TREND LINES
Home prices in metro Atlanta…
Over the past year: UP 6.3 percent
2007 (peak) to 2012: DOWN 39.5 percent
2012 to now: UP 58.7 percent
Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices
Completed sales, Jan.-June
2015 – 4,815
2016 – 4,282
Source: RE/MAX of Georgia
Metro Atlanta home prices rose an average of 6.3 percent during the past year, better than average gains across the country, according to a much-watched national index.
Atlanta outpaced the 5.2 percent gain for the nation’s 20 largest metros, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller House Price Index, a calculation based on a three-month average of sale prices.
“Home prices continue to appreciate across the country,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones.
A separate, more local report, also out Tuesday, said the pricing trend portrayed by the index masks a divide in the market. Prices are rising mostly at the low end of the market, while expensive homes spend months on the market without an offer, the report from RE/MAX of Georgia said.
Prices at the low end are rising because there just aren’t enough homes for sale, said Jeanette Schneider, senior vice president at RE/MAX.
A sign of that shortage is a drop in the number of completed sales: transactions during the first six months of this year were down 11 percent from the same period of 2015, she said.
“We are definitely seeing the impact that the tight supply of homes is having on the market. The lack of inventory needed has helped push home prices up while closed sales have dipped from last year.”
The number of homes for sale is less than half the level of a healthy market, Schneider said.
That makes it “a sellers market,” with prospective buyers often competing against each other. Homes – especially those in desirable areas – sell quickly and for close to or even above the asking price. Average days on the market has fallen from 64 last year to 56.
Schneider said the luxury market, or homes of more than $500,000 “is slower overall with fewer active buyers and homes sitting on the market longer.”
According to the Case-Shiller index, Atlanta’s price hike was stronger than the 5.2 percent average for the nation’s 20 largest metro areas. Among those 20, Atlanta was the ninth-strongest increase, said Case-Shiller.
The metro with the fastest climbing prices for the past year was Portland, Ore., where prices climbed 12.5 percent, followed by Seattle, up 10 percent. The weakest gain was in metropolitan New York, up 2.0 percent.
The national index has risen at a pace of 5 percent or more for seven consecutive months, and has been positive for 49 consecutive months, said Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist for San Francisco-based Trulia, an online source of housing information.
“May is also the fourth straight month in which the year-over-year increase was smaller than the previous month,” he said. “This is a sign that the U.S. housing market may be cooling.”
