Home sales rise, but not here

Pinpointing why metro Atlanta's numbers lagged the national report isn't easy, Mark Vitner, economist for Wells Fargo.

“It may simply be that sales last September were strong for some odd reason,” he said. “But then again, I don’t know that Atlanta is as off from the national numbers as it appears at first blush.”

Vitner noted that the federal tax credit for first-time home buyers is set to expire at the end of November. Without the tax credit as a motivator, he said, the national figures might not have looked as good.

Roger Tutterow, professor of economics at Mercer University's Stetson School of Business, said metro Atlanta's economy, which has suffered from the housing slump and now has an double-digit unemployment rate, is in a deeper funk than many parts of the country.

Still, he added, “I just can’t image Atlanta is that far out of whack with what is actually happening nationally. I would caution us not to read too much into one month’s data.”

Atlanta wasn’t the only major city to fall below national sales volume activity levels. Seven other cites were reported as losing between 1 and 21 percent of year-over-year sales volume in September. Among them were Dallas, down nearly 6 percent, and Washington, down a little more than 3 percent.

On the national side, the year-over-year gain in September represented the largest monthly increase in 26 years and beat Wall Street forecasts.

National real estate experts say low mortgage rates and foreclosures, along with the $8,000 tax credit program for first-time buyers, helped fuel the increase. Because there is some evidence the tax incentive helped moved homes, there is a movement to have the Nov. 30 deadline extended.

U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), a former Realtor, and Christopher Dodd, (D-Conn.), want to see the deadline moved to June 30 and they’d like to see all homebuyers included.

Realtors and builders support the effort, saying the credit will help get the nation’s housing market back on its feet.

But some analysts say the tax credit may not be as critical to the housing market proponents suggest. Real estate agents have "an incentive to talk up the effects of the credit as it is urging Congress to extend it, and it therefore may be exaggerating the credit's effects," wrote Nomura Securities economist Zach Pandl.

One potential roadblock to an extension also emerged this week: Concerns that some of the 1.5 million applications for the tax credit are fraudulent. The Treasury Department's inspector general for taxes questioned the legitimacy of some 100,000 claims for the credit, potentially including some illegal immigrants and 580 people under 18.

-- The Associated Press contributed to this article.