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Robert Ellis
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  • Developer
  • Columbus, OH
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43204 (Hilltop, Westgate, Valleyview) year over year analysis

Robert Ellis
Pro Member
  • Developer
  • Columbus, OH
Posted Mar 15 2020, 07:43

In a recent request, I had an investor who asked me to look at this zip code in COlumbus OH. 43204 encompasses Westgate, Central Hilltop, North Hilltop, South Hilltop, and Valleyview. The numbers look great for cheap houses and rents and they wanted some data on the area. Some parts of this zip code are even located within Hilliard Schools. 

43204 is a very diverse zip code. There were closings in the last year from 12k all the way up to $650,000. Here's a pic of the zip:

If you look at closings over $250k, which isn't the area this investor is looking at, it's north of 70 (see in map below). I'm going to ignore this area for the sake that it's outside of where he was interested. What is left is Westgate, Valleyview, and Hilltop. 

Let's start with Westgate since it has the highest property values. Here's a map of the boundaries of westgate. Westgate is located 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Downtown Columbus and is bounded by W. Broad Street to the north, Demorest Road to the west, Sullivant Avenue to the south, and Hague to the east.:

If you are looking at information about what the draw is to this specific area, I'd check out this quick wikipedia article that talks about trends:

Let's look at a year over year analysis on this area from 2018 to 2019. 

In 2018, there were 106 closings. The highest price was $228,400 (2937 Palmetto Street) and the lowest price was $25,000 (105 S Hague Avenue). The average price was $164,480.43 at an average price per sq ft of $114.91. Average days on market was 22.82. 

In 2019, there were 102 closings. The highest price was $249,900 (224 S Westmoor Avenue) and the lowest price was $35,000 (87 S Hague Avenue). The average price was $160,674.49 at an average price per sq ft of 113.85. Average days on market was 40.72. 

Should you invest in Westgate? LOL this is the first area in columbus i've analyzed where property values went down at 2.31% decrease year over year. Compare that to some areas like driving park that went up by 35% i don't know why you'd invest in this area for long term hold. As far as flipping, I would say yes, but if you get stuck with the house know it's a decision that you made. 

As far as other areas, valleyview is super small and for the simplicity of this analysis, I"m going to exclude it. I'm just going to look at hilltop as a whole. Here is a map of valleyview: 

Hilltop boundaries: The Hilltop is bounded by Interstate 70 in the north, the CSX railroad on the east, and Interstate 270 on the south and west. The Hilltop includes part or all of ZIP Codes 43204, 43222, 43223, 43123 and 43228. For more info, here is a link to the Hilltop Land Use Plan provided by the City of Columbus. 

For this map below, this is where most of my investors bring up their deals. It's in the zip code 43204. It encompasses a lot of central, north, and South Central hilltop. Some of hilltop on the south side falls in a few other zips, but for simplicity, I removed Valleyview, Westgate, and north of 70 to look at the rest of the map. Here is a map of 2018 closings to show you what I mean:

For 2018, there were 418 closings in this region. The highest price was $195,000 (1358 Telham Court) and the lowest price was $13,700 (205 N Warren Avenue). The average sold price was $86,299.19 at an average price per square foot of $67.73. Average days on market 34.34. 

For 2019 for the same region, there were 421 closings in this region. The highest price was $225,000 (724 Binns Boulevard) and the lowest price was $12,000 (72 N Eureka Avenue). The average sold price was $98,471.46 at an average price per square foot of 77.97. Average days on market was 30.95. 

So the million dollar question, should you invest in this area? First off I'll say hilltop is a very large area. I think this is too large of an area to go off of this post to make decisions. Year over year for this area property values went up by 14.10% which in itself is a great sign. I think this is because in general, lower price point homes has the ability to up the most since the average of Columbus is well over $200k. From my own experience, I didn't like the ages of a lot of hilltop homes. Some you can buy for 40k but they need 60-80k of work because of the age of the home and the property values around them don't support that much in repairs like some of the other areas of the city (Near East, and other areas). I think you have to look smaller regions and at more individual deals to make a decision, but overall I think that appreciation is a great sign in this area and hilltop is a zip code you can get cheaper houses in Columbus. 

The purpose of this post was to just provide some information about these areas and as always, if you want us to post about another district in Columbus please reach out. 

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