Metro Atlanta’s housing market fell into the fall the way it slipped through the summer, with annual sales nearly flat and yearly prices up.
As it usually does, September meant a slowdown in sales as well as lower prices than in August, but that is a seasonal effect. The long trend shows modestly good news – especially for sellers of nice homes in the right places, like the good school districts on the north side of town.
Angela Staley was a bit surprised at the price tags for the homes she and her husband had on their list of possible purchases, but they wanted their daughter to attend Riverwood High School.
They were pre-approved for a $1.2 million mortgage, bought a home for nearly that much – and it was a house that needed renovation, she said. “Because it was Riverwood, it inflated the prices. You have to be willing to do work on a house.”
Then again, on the selling side, they were moving from elsewhere in Sandy Springs, she said. “And we sold our house in three weeks.”
Last month, 3,601 homes were sold in the 11-county metro Atlanta area tracked by the Atlanta Board of Realtors, according to its monthly report issued Monday.
Sales were down 15.3 percent from August 2014, but just 1.5 percent below September 2013, the board said.
The median sales price of homes sold in September 2014 was $213,000, slipping 3.2 percent from August. But September’s median price was up 13.9 percent from a year earlier.
“There has been strong, stable, upward movement in home values,” said Denise Pajak, vice president of PrivatePlus Mortgage, a division of Private Bank of Buckhead and Private Bank of Decatur.
The formula is simple: Solid demand and low supply mean higher prices. The supply of homes listed for sale has been holding steady at a number roughly equal to 4.4 months of sales, which gives the advantage to sellers.
But the board report – like most – pulls together data from all over the metro area. Some locations and some kinds of homes are hotter than others. For example, the average price has been steadily running about $50,000 higher than the median price – a sign that a lot of the action is in expensive homes.
"Any statement about housing values in Atlanta needs to be qualified," Pajak said. "Even neighborhood to neighborhood the prices are different."
In the south of the city and in the southern suburbs – where foreclosures were rampant and home values plunged after the burst of the housing bubble – the market has struggled to regain its footing.
“In some of those other areas, if you are lucky, the prices are not still falling,” said Sam Booth, a metro Atlanta agent with Seattle-based Redfin. “In some communities, they are still getting their confidence back.”
The hot zones are on the north side, he said, from Midtown through Buckhead, Brookhaven, Sandy Springs and Dunwoody. “Atlanta is growing. We are seeing buildings, new homes, new townhomes, people under contract to buy – and builders can’t build if people don’t buy. And we think it’s healthy.”
Booth is upbeat, citing a hint that is hidden by the big numbers about sales and price: the number of “tours” – that is, the number of visits to for-sale homes by prospective buyers.
That number is a signal about the market of the next few weeks and months, and that number is up, Booth said. “The more tours that we get, the more opportunities we’ll have to put in offers on homes.”
Metro Atlanta’s housing market has faced drags on both supply and demand.
On the supply side, construction of housing in many areas far outpaced population. On the other hand, the recession left many young people unable to make a purchase.
According to national real estate firm Zillow, one-third of the adults in metro Atlanta live with a roommate, up from 25.7 percent in 1990. That may be good for the rental business, but the housing market depends on a steady stream of first-time buyers.
In any year, the market typically sees fewer buyers and sellers as autumn morphs into winter. “I would expect both the median and average sales prices to decline month over month during winter, as this is something we typically see as a result of seasonality forces on the market,” said Todd Emerson, president of the Atlanta Board of Realtors.
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