The American Action Forum and The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business hosted a panel discussion with housing experts and a keynote speech in Columbus, Ohio today. The event, “The U.S. Housing Market: Lessons from Ohio,” coincided with the release of a Forum paper showing that the pursuit of job and wage growth should be the focus of policymakers. The paper, “Foreclosures & the Housing Market Recovery: Focus on Ohio,” also shows that trying to prevent foreclosures can also prevent markets from healing. Watch video from the eventhere.

 

David Goodman, Ohio Director of Commerce and Chairman of the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, emphasized the steps the state has taken to grow the economy. While house prices around the state fell with the rest of the country during the housing crisis, Ohio’s housing market really suffered because of jobs lost during the economic crisis. Unemployment in the state recently however has fallen to 7.2 percent, a percentage point lower than the U.S. average. Goodman attributed the state “being ahead of the curve” to keeping taxes low, paring back burdensome regulations, and growing the manufacturing sector.

 

The panel discussion included Zahi Ben-David, a professor at OSU’s Fisher College and a housing market expert, as well as Mark Willis from NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. The panelists, moderated by Jim Weiker of the Columbus Dispatch, agreed that stronger economic growth would aid the housing recovery, though issues remain about the future of housing finance.

 

Still, this event and our event in Las Vegas have shown that each market is different. The problems that exist in Columbus, in fact, are different even than those that exist in Cleveland; their recoveries have been different. In fact, Dr. Ben-David did not expect some housing markets to reach their pre-bust peak for 15 to 20 years. Yet the entire country can benefit from stronger growth in jobs and incomes. Clearing foreclosures from the market is also in an important step that while painful can speed up the recovery.