Cleveland Real Estate News

The PD alerted me to the fact that The Census Bureau has released statistics for 2007 in this article by Rich Exner. h/t to their chart of NE Ohio, Ohio and National stat comparisons.  The PD points out that the median age of people who live in Cleveland (and also Cuyahoga County) are about 40 years old. (39.9% for Cleveland and 40.1% for Cuyahoga County).  The National median age was 36.7, a tad younger, but close.

This surprised me, I thought there would be more of a gap on median household incomes:

Cleveland – $48,227

Cuyahoga County – $44,358

Ohio  Overall – $47,898

US Median – $50,760

Another surprise (and maybe because I haven’t really looked specifically at these stats before) is the age of our housing stock. So let’s look at housing issues. 68.3% of Clevelanders own their homes. 62.2% of Cuyahoga Co residents own their homes.  69.7% of Ohioans own their homes; and the Nat’l figure is 67.2%. However, if you look at the ‘homes built prior to 1959′ stat and add it to ‘homes built prior to 1939,’ 50.7% of our housing stock was built before 1959.

The surprise for me is the age of our housing stock.  I thought for sure it would be closer to 40% of the homes in Cleveland being built before 1939.  Not true. Here is the breakdown:

23.1% of homes in Cleveland were built before 1939. In actuality, the Cuyhoga figure is higher: 28.6%.  Ohio as a whole figures show 20.6% of the housing stock was built before 1939. The Nat’l figure for homes of this age is 14%.  So if you think we live in an area with homes older than some other places around the country, you’d be correct.  

This probably won’t surprise you; 82.1% of Clevelanders commute/drive to work alone.  The Nat’l average is not much different but slightly better: 76.1%.  The public transportation figures Nationally surprised me. 4.2% of Clevelanders take public transportation to work. Nationally that figure is only slightly higher, 4.9%. It seems much lower than I expected, I thought it would be closer to 9% Nationally, especially when you look at areas like Manhattan or Washington DC.

3.4% of Clevelanders work at home. 4.1% for the National figures. The categories they used for commuting were public transportation, waking, driving alone, carpooling and ‘other means’.

7.3% of us carpool as opposed to 10.4% Nationally. (This a figure we could increase without spending money, no?)  And maybe the figure will be up for 2008. What is ‘other means?’  Biking? Where do trains fall into this picture, public transportation or ‘other means?’ I’ll have to see what I can glean.  If you know the answer, please let me know.

89.4% of Clevelanders used a car, in one form or another, to get to work in 2007. The public transportation figures are for 2007.  I expect the numbers will climb a bit for 2008. 

Stuart Mease posted a blog on moving habits of Americans. He apparently sifted through Nat’l data and found that 10% of Americans move each year. He claims that even a 3% change/move rate (and he means out of an area not from house to house within an area) can affect a location’s economy.

Cuyahoga County lost about 7% of it’s population in 2007. 

I’ll close out with population figures from 2007. Cuyahoga County: 1,295,958. WIthin the City of Cleveland: 2,096,471; Ohio: 11,466,917; The United States: 301,621,159.

By the way, since we are already three quarters of the way through 2008, I went to the Census Bureau site to check a few things out. That ’301′ figure for the U.S. population is now  305,243,977

Peace Out – 3C