Ohio Housing Market Shifting Toward Buyers — Here's Where

The typical home in Ohio is now worth $255,750 — up from $247,286 a year ago. Prices are still climbing. But there are a lot more homes for sale right now — active listings are up 10% from last year. Buyer demand hasn't kept pace with the new supply.

Put simply: supply is outpacing demand. That's a reversal from the past several years, when demand outpaced supply. And it's turning a growing number of Ohio markets from seller's markets into buyer's markets. This builds on what I found back in July — Ohio price cuts just hit a 7-year high.

Buyers Are Gaining Ground in Ohio

One of the easiest ways to tell if buyers or sellers have the advantage is comparing how many buyers are active in the market to how many sellers are. I track this using the pending ratio — pending listings divided by active listings — pulled from Realtor.com data for all 88 Ohio counties. The number of homes going under contract tells you how many buyers are in the game. The number of homes for sale tells you how many sellers are in the game.

When buyers outnumber sellers, sellers have the advantage. When sellers outnumber buyers, buyers do.

Back in 2016, sellers badly outnumbered buyers — for roughly every 10 homes for sale, only about 4 were finding a buyer. Demand kept building through 2019, up to about 7 out of every 10. Then 2020 hit and everything flipped. Active listings collapsed while buyer demand stayed strong. For the first time, buyers outnumbered sellers.

By 2021 — the peak — there were about 16 buyers for every 10 homes for sale. That's when prices took off, jumping from $158,000 in 2019 to $198,000 by 2021, according to Zillow. Since that peak, the trend has moved the other way every single year. By 2024, buyers and sellers were roughly even. Today it's about 8 buyers for every 10 sellers — the weakest buyer turnout since before the pandemic, five straight years of decline.

Ohio Buyers Are Gaining Leverage in the State's Biggest Counties

It's not just the small counties. Ohio's ten most populated counties — where most of the state actually lives — have all shifted toward buyers since 2021.

Every one of these counties had more buyers than sellers back in 2021. Today, every one of them has more sellers than buyers — except Stark, which is sitting almost dead even. Butler County had the biggest swing — nearly three buyers for every seller in 2021, down to less than one buyer per seller today. That's Cincinnati's northern suburbs, one of the fastest-growing areas in Ohio over the last five years. U.S. Census migration data confirms southwest Ohio has seen consistent population inflows.

Want to see exactly where your county stands? Check the full breakdown on my Ohio housing data page.

Where Buyers Still Outnumber Sellers

A dozen Ohio counties haven't flipped. Buyers still outnumber sellers there — and almost all of them are in the same two corners of the state.

Six of them — Medina, Portage, Wayne, Tuscarawas, Stark, and Geauga — sit in Northeast Ohio, stretching from the Cleveland-Akron area down through Amish country. The rest — Wood, Hancock, Defiance, Henry, Auglaize — cluster in Northwest Ohio around Toledo and Lima. Demand in these two regions has held up better than almost anywhere else in the state. See how every county stacks up on the data page.

What This Means If You're Buying or Selling in Ohio Right Now

If You're Buying

Head to my Ohio housing data page and look up the pending ratio for your county — or better yet, your specific ZIP code. Check the trend: is it going up or down?

• Ratio near or above 1.0 — buyers still outnumber sellers. That's a seller's market. You can still negotiate, but expect to pay close to asking.
• Ratio below 1.0, and dropping — sellers outnumber buyers. That's a buyer's market. Expect more listings to choose from, less competition, and more room to negotiate on price, repairs, or timeline.

If You're Selling

Same first step — look up your ZIP code's pending ratio on my Ohio housing data page.

• Ratio near or above 1.0 — you have leverage. Expect decent buyer interest and multiple offers, as long as you price it strategically. An overpriced home still won't sell, no matter how strong the market.
• Ratio below 1.0, and dropping — expect more competition from other sellers and more negotiating pressure from buyers. Pricing it right from day one matters more than it did two years ago.

This data is a compass, not an exact coordinate. County and ZIP-level numbers get you close, but hyperlocal analysis is what actually gets it right. A specific street, a specific school district, even a specific block can behave differently than the ZIP code average.

That's where working with a professional realtor matters — someone who can dial in exactly what to expect in your situation. The conversation's free — reach out anytime.