Good real estate news in Atlanta and Sandy Springs GA for December 2009. We just got our latest statistical data from SmartNumbers, Steve Palms for the Atlanta First Multiple Listing Services data. We are continuing to trend upwards on sales increases in volume for comparing this November to last November. Steve Palms says "There were 3,630 closings in November 2009 for single family detached. This is an increase of 32.9% over November 2008 and the greatest year-to-year percent increase since April 1996’s 41.6%. If there are a lot of lags, this could be the largest percent increase since records have been kept (January 1995)."
The chart to the right shows the data for the last 10 years for metro Atlanta from SmartNumbers. I like to watch this to follow trends. It's a broad based paint stroke of the Metro Atlanta data. Again, this is Single Family Homes or as we now politically correctly call it Residential Detached only. The use of the term "lags" means that when this data gets published next month, November statistics can get slightly revised, as the SOLD's that "lagged" behind in being reported are added to overall numbers.
Home prices are still lower than previous years but holding steady. In fact, they have trended up since earlier this year and are almost steady the last four months. It's more generic to me, as the data is for all of metro Atlanta and home prices vary a lot in different areas from the downtown/midtown, Buckhead, Roswell, and further out areas.
There are other trends we watch as well. These include months of inventory for a certain price point in an area called absorption rates. This means if homes sold at the current rate of sales how many months would it take to absorb (SELL) all of the current inventory? As you would expect, the numbers are better and stronger for properties at or below the $500k mark in Buckhead and Sandy Springs. The absorption rate continues to decrease. (This is not so true of the higher end market over $1.5 million as that has many, many years of inventory!)
The other great news is our inventory levels for single family homes are decreasing. The expected level of inventory of single family homes should be below Dec 2005 levels. Along this line of thought, we also see that months on market supply of inventory is decreasing from a 14+ month high to approximately 10 months of inventory averaged across all price points in the metro Atlanta area.
I am excited by the news and data I am seeing. Real estate goes in cycles. Everyone I work with would love to buy at the absolute bottom price points. However, typically I tell them you are already pulling out of this bottom price points by the time you truly know you had hit it. So, while it makes sense to buy as low as possible, the trending makes me think we are already starting to slightly shift up.
Because our inventories are so reduced, back to what is considered "normal" for a large metropolitan area, I believe that once we start going in this direction, it could definitely SHIFT to more of a "Seller's Market". This moves the control of power, home prices and more to an in balance from where we have been for years in Atlanta. So, what are you waiting for? It really is time to buy!
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