find and capture that, you know, you can really focus more on your monthly mortgage payment and financing end of it. Then, you know, two, three years ago where you had to rush into something and didn’t have a ton of time to analyze the deal. Now you have, you have a little bit of breathing room can look through the deal, consider it carefully.

And good deal doesn’t just mean a, you know, cheaper house that doesn’t have, you know, the updates you’re looking for. As I think a lot of sellers are finding out, you know, buyers are still picky. They still want things updated, upgraded.

If they’re going to spend that kind of money, they want a finished product. So I think the deals are out there. So question for, I guess, all three of you start with you, Jay.

Is it a seller market or a buyer market? I think it really depends on location and price. So, you know, I got a listing that’s out in the London area and when I’m analyzing that area, it’s right on the edge of being a buyer’s market there. You know, now, like we talked last week, if you’re Dublin and you’re 700,000, well, the sellers have a lot more power there, you know? So I think, I really think it’s, it’s, you know, the old saying is real estate is local.

And I think that we’re seeing that more so than ever in a general statement, I would say it’s, it’s balanced, but still sellers slight advantage would be my overall opinion. Your thought, buyer market, seller market. Again, I don’t want to sound like a broken record here.

I would say it’s balanced. Be a broken record. You would say balanced.

I would say pretty balanced market. I think, you know, again, location and the finishes on a home. Again, if it’s, as you call it, pottery barn and everything is, is done up, you know, the, and there it’s priced correctly.

Those homes can still sell pretty quickly. And like Jay said, locally, you know, I see houses in Lancaster sign pretty quickly. That aren’t necessarily updated to the gills.

So just, you know, price correctly. So, I mean, I think it’s pretty, pretty balanced at the moment. And rich on, I mean, Jaime works both buyer, mostly buyers does have sellers.

Jaysen does mostly sellers and has a few buyers. You basically are just dealing with all buyers, but what are you hearing from your clientele buyer market seller market? Well, I’ll give you one anecdotal story. This week I had a young couple who I’ve done a couple of different.

They bought a couple of homes through me over the years and they wanted to move up to a 700,000 house. Somewhere in the 700’s in Westerville. And they were all 700 was fine.

No problem with that price. But as we went through and I said, okay, your payment’s going to be, I think it was like 4750, something like that a month for a monthly payment with their down payment considering all that I said, do you want me to send a preapproval? And she said, Oh, no, no, no, no, no. We won’t be buying a house with a payment like that.

Our payment right now is $1,900. So, so I, I think that in terms of the buyers, I think they don’t find the price. They just don’t like the payment kind of like when you go into buy a car and they, they ask you what payment do you want? I think it’s house right now.

And the interest rates are driving these payments. If this was a lower interest rate market, this payment would be in the two thousands and instead it’s in the forest. And that’s driving, that’s driving the buyers to be hesitant, which is making it more of a less of a seller’s market, more of a buyer’s market from my standpoint.

But again, I don’t deal with it as much as you guys do. Right. Yeah.

It’s just, I think it’s more just quickly balanced. I think that the sellers that are priced correctly for what they are, the house is selling. And on the opposite side for buyers, a house that is priced correctly for what it is, it’s going to sell.

And so that’s why I think it’s balanced. I don’t know, Jay, you look at those numbers a lot more than I do. What is now considered, you know, days on market you said was 75, but, you know, for that average equilibrium, what is that number as far as days on market? Is it, I think it used to be right around 90 days, but.

What do you mean? I don’t understand you mean by equal supply, you know, that we have enough coming onto the market to kind of balance the market for, you know, right now, I think you said earlier that we have fewer homes going into contract. So inventory is growing some. So that would maybe tip it towards a buyer’s market a little bit.

What I’ve always, and what I look at is, you know, months, months of supply, right. You know, a three month supply is considered to be balanced out 90 days. Yeah.

Now typically we sell 3,300 homes, but I don’t know. Well, we’re going to find out, you know, how many were closing. I mean, and part of the problem is, this is all like in real time.

And, you know, so we’re seeing, yeah, in contracts are slowing up, but then, you know, like going the next step deeper, you know, 180 homes came back on the market. And so, you know, like how many are going to actually close, you know, it takes three to four weeks typically to close them. So, you know, are we going to, are we going to close? If we’re doing 500 a week minus say 150 back on the market a week, that’s 350 a week.

So that puts us at 1,400 a month. I mean, that seems awfully low for number of closings. So we’ll see if that bears out in 30 days from now or if we’re selling more.

In the last week, we closed 601. But, again, that is trailing from 30 days ago, which was, you know, a different market. Right, but that number has been around 2,500.

Yeah, that number has been around 750. So 600 is way off. I mean, you’re 20%.

That’s in a week now. Well, that’s what I’m talking about because I do my weekly newsletter, and typically that close is around 750 or thereabouts. So at 601 or whatever you just said, that’s pretty short, which is what we’ve kind of seen over the past month with, you know, again, inventory building, fewer contracts means fewer closings in the future.

Yeah, and if you maintain that 600 closing number a week, then you’re going to be around 2,500 in a month. Right. And then times three months supply is 7,500 listings.

So, again, we’re still overall market-wide still technically a seller’s market. But, again, you go out to different areas. Well, there’s way more supply, so it changes location to location.

Yep, very interesting. All right, fellas, great conversation. Thank you.

A lot of in-depth information, not too much tomfoolery this week. Which is the way Jaysen likes it. He wants to be serious about it.

I’m very serious. Let’s be serious. I’m very serious.

We don’t have any – this is a no fun zone. As we’re coaching the kids, I think about that scene from Remember the Titans when he’s yelling at the quarterback, he’s like, are you having fun? Zero fun, sir. Football is zero fun, sir.

That’s right. Real estate is no fun. And if you would like to have some fun, we’ll give Dave a call.

Dave likes to have fun. Please. His number is below on the screen.

We’ll have a fun conversation. Direct all your complaints to Dave. If you’re looking to buy a home, give Jaime a call.

If you need to sell a house, give me a call. If you need to refinance your 2% rate to a 7.5%, give Rich a call. Oh, boy.

I’d be more than happy to help you. If you need to close in eight days, call Rich. There you go.

If Rich can’t do it, no one can. Please like and subscribe. Leave a five-star review on the podcast channels.

Help people find us. And if you know anybody thinking about selling a house, tell them about us at Sell for 1%. We’ll save them thousands of dollars in commissions.

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We are selling more homes than the average agent is. So, now is the time when you want somebody with some experience. And while the 1% gets our foot in the door, we do 200, 300 of these transactions a year, where most agents are doing five or six.

That sounds unbelievable. Most agents are doing zero. We have the know-how.

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Thanks for watching. See you next week, everybody.