Home prices in Atlanta gained modestly in July, reflecting the national trend of four straight months of increases, though prices are still below where they were this time last year, according to Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller home price index.
Prices in Atlanta were up 0.2 percent from June to July. It was near the bottom of the scale in price increases among 18 of 20 major US cities, and it was far behind leaders such as Detroit at 3.8 percent, Minneapolis at 2.6 percent and Washington at 2.4 percent.
Atlanta home prices are about where they were in June 2000. Prices peaked here in July 2007, according to the index.
The slight uptick is not convincing experts that the housing market has turned.
"We are seeing ... some fairly broad improvement in the annual rates of change in home prices," said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the S&P Index Committee.
Another good sign is that the number of mortgages going into default is decreasing.
But the country is still "far" from a sustained recovery, Blitzer said. The housing market is still bottoming and has not turned around, he said.
Alan J. Ziobrowski, an associate professor of real estate at Georgia State University, said of the uptick: "As much as anything else, this is a seasonal adjustment. Prices always tend to go up in the summer months because that is when families are on the move."
"Year over year," he said, "we are still way down."
According to Case-Shiller, prices at this time last year were 5 percent higher.
"And again, it's the same story," Ziobrowski said. "Until the foreclosures are cleaned up, things are not going to improve all that much."
Even when the foreclosure market gets absorbed, Ziobrowski believes prices will not roar back quickly. Questions have now been raised in potential buyers' minds about the wisdom of buying, he said.
"So anybody who is probably in their teens and up," he said, "is going to ponder a lot more carefully whether they really want to buy a home or not."
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