Metro Atlanta home values rose modestly from March to April, but still lag behind where they were this time last year, says the monthly release of the Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Index.
The uptick tracked the national trend in the Case-Shiller survey of 20 metro areas, though Atlanta's numbers were among the strongest, increasing 1.6 percent from the month before. Only Washington's 3 percent and San Francisco's 1.7 percent gains were higher.
“In a welcome shift from recent months… April’s numbers beat March,” David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices, said. Case Shiller had declared that the March numbers represented a "double-dip" housing recession.
Blitzer said an April uptick is typical for the spring-summer buying season, adding: "It is much too early to tell if this is a turning point or simply due to some warmer weather."
The Case-Shiller Index uses repeat sales of single-family homes, not new homes or condos, to measure appreciation compared to a base value of 100 established in January 2000.
The April increase put Atlanta at 101.95, compared with March's 100.30. In April 2010 the area's index stood at 105.69
Steve Palm of SmartNumbers, a Marietta real-estate tracking firm, noted that April has beaten March's numbers for the last 15 years, according to his firm's sales data.
"It's still down, year-to-year," Palm said.
He said he would consider three straight months of improvement to be an upturn.
The Case Shiller index shows prices bottomed in spring of 2009, climbed for a few months, and then hit a deeper low before April's uptick.
It will take a few months to tell if the worst of the second "dip" is behind, Blitzer said.
Some are optimistic.
Daniel T. Forsman, CEO of Prudential Georgia Realty, said home sales in the first half of 2010 were boosted by federal tax credits. This year, he said, his company's sales have been just as strong without the credits.
"I am cautiously optimistic. It is being verified that we are bouncing along the bottom," he said.
Forsman believes slight uptick in the Case-Shiller shows sales momentum is growing.
The index follows the May sales report released by the National Association of Realtors.
Metro Atlanta sales in May were up 1.1 percent compared to May of last year, according ot the NAR report, based on sales of single- and multi-family homes and condos in more markets. The median home sales price in the group's May report rose from the winter by about $4,000 to $103,700 -- still $21,200 lower than May 2010.
Foreclosures and short sales are keeping home prices depressed in this region, NAR spokesman Walter Molony said. Thirty percent of all sales during the first quarter of 2011 were foreclosures in metro Atlanta, according to real-estate tracking firm RealtyTrac.
Molony also warned to not read too much into the increase in numbers, nothing that home sales typically trend up in spring and summer.
Case-Shiller metro Atlanta home price index
The peak for Metro Atlanta was 136.47 in July 2007. The recent low last December was 100.06, which put home values at 2000 levels.
2010
January 107.04
February 105.65
March 103.73
April 105.69
May 107.86
June 109.72
July 110.02
August 108.95
September 106.39
October 103.30
November 100.80
December 100.06
2011
January 100.35
Feb. 100.65
March 100.30
April 101.95
