The Atlanta housing market wobbled toward the end of the spring buying season with prices still rising solidly, but with sales volume slipping from a year earlier.
The median sale price of a home in metro Atlanta climbed to $240,000 in May, up 6.2 percent from April and 7.6 percent from a year ago, according to the Atlanta Board of Realtors. Sales volume rose 1 percent from April, but fell 3.3 percent from a year ago.
While some areas are hot, the overall climate is temperate and unlikely to change soon, said Charlotte Sears, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Atlanta. “I think everyone is in careful mode. And all the numbers that we see now point to modest growth over the next year or two.”
The market’s progress has been ragged — some areas booming, others struggling to shed the painful residue of recession.
“I think we’ve had a good season, although I don’t think it was as good as in 2014,” said Adam Kappel, an agent for Redfin. “In general it is getting healthier, but the market is pocketed.”
Cooler pockets tend to be south of the city.
“There was a period when nothing moved – nothing,” said Marianna Boyd, realtor with Engel & Volkers, who lives in Clayton County. “I think the resurgence is coming, but I think it is very gradual. There’s a house in my neighborhood, down a cul-de-sac, that just sold for less than $100,000. And it was not a short sale.”
Some of the market is depressed because so many people have still not seen their home values return to what they owe on the mortgage. That leaves them “underwater” on the mortgage.
The percentage of underwater mortgages in metro Atlanta is now less than half the peak of 55.2 percent, according to Svenja Gudell, senior director of economic research at Zillow. In the core counties, DeKalb has the highest underwater rate: 31 percent, followed by Fulton at 23.6 percent, Cobb at 17.6 percent and Gwinnett at 17.5 percent.
The wave of foreclosures and delinquencies also has dramatically ebbed, according to Kennesaw-based Equity Depot: There were 2,013 foreclosure notices filed in metro Atlanta in June, down 1.1 percent from a year earlier.
So far this year, the region has seen 12,060 foreclosure notices, down 13.2 percent from the first half of 2014.
The pace of foreclosure filing this year is the lowest since 2001, according to Equity Depot.
In Buckhead, trendy city neighborhoods like Inman Park or the near-northern suburbs, being underwater isn’t much of a problem — values have been rising rapidly.
“It’s really kind of a shocking change,” said Travis Reed, realtor with Harry Norman Realtors Buckhead. “And I think it’s going to keep going.”
Leading the charge are dual-income, affluent professionals, especially those arriving in corporate relocations, Reed said. “If you are coming from Hong Kong, $750,000 to $1 million for a townhouse seems like a deal.”
But where there is buyer demand, higher prices are also driven by a stubborn shortage of supply.
Experts have been complaining for more than a year that inventory – the number of homes for sale – is too low. The scarcity is good for sellers, since it pushes prices up, but buyers find themselves scrapping over attractive listings.
Experts have predicted a burst of new listings as prices rose, yet, that figure has actually fallen in the past year, said Adam Kappel, an agent for Redfin. “I am pretty surprised by that. But since we started the recovery, we’ve had low inventory.”
Another factor skewing the market: Young adults are putting off home purchases for longer than previous generations.
That deprives of the housing pipeline of people to buy “starter” homes, which in turn enables their owners to buy more expensive houses, said Sears of Coldwell Banker.
If the broader market is going to pick up, it depends on people like Sarah Hesney, 30.
She, her radiologist husband and a toddler are moving in the next few days from Allentown, Penn. to a townhouse in Inman Park. Because they may be moving again after her husband’s residency, they wanted a good investment, she said. “We saw the cool neighborhood and we saw the Beltline and we knew, in four years, we should be able to sell this place.”
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