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How is something "interesting" and "wrong?" Either way, Cincinnati's incredibly cheap real estate stands as a fact to be explained. Markets are important for understanding how human societies work. Cincinnati's only hope is understanding its place in larger markets and accepting it as a basis for getting the world to value Cincinnati in some way. Circling the wagons and sharing happy talk with each other won't help Cincinnati's housing market or overall economy. But, maybe Cincinnati doesn't want others to see value in Cincinnati.....like a beaten down person who wants nothing more than to be left alone rather than face the risk of more failure. Mabye Cincinnati works as a place to hide away from the world. Still, I think there are some who can envision more in the Queen City.

That looks like a bit of bargain hunting from larger investors looking to diversity away from more expensive cities...which is almost all cities Cincinnati's size or larger. Cincinnati property may be nothing more than a tax write-off for such investors. Potential investors see Cincinnati's very cheap property, its low wages, and weak job growth and look elsewhere unless Cincinnati gives them some other reason to reconsider it. Cincinnati, and other stagnant metros, will only succeed if they want to...and Cincinnati's leadership doesn't want to. Their strategy is one of 'managed decline' allowing them to extract all the residual value out of Cincinnati to support their financial and political positions. There's no financial scenario for anyone to invest in Cincinnati's housing markets or anything else now. Until that changes, it will continue to drift lower in the hierarchy of American metros.

What evidence of that do we have? If they're investing so much, why are office and industrial property still so cheap in Cincinnati? https://f.tlcollect.com/fr2/418/63842/MarketFlash_Louisville_Office_Market_Affordability_-_2nd_in_US_-_5-15-18.pdf

They do have control over taxes, public services, roads, institutional structures, political machines, etc....all the things that affect property values profoundly. Every place has an elite and every elite has a set of class interests. Whether you see socioeconomic class as a "conspiracy" or a set of shared interests, low property values certainly serves the interests of Cincinnati's elite. They have no incentive to 'sell' Cincinnati to institutional investors. If they did, institutional investors might take them up on their offer and marginalize the local elite's power as a class in Cincinnati. Local politics ultimately serve the interests of those who currently dominate a place, not those who might dominate it in the future.

Your original point about "institutional" investors is important. Individual bit players are able to participate in Cincinnati's real estate market BECAUSE institutional investors are not. Buying a few rental income properties doesn't threaten the local elite's ability to keep property values to low and stagnant to attract institutional investors.

So, Cincinnati's elite likes having the Queen City all to itself. It benefits from not having to compete with "institutional players" who have better access to capital and more experience in managing projects. Flying under the radar of companies with better access to capital and more successful development experience benefits a local elite that depends on it's control of Cincinnati. That explains a lot. Thanks.

My comments weren't in response to yours. You presume everything is about you. Just like "Jake".

That argument has some validity, but will it convince investors and businesses assessing metro area stats when they decide where and how to invest? They see Cincinnati's slower new construction, lower property values, and only slightly higher population growth and decide against investing in the Queen City. Cincinnati has to work hard to overcome headline data that makes it look bad and I don't know of an American city that does a worse job of selling itself that Cincinnati. Cincinnati's elite almost seems to resent that it should even HAVE to sell itself, but when it's seen in the context of other metros, it clearly has to sell itself as hard as it can.

The total value of new housing construction in Detroit was greater than that in Cincinnati in 2019. That's astounding. Cincinnati can't even keep up with the city that has defined societal failure for generations.

https://constructioncoverage.com/research/cities-investing-the-most-in-new-housing-2020. The table at the end of the article really shows what's been going on in metro housing markets in a way I haven't seen elsewhere.

These things are all being created on the fly and will continually be adjusted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/business/stock-market-today-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=LiveUpdates&pgtype=Homepage&action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage#link-331d72ae. Franklin County would be the only local government in Ohio that even might qualify for the Federal Reserve's new municipal bond market.

For some cities, this might be a 'katrina' moment forcing lasting reform in the longer term while others will quickly return to their established tax structures because the pressure for change will be only short term.

What do all those numbers mean?

Even more significantly, most of Cincinnati's growth is 'natural increase' that is, births minus deaths. Very few people move to the Cincinnati metro. Most of Columbus' growth is in-migration. They are even more starkly different metros than the headlines numbers suggest. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/geographic-mobility/metro-to-metro-migration.html. Most in Cincinnati are simply unaware of their city's stagnation. They can't see it. The few who do see it blame it on wicked capitalists in distant cities (bwahhhhhhhhh!) You can't change if you won't even acknowledge there's a problem .

Major airport improvements and virtual rebuilding in some cases are starting across the country. airport-world.com/news/general-news/7100-blog-us-airports-launching-huge-renovation-projects.html

So, demand for property is what gives that property value. Without demand for property, property has no value. Got it.

The last of the "Bells" is gone and Cincinnati loses another public company. Where on earth will job growth come from in Cincinnati?