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“Please remember that Real Estate is LOCAL”

In a post titled “Please remember that Real Estate is LOCAL” China Moon Crowell. a real estate agent from the Madison Wisconsin area pointed out a New York Times article that I missed. I missed the article in “The Nation” because it failed to mention Columbus Ohio among the college towns. “College Towns  Escape the Pain.”

OK Columbus is a bit big to call a college town but Coldwell Banker referred to Columbus as a college town last year. OSU is super sized… maybe that makes Columbus a super sized college town…Or just Columbus size as the 15th largest US city.

Of course Columbus Ohio would not be mentioned in this New York Times article was about small cities:

“The list of metropolitan areas with the smallest percentage of high-cost home loans is dominated by small cities with big colleges, including Ithaca, N.Y.; Iowa City; Madison, Wis.; Morgantown, W.V.; and State College, Pa.”

Bruce Katz with the Brookings Institution (Katz loomed large in the recent Columbus Dispatch article about Ohio’s big cities….) is quoted in the New York Times article:

“Where subprimes are turning up is in hot markets, but also in places like Cleveland and Detroit,” Mr. Katz said. “College towns are more stable places in some respects. If you make between $75,000 and $125,000 in these places, you can get into a pretty decent home and still have very reasonable ratios.”

In one of the audio comments in the Columbus Dispatch series Katz talked about the Ohio Brain Drain and mentioned Madison Wisconsin as a hot place for young, educated people. He said Ohio’s cities are losing young educated people to cities in the southwest and southeast US and then mentioned Chicago, Minneapolis and Madison.

Columbus is the third most stable housing market in the country according to Forbes.com and Moody’s Economy.com I think that study / article looked at bigger cities so you won’t see the Madison, State College PA, Iowa City size cities on that list.

Look at the Multimedia map in the November 4, 2007 New York Times article.

National average 29% of loans are subprime…

Look at Central Ohio…

Franklin county 29%
Delaware county 17%

Cleveland area

Cuyahoga County is 36%
Lake County is 24%
Geuga County is only 16%

Cincinnati area

Hamilton County is only 28%

Columbus as a college town:

Nov. 6, 2006 - College Towns Columbus Ohio on Discover Columbus

How expensive is Columbus in comparison to the small cities that the New York Times wrote about… this is last year, 2006 info from the Coldwell Banker table, article, if you want to see how we compared to other college towns like Ann Arbor MI, Evanston IL use the link above to Discover Columbus:

“Columbus, Ohio, home to Bowl Series Championship leader Ohio State University, was number 62 on the affordability ranking at $251,364, approximately $108,000 less than the national average of $359,779 for the 119 studied college markets.

Iowa - Iowa City, IA 2006 - Avg. Price $208,691

Ohio State - Columbus, OH 2006 - Avg. Price $251,364

Wisconsin - Madison, WI 2006 - Avg. Price $279,500

Penn State - State College, PA 2006 - Avg. Price $306,950″

Thanks to China Moon Crowell (what a great name) for bringing the New York Times article to my attention… even if the New York Times article does not mention Columbus. Real estate really is local.

The “Soup Nazi” is coming to downtown Columbus, at corner of Broad and High Streets.  The Original Soup Man inspired the Seinfeld episode about the Soup Nazi.  Read all about it in the Columbus Business First in  ‘Soup Nazi’ to open shop at Broad & High.  

It is the first Original Soup Man restaurant in Ohio.

“It will begin at the corner of 4th and Gay and extend east toward the Columbus College of Art and Design….” 

Take a walk around one neighborhood northeast of Capital Square online on the neighborhoodlaunch.com . The site is Edwards Companies  (Duffy Homes Inc., Eclipse Real Estate Group and Multicon Construction)  launch of a new seven acre neighborhood in downtown Columbus.  Take a walk through a home online… First watch parking lots disappear and be replaced by a neighborhood with green space, seven parks.   Pricing will be from $140,000 to $650,000.

According to an article in Columbus Business First by Brian Ball  “Gay St. project teams up styles to become neighborhood” :

 ”The mix of townhouse styles is what you see in Chicago’s Gold Coast and Georgetown (section of Washington, D.C.) or Boston and Philadelphia. That’s what makes it seem more like a neighborhood than a project.” 

The first condos in the neighborhood will be completed in January 2008. 

The developers looked at the history of the area.  The neighborhood will be a mixture of traditional (but not formal) style and contemporary.  Two architect firms are involved,  
 Brian Kent Jones Architects Inc. for the traditional and Lupton Rausch Architects Inc. for the contemporary homes. 

“Jewish chorus to sing in mall atrium” was in This Week News in late November.  The Jewish Choir will sing in the Worthington Square Mall atrium at 2:00 PM on Sunday December 16, 2007.  This Week News said of the Koleinu Choir:

“”KOLEINU, Hebrew for “Our Voice,” was founded in 1992 by Cantor Jack Chomsky of Congregation Tifereth Israel and Cantor Vicki Axe, then of Temple Israel. The chorus is co-directed by Chomsky and Gail Rose. “

The Worthington Square Mall ( map link) Route 23 (High Street)  and W. Wilson Bridge Road.



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Columbus is not walkable according to a study just published by the Brookings Institution. As one of the Top 30 US Metropolitan areas Columbus was ranked 19th according to an article in Columbus Business First. “Columbus near bottom of walkability survey” which says the Short North is the only walkable neighborhood in Columbus.

Columbus did better than Cincinnati and Cleveland which are 28th and 29th on the list of US cities.

Here’s a link to the info on the Brookings Institution site:

Footloose and Fancy Free: A Field Survey of Walkable Urban Places in the Top 30 U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Christopher B. Leinberger the author of the study is also the author of a just published book on the subject:

The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream, the publishers write up says:

“Americans are voting with their feet to abandon strip malls and suburban sprawl, embracing instead a new type of community where they can live, work, shop, and play within easy walking distance. In The Option of Urbanism visionary developer and strategist Christopher B. Leinberger explains why government policies have tilted the playing field toward one form of development over the last sixty years: the drivable suburb. Rooted in the driving forces of the economy-car manufacturing and the oil industry-this type of growth has fostered the decline of community, contributed to urban decay, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and contributed to the rise in obesity and asthma.”

Copyright 2007 Discover Columbus and Maureen McCabe

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Above was originally posted on Discover Columbus, my RealTown blog  on December 9, 2007.