Central Ohioans keep a good home once they find it

Source: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2008/06/30/STAYPUT.ART_ART_06-30-08_A1_SIAKD3N.html

 

Residents of tiny Riverlea tend to stay in their homes longer than residents of any other central Ohio community.

Take Patricia Anderson, a former mayor. Anderson moved into her W. Riverglen Drive house when it was built, in 1941. She was 5 years old. As a child, she helped plant two spruce trees -- Christmas trees -- in the yard.

She moved away, lived in Clintonville with her husband and then bought the Riverglen house from her father in 1970. She has been there ever since.

The spruces are still there, now towering over her house.

"I have very deep roots here, needless to say," she said.

Residents of Riverlea, a village of 470 just south of Worthington, stay in their homes an average of 16 years, according to data compiled for 2007 by Claritas, a marketing company.

The communities at the top of the list shouldn't be a surprise. Riverlea, Upper Arlington, Worthington and Bexley are all built-out, well-to-do communities with distinctive housing on leafy streets in well-regarded school districts.

Good schools and stable neighborhoods will always be attractive, said Gary Parsons, president-elect of the Columbus Board of Realtors. "People buy into that kind of community sense, and I've bought into it for the last 40 years," said Parsons, who has lived in Worthington since he was 13.

Schools were the reason Anderson decided to move back to Riverlea; the village is in the Worthington school district.

It shouldn't be a shock that Powell, with its new housing and recent influx of residents from Franklin County, is at the bottom of the longevity list.

Also not surprising is that people tend to be older in places where they stay in their homes longer. The median age of a Riverlea resident is 48, behind only Minerva Park at 53.4. Meanwhile, Powell's median age is 33.7. Only Urbancrest is younger, at 24.5.

Then there's Lincoln Village, a planned community in Prairie Township in western Franklin County that's high on the list even though the homes are more than five decades old and more modest than those in Columbus' upscale, established suburbs.

"Some of us have been here for 50 years," said Terry Allen, president of the Lincoln Village Residents Association, who has lived all of his 51 years in the neighborhood off W. Broad Street near I-270.

As always, location had a lot to do with it. Years ago, the nearby Delphi and Westinghouse plants employed thousands. Westland Mall thrived.

In fact, Allen thinks that the current average of 14 years in one residence was even higher 20 years ago. But there has been an influx of new residents, he said, some of them returning to the community where they grew up.

"It's a great place," said Allen, who said he has never thought about moving.

Of course, there are many reasons people decide to move. Crime and declining schools are among them.

People living in small houses need more space when their families grow. Others move after deciding their homes don't have the amenities of those they drive by, said Mark Salling, a demographer with Cleveland State University.

"Push-and-pull factors cause people to move," he said.

Other communities remain stable because folks living there work jobs that don't give them much of a chance to move up, he said.

And communities with many renters, obviously, will have less-stable populations, he said.

Nancy Reger, a demographer at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, said she was surprised by how stable the population is, both locally and statewide.

The average in Ohio is 13 years, according to the Claritas numbers.

But she added, "I don't think people like to move unless they have to."

Sue Ranck has no reason to leave Riverlea. She has lived in the same Olentangy Boulevard house for 46 years, the house her husband, Robert, bought in 1953.

It's close to the library and freeways. It's secluded.

"It's beautiful. It's interesting. Each house is different," she said of Riverlea.

"It's a community that's alive."

mferenchik@dispatch.com