Sales and prices went up in March, as the region slid toward the peak of the selling season, according to two reports issued late Wednesday.
The reports underscore the uneven way that the metro Atlanta housing market has lurched forward in the years since 2007 when the housing bubble burst and 2012 when the overall market began to improve.
Overall, there continues to be steady improvement, said Lane McCormack, president of the Atlanta Board of Realtors. "I believe low rates and positive employment forecasts will contribute to active buyer demand."
Which means prices will keep rising and the housing market will stay strong at least into the summer, he said.
Results last month were, as they have been for several years, a sign that modest progress is continuing – with the specter of low inventory continuing to haunt the real estate market,
In a healthy market, inventory — another word for the number of homes for sale – generally represents the equivalent of six to eight months of sales. But the inventory number in metro Atlanta has not approached that level for years.
In fact, inventory last month was lower than it was a year ago, according to the Atlanta Board of Realtors.
The board calculates that the most recent inventory amounted to 3.1 months of sales.
It's tighter than that, argues Re/Max of Georgia, which sets that supply at just 2.3 months.
And a tighter market is generally a market where a surplus of buyers drives prices higher.
But where there are homes for sale, there are buyers.
The median sales price of a home sold last month was $233,000, according to the Atlanta Board of Realtors report. That is up 7.8 percent from a month before. Compared with March of last year, that is a 7.4 percent rise.
The parallel report from Re/Max of Georgia covers similar, but not identical territory. And the Re-Max report, based on FMLS data, shows a slightly lower median price, but a similar increase from a year ago: 7 percent, the brokerage reported.
Those prices, of course, reflect broad, market-wide trends. In many places, prices are not rising steadily at all. And in some areas, there are still large pockets of owners who are “underwater,” that is, who owe more on their mortgage than their homes are currently worth.
The total number of homes sold in March jumped dramatically, as it typically does with the end of winter: Sales were up 39.5 percent, according to the board. They rose 34 percent during the month, according to Re/Max.
The two reports often dove-tail in most ways. But they differ in comparing the current pace of sales to a year ago: Sales were up 6.9 percent in March compared to the same month of last year, according to the board.
Re/Max reported a similar number of sales, but had recorded a larger number a year ago, so Re/Max reported a 2 percent dip in the number of sales compared to a year ago.
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