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It’s more bad news for home prices in the state of Ohio, an area of the country hit especially hard by the housing collapse and the continued toils of the Great Recession. A new report from Cleveland showed home prices in the northeastern part of the state taking a veritable nose-dive, right in line with overall U.S. home values that were at a ten-year low. From coast to coast, individual housing markets are painting a very clear picture of just how bad off the real estate situation is.

Experts weren’t exactly surprised that home sales tanked in July. The new homebuyers’ tax rebate incentive program ended for purchases in June, and a drop-off in the heretofore modestly steady sales numbers was anticipated. The actual results for the following month, however, turned out to be quite a bit worse than forecasted. Between June and July, closed sales of previously-owned homes (as opposed to purchases of new construction) in Ohio tumbled by a dramatic, horrible twenty-seven percent. That’s slightly higher than the nationwide drop-off of twenty-five and a half percent.

The first-time homebuyers’ tax credit was a program begun in 2009 and extended by the Legislature into the first half of this year after its wild success and positive stimulation of the moribund housing market. Brand new homebuyers could qualify for an income tax credit of as much as eight thousand dollars upon the purchase of a home. It was required that qualifying applicants submit a contract with the seller by the last day of April, and that they closed by the end of July. Congress ended up agreeing to an eleventh-hour extension of the closing date, since so many buyers were getting bogged down in the snails’-pace closing process. Still, the lion’s share of the tax credit homebuyers finalized their purchases in April, May, and June. Home sales don’t count until the closing date, so all those sales went on the books for the spring months.

In the month of July, the National Association of Realtors dismally reported the lowest level of nationwide home, condo, townhouse, and co-op sales since they began keeping records in 1999. The sales of single-family homes, which count for the bulk of all real estate purchases, hit their lowest numbers since spring of 1995. The terrible numbers are leading some cynics to wonder whether the homebuyers’ tax credit was even worthwhile in the first place – if the drop-off afterwards is so severe, will it really turn out that the net gains outweigh the negatives?

In Ohio, the numbers were – again – even worse than the nationwide figures. Between June and July, the sales of both new construction properties and existing single-unit homes dropped off by thirty-five and a half percent. The Northern Ohio Regional MLS reports that July 2010’s sales were a drastic twenty-one and a half percent less than those of the same month last year. Condo sales did even worse, if that’s possible – almost forty-six percent fewer were sold between June and July 2010, and almost twenty-nine percent fewer between July 2010 and July 2009.

The end of the tax credit isn’t the only factor driving lousy sales, experts insist, even if it is probably the strongest. Also complicating the matter is the fact that foreclosures throughout the state remain sky-high, a state of affairs that diminishes home prices across the board. The poor economy continues to make potential buyers wary of closing a deal. And those who actually want to buy a house are being stymied on their path to closing – with lending standards almost impossibly strict these days, would-be buyers who are arguably quite qualified to purchase homes are being turned away by banks or giving up the quest in frustration. There’s not an immediate improvement in sight, although the longer-term forecast is a touch rosier: experts are predicting low home sales in August and some improvement in September.

It’s not that people are disinterested in the concept of purchasing a home, insist the realtors. In fact, with prices so low, more people than ever are window-shopping (as it were) the market. Those realtors on the scene report plenty of showings, open house visits, and website views of listings. That doesn’t mean that all this interest is translating into sales, however. Many buyers are cagily wondering if the government will throw more incentives their way if the market continues to flounder. Others are choosing to refinance their current mortgages to take advantage of low rates, instead of moving. And many are just concerned about the overall state of the economy and not willing to make a big purchase, the experts bemoan.

Realtors claim that the disastrous numbers are playing havoc on their sales results. Sales patterns have been sketchy and irregular, and the overall numbers have been very weak. Throughout the state, the prices of homes varied all over the place last month. On a nationwide price of a home with a previous owner was around one hundred eighty-two thousand dollars, up slightly less than one percent from a year before. The Ohio Realtors report average prices instead of medians, however, which slightly skews the results. The average sale price for a new or existing home in the state was slightly less than one hundred thirty-seven thousand dollars in the month of July, down slightly more than three percent over the results from a year before.