The region’s housing market has turned a corner, but a full recovery of home values is still years away, housing experts say.

A home is the single biggest investment most people make, so the value of their home is an important source of wealth. Experts believe an improving housing market can help create jobs and stimulate spending to benefit the rest of the economy.

Evidence shows the market is improving. The number of area homes sold so far this year hasn’t been higher since 2007, and home prices are rising. Also, foreclosure filings, while still high, have eased to levels below those seen last year.

But the national and local housing market fell into a deep hole when the housing market collapsed in 2008.

“It’s going to be a slow recovery, but certainly the recovery’s there,” said Shaun Bond, director of University of Cincinnati’s Real Estate Center. But it has been “six years of continual downward house pricing movement. That’s just going to take a long time to unwind. I think it’s going to take us many, many years, if not a decade or more.”

The average sale price over the first three quarters of this year is $105,078 for the seven-county region. Just Clark County’s average sold price through September was $95,495 and in Champaign County it was $106,433.

The regional sales price is still 8 percent below the peak average sale price of $114,332 for the same nine months in 2007, according to Western Regional Information Systems & Technology Inc. WRIST is the Troy organization that houses the region’s Multiple Listing Service where Realtors list properties and record their sales.

“Once again, I think we’re going to see regional variation,” Bond said.

Higher prices and higher sales this year is still good news for local homeowners.

“Those things tell us that consumers are seeing homes worth more, so they’re paying more, and the fact that we’re seeing more volume, units sold, means people are starting to feel better about a house, buying houses, and both are indicators that would affect the average homeowner in a positive way,” said David Brisker, chief executive officer of WRIST. The MLS covers the counties Auglaize, Champaign, Clark, Logan, Mercer, Miami and Shelby.

However, average prices region-wide increased this year 4 percent to $105,000 compared to the same three quarters of 2011.

“If we had two more years like that we will regain the equity we’ve lost since ‘05, ‘06,” Brisker said.

Here’s a look at the factors affecting area home values today.

Loss of equity

The improvement in prices this year in the local market will give some relief to homeowners who in recent years lost equity.

About 24 percent of mortgages in Ohio are still underwater — meaning the amount owed on the home exceeds its appraised value, according to real estate firm CoreLogic.

Homeowners in this situation are stuck, waiting to sell their house until values come up. They could rent the house out. Or, if they must sell, they might have to bring cash to the table to pay off the mortgage if the sale price isn’t high enough.

They might also sell the house by short sale, an agreement with their mortgage lender to accept a lower price, which affects the homeowner’s credit.

“That’s been part of the problem the past couple of years is they’ve been upside down and they can’t sell,” said Jerome Vinson, a real estate agent for Real Estate II of Springfield and 2012 president-elect of Springfield Board of Realtors.

Location, condition

Some of the most important factors to the market value of any home are location and condition, said Lori Fulk, a real estate agent and broker/co-owner of the firm Real Estate II. She is this year’s president of the Springfield Realtors group.

Location is “going to dictate the largest part of value,” Fulk said. “The lenders may not only be looking at the buyer’s credit condition, but they may also be looking at the property’s physical condition.”

Houses in older, urban settings built close together will sell for different prices than large, suburban lots with newer construction, for example.

A house with updated, energy efficient appliances will add to a higher price than houses with outdated appliances.

“A $100,000 house that the owners put in a new $30,000 kitchen does not mean you can sell the house for $130,000, but as people make improvements through the years — new windows, new furnace, new roof, new water heater, those things do help and make the house more desirable,” Vinson said. “It depends on who you’re competing with.”

The number of bedrooms and bathrooms, amount of land, age of the house, finished basement and out buildings on the property are also factors that will adjust prices and values from one home to the next, Fulk said.

Also impacting values are “the conveniences to every day life, so where are they to school, where are they to shopping. And then probably highway access,” she said.

Not only does the maintenance of your home contribute to its value, but the maintenance of other houses on the same street matters as well.

Older housing stock would typically make houses lower priced than newer neighborhoods like Greene County’s Beavercreek and Hilliard in suburban Columbus, Vinson added.

“All of Clark County, we do just have a very old housing stock …. but with that, the positives are we get a lot of house for our money locally. There’s a lot of value there,” he said.

Through the end of September, the most recent county level information available, average prices in the region range from $95,495 in Clark County over 846 homes sold, to $129,239 in Miami County for 654 homes sold. The average price in Champaign County was $106,433 for 239 homes sold for the same time period.

Comparable sales

A key factor just as important to home values are the prices recently paid for similar houses in the same neighborhood.

The rule of thumb real estate agents use is to find sales of similar size houses — by number of stories, bedrooms and bathrooms — in the past six months within the same area. Recent sales prices of other similar homes give agents an idea of the price the market is willing to pay for your house.

If there aren’t any comparable sales, agents can go back further in the sales history or look at a wider area.

A house is a commodity, said Brisker, of WRIST.

“If you want to know what your house is worth, what are like houses in the neighborhood selling for? That is the key,” Brisker said. “So what you want to do as a neighbor is you’d like to see the houses that do sell in your neighborhood start going up in value because your price will carry along with it just like when there’s a lot of distressed properties being sold in the neighborhood, the average sales price drops and that affects you.”

Sales of foreclosures, short sales and other distressed properties are not supposed to be used as comparable sales. In some neighborhoods there haven’t been any other sales or there have been more distressed sales than regular market sales.

One or more distressed properties — unkempt or vacant — on the same block can impact the value of your house because your house is competing with those lower-priced homes.

But foreclosures and distressed homes also can be good deals for buyers and investors.

Foreclosures affect “the attractiveness to a homebuyer to want to buy in an area that’s more distressed than another,” Fulk said.

Property tax appraisals

The sales price of a home and the tax appraisal come from a different process. County auditor offices use a mass appraisal approach that does not consider appliances, or the inside condition of the house.

County auditor appraisers look at quality of construction, building materials, square footage and what it would cost to build the house new, and how much the cost would depreciate for how old the house is. They also look at sales of the most similar houses in the same neighborhood, said John Federer, Clark County auditor.

The auditor considers comparable sales prices over a three-year period when updating appraised values, a longer time period than real estate agents or bank appraisers look at. More weight is put on the most recent sales.

The auditor’s office only does appraisals of homes for tax purposes and must value tens of thousands of parcels of properties.

“We rely heavily on sales,” Federer said. “Generally, neighborhoods will carry a likeness of grade and quality which will be reflected in the sales price.”

Unless the homeowner gets a permit for a finished basement, deck or an addition or lets the auditor know, the auditor doesn’t know to include that in the appraisal.

Every three years auditors conduct a triennial update that uses a statistical approach to adjust appraised values based on market conditions and comparable sales prices. Every six years, auditors do a revaluation where they view each property individually from the outside.

Clark County will finish its revaluation next year, and the new property values will be certified Jan. 1, 2013. Taxes based on the new values will be payable in 2014. The reappraisal currently underway will look at sales from 2010 to 2012, and possibly the first three months of 2013.

“I think that’s the biggest misconception that the public has is that we should be valuing this timely, but it doesn’t work that way,” said Tanya Schilling, appraisal and technology director for the auditor’s office.

If the value seems off, an appeal can be filed with the county Board of Revisions.

More than 2,800 appeals of property values came after the county’s 2007 revaluation under the administration of former Auditor George Sodders, a Democrat who later lost to Republican Federer.