Alpharetta Real Estate Homes for Sale

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I’ve said on this blog before that you can lie with statistics - or at least mislead by not telling the whole story.  I find this often with the current housing crisis.

The headline of the most recent Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report, referenced on the front page of the USA Today today, reads:  "House Price Weaken Further in Most Recent Quarter, First Quarterly Price Decline in U.S. since 1994."  That sounds scary, doesn’t it?

While this is technically correct, if you looked at the report in more detail, you would probably not be so scared.

I’m not saying the housing market is a bowl of cherries, but it is certainly not all gloom and doom as most media outlets would have you believe.  Frankly, I’m growing a bit weary of hearing about how bad the market is.  I hear it from other agents, usually the ones who aren’t selling anything, and I hear it from frustrated sellers who can’t sell their homes because they are overpriced, and I hear it every day on the news.

Personally, I prefer to look at it this way:  Atlanta is a growing metro area with steady job creation; Alpharetta and North Fulton have some of the best public and private schools around; people want to live in the South because of the weather, jobs and because it is cheaper to live here than other regions; people want to live in Alpharetta and the surrounding cities and they appreciate the informed, professional real estate services that we provide them.  My business is up over last year.  Can the market be that bad?

Housing Crisis Centered in Four States, Not Georgia

If you dig into the actual report, which no one ever does because it is 89 pages long, you’ll see that the housing crisis, in terms of negative appreciation, is isolated to California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada, with Massachusetts and Rhode Island, playing a small role.  There are still twenty states that have experienced 5% or better appreciation from Q3 2006 through Q3 2007.

Yes, that is a drop from the double digit appreciation of 2004 and 2005, but do home owners expect the market to continue like that for ever?  To me, it has sounded like some homeowners thought they were in some way entitled to double digit home appreciation and now when they are trying to sell they say, "Well, I’m not gong to give the house away."  If I had a nickel every time I’ve heard that in the last six months ;->

If you zero in on the Southeast, home appreciation has been respectable in the last year given the overall economic climate:  Tennessee 6%, North Carolina 6.5%, South Carolina and Mississippi 5.1%, Alabama 5.3%.  Georgia is the low man on the totem pole at 3.5%.

Atlanta’s Housing Appreciation is Average for the Country

If you look at just Atlanta, it ranks 139th out of 287 metropolitan statistical areas.  Atlanta has had 2.61% growth over the past year but a -.56% drop in the last quarter.  Over the past 5 years, Atlanta real estate has appreciated 20.18%.

Looking at other cities in the U.S., seventeen of the twenty cities leading the the DEpreciation were in Florida and California.  The other three were in Michigan.  Surprise there!  My reading of the OFHEO report is that while certainly appreciation has come down across the board, that this problem is mostly concentrated in a very few states.

Alpharetta Real Estate Continues to Appreciate

Even within Atlanta, there are pockets of variance in the real estate market.  While the city as a whole may be relatively flat price wise, I wrote on this blog back in September that average sales prices have continued to increase in North Fulton (Alpharetta, Milton, Roswell and Johns Creek) on both sides of GA-400 by $30,000 over last year.  People want to live in North Fulton, that is obvious - and we are here to help them accomplish that goal!

It is a great time to buy real estate in Alpharetta.  Sellers who have remained on the market are truly motivated to sell.  But buyers, don’t think that Alpharetta is a fire sale.  Yes, it is a good time to buy.  Yes, you can find a lot of house for the money.  But good houses still sell quickly, so my advice to buyers is not to get too high on the hog.

I don’t know about you, but my glass is half full and I don’t subscribe to gloom and doom in Alpharetta.  Looking at the details of the housing data tells the more complete story.

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