What's Your House Worth? - Things That Affect YOU - Ohioans for Responsible Rural Development

On March 28, 2010, the Columbus Dispatch devoted its front-page story to the dramatic fall in residential property values in Central Ohio from 2005 to 2009.  This article listed the 53 Metropolitan areas in the vicinity of Columbus with comparisons of their 2005 and 2009 average home selling prices and the percentages of declines between those years.  Those decreases are stunning.  The worse hit were the “newly developed suburban areas“, according to the Dispatch.

The article further reveals the reason for such losses in home values in 51 of those 53 districts: the irrational over-development of residential construction, fueled by overly optimistic projections of home values increases, and mortgage lending devoid of any sound financial analyses on borrowers’ abilities to repay their loans.  As those many new homeowners began to default on their mortgages they abandoned and neglected their homes.  As the real estate market began its free fall in 2008, so that many borrowers found themselves “upside down”, owing more on their homes than the their values, they abandoned those properties at an even faster rate and hastened the deterioration of surrounding properties.  Like a ripple in a pond, value loss extended further until entire districts were devalued wholesale.

And the two districts that did not suffer value declines, but which actually saw a net increase in value in those 4 four years?  They were well-established neighborhoods that precluded over development.

Who could have seen this coming?  Well, actually most of us in Liberty Township did in 2004 when the ill-conceived and unpopular Roshon PUD was forced on us by outside speculators and short-sighted township leaders who mocked our concerns and ignored our pleas to reject that plan as demanded by most of Liberty’s residents.

We warned them at public meetings that the PUD would guarantee a crushing burden on our infrastructure and increase our tax obligations.  We further and specifically warned of the long-term consequences of  over 240 potential subprime borrowers moving into Liberty Township, defaulting on their obligations, neglecting their properties and degrading our homes and the entire township.

But those trustees ignored our warnings.  They and the developers allied with them told us we simply didn’t understand the “complexities of the market” and that our fears were unfounded.  The PUD was approved.  Legal challenges dragged the matter on for enough time to disrupt the plans and today we can breathe sighs of relief that it never came into existence.

A measure of our outrage over this scheme was the defeat of the second high-density subdivision planned for Liberty Township: the  Nicodemus PUD on Refugee Road.  This time the citizens took direct action.  They took the decision out of the hands of their complicit trustees,  placed this PUD on the ballot and defeated with an 80% opposition.  Had these two projects not been stopped Liberty Township would  today be faced with the same ugly dilemma now being faced by all of Central Ohio and beyond with many homes in various stages of default and abandonment.

We can’t afford to let this happen again.  One day, we hope, our country’s economic prospects will brighten.  When that time comes we can expect a renewed interest in crowding our township with high-density developments for the fast and marginal profits for a few at the expense of  greater long term prosperity for everyone here.  We would like to think township leaders would always be faithful to our community’s welfare, but we would be irresponsible if we succumbed to that false assumption.  We’ve been burned before. We cannot outsource the security of our most valuable assets, our homes, on the reliance of those we elect to safeguard them.  We have the first responsibility to protect our households and our community and to do that we must stay aware of what’s going on here in Liberty Township and the actions of our township officials, and we must act when we see them failing us.