Columbus Business - All Columbus Data

After 4 previous tries, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment to allow casinos to operate in the state’s 4 largest cities. Three years after that 2009 vote, casinos began operations in Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo, with Cincinnati’s casino opening the following year in 2013.
The Columbus casino was originally supposed to be built Downtown in the Arena District. Specifically, it was supposed to be built where the Crew’s new stadium now sits. There was quite a bit of opposition to this plan given that casinos provide little to no external business traffic, and the thinking was that it would’ve caused more problems for the neighborhood than what it was worth.
So, the following year, a second statewide vote allowed for the Columbus casino to change locations to the West Side. The site that was chosen was the former Delphi plant, which had been closed since 2007. A bit of hypocrisy and irony was not lot in the demand to move the site, though. The West Side and Westland area were already in late state decline at that point, and proponents of the move claimed that the casino would help the area improve. This claim was made despite the fact that the move was initiated with the idea that it would’ve hurt the Arena District.
Still, the West Side seemed to be all for the move, as a new business- even a casino- was still better than a closed and deteriorating industrial plant.
Columbus’ Hollywood Casino opened on October 8, 2012 after about 2 years of site clearing and construction. While visions of the West Side raking in the benefits never really materialized in reality, the casino itself has gone on to great success in terms of revenue.

Initially, Cleveland- whose own Jack Casino was located in the heart of its downtown- was the highest earner by revenue in the state, Columbus passed it by 2016 and has been the state’s leader ever since.

All the casinos saw a 2020 drop as they were closed for 2 months and had hour restrictions into early 2021 due to the pandemic. Curiously, though, all of the casinos saw a huge increase in revenue over where they were in 2019. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

The Housing Market Update January 2023 data, the first of the new year, from Columbus Realtors showed that home sales and overall supply continued to decline, helping to ensure most areas saw continued increases in median prices.

Note: LSD= Local School District, CSD= City School District. In both cases, school district boundaries differ from city boundaries.

Closed sales are those sales that were completed during the month. 7 of the 10 metro counties saw declines in January

Only 9 of more than 40 local markets were up year-over-year.

Not sure what was going on in Union County in January, but it was well above all other counties for the month. The market overall continued to be up on price year-over-year, except in Pickaway County.
Overall Market Median Sales Price in January 2023: $307,289
Based on the 10 Columbus Metro Area counties, the metro price saw a more than $39,000 increase over January, 2022.
Overall Market Median Sales Price % Change in January, 2023 vs. January, 2022: +14.6%
Continuing home sale declines had relatively little impact on home prices overall, which saw a strong increase over the year.

It seems the Intel project’s impact may finally be making an appearance in housing numbers, with the Johnstown district seeing a huge increase in median home prices versus January 2022, 2 months before the project became official. That said, New Albany had one of the areas largest declines, but that could be due to it generally being one of the most expensive markets last year.

New listings across most of the metro area were down, accounting for most of the median price increase as demand remains strong in the region. Most of the decrease came from Franklin County.
Total Metro New Listings in January, 2023: 1,612
Total Metro New Listings Change from January, 2022 to January, 2023: -316

Average # of Days Homes Remain on the Market Before Sale for the Metro Overall in January, 2023: 34.0
# of Days Homes Remain on the Market Before Sale for the Metro January, 2022 to January, 2023: +8.8
Homes continued to sell more slowly than they did a year ago, now more than a week more slowly on average.