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The 4^th Quarter 2010 stats are in!

Inventories in the Atlanta market continue to be high. Even if no more houses went on the market, it would still take 11 months for the houses currently on the market to sell. The highest inventories are in the million + market, which has a 26-month supply of homes for sale. The “under $200K” market is much closer to balanced with a 9.7-month inventory.

The 4^th Q statistics show that pricing your home correctly has never been more important. Only 9% of homes sold without price drop. 27% required a price drop, netting sellers just 76% of their asking price. A full 64% of homes did not sell at all, almost certainly because they were over-priced.

Foreclosures and short sales (when a lender agrees to take less than it is owed) continued to dominate the real estate landscape. In the 4^th Q, 39.9% of all homes that sold were distressed properties, the highest percentage all year.

Monthly median sales prices in 2010 were consistently higher than in 2009 until July, when they declined to the lowest level since 2003.

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The 3rd Quarter stats were rather dismal and are believed to be the direct result of the spring Federal tax credit. Business was booming earlier this year as first-time homebuyers raced to beat the deadlines. Things certainly looked bright, like the bottom of the market had come and gone.

Not so fast….What the 3Q stats show is that we’re not out of the woods yet. Bumping along the bottom, yes. In full recovery, no. People who were going to buy strategically timed their buying this spring. That left a fairly significant hole in the market this fall.

In the 3Q, sales in the Atlanta metro area were down 19.3% compared to the same time period last year. Of the houses that sold in the 3Q this year, 37.5% of them were distressed sales – either short sales or foreclosures. A stunning half of all the homes that sold for $200K or less were distressed properties. The median sales price reached its third lowest point since all this began, largely due to the high volume of distressed properties changing hands.

Good news for buyers: The bargain are out there and it’s never been cheaper to borrow money.

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The 2010 1Q stats are out and the news is mixed. After a 16.3% increase in sales during the 4th Q 2009 (largely attributable to the first tax incentive last fall), sales in the Atlanta area decreased 2.3% in the first quarter.

But if things have just felt better than that, you’re right – for particular areas, that is. In the Buckhead area, sales were up a stunning 38% from the same quarter last year. In Sandy Springs, sales actually doubled. (If you want the specifics for your neighborhood, just send me an email. I’d be glad to send them to you.)

Foreclosures continue to define and set the market. Overall, foreclosures were up, representing 32.8% of all sales. Think about that number. Roughly one out of every three homes that closed this past quarter was a foreclosure.

What’s interesting is that the <$200K market actually looks like it’s on the mend with foreclosures falling from 48.4% of all sales to 43.3%. The news is that the upper tier market is now getting hit by foreclosures. Although foreclosures represent only 14% of all sales, that percentage has more than tripled from a year ago.

These numbers make sense, if you think about it. A shift in the market almost always starts at the bottom and trickles up. The foreclosure tremors were felt first in the <$200K market. Those owners were likely the ones with the least amount of savings and equity to survive the storm. And as the recession drags on, the resources of the high-end owners are slowly being depleted, resulting in increasing numbers of foreclosures in the top markets.

When it comes to prices, there’s actually cheery news. The median sales price rose 8%, the first real gain in three years. Inventories are down as well. The biggest threats we now face are the foreclosures that the banks have taken back and not yet released to the market. If the banks decided to release them all at once, we could anticipate a steep drop in prices. But we’re counting on the banks not being that stupid.

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The latest statistics brought a ray of sunshine into the Atlanta real estate market. After more than two years of dismal news, finally something good.  Read more

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