Alpharetta Real Estate Homes for Sale

I know that you’re out there:  people who understand the difference between the median and the average;  people who live outside two standard deviations of the national understanding of statistics; people who know that statistics lie.  But trends don’t - or at least it is harder to trick you with trends.  Trends are statistics put in context of each other:  strength in numbers. Last week I attended a forum sponsored by the Atlanta Home Builders Association on The State of the Atlanta Housing Economy.  I went because I love the numbers, I love the analysis and I wanted to see if what the “experts” saw in the numbers jibed with what I saw in my experience.  I was the only realtor there:  Strange, I thought everyone would be interested in polishing up their bell curves. The analogy used at the forum to characterize the Atlanta housing market was that we have been running at about 90 miles and hour for the last few years.  Now we have slowed down to about sixty, but we are still moving ahead at a “normal” pace.  This is a mere tap on the breaks on GA-400. The numbers show that Atlanta has not experienced a housing bubble like other cities and therefore has not experience a bubble burst either.  Homes in Atlanta have appreciated at about 3-5% over the past few years; annual appreciation in the US as a whole has been 8-14%. In 2006, the annual appreciation in the US has gone from 13.3% down to 5.9%.  In Georgia, it has gone from 6.4% to 5.6%.  That is a big difference.  No bubble here.

Annualized Home Appreciation
State	Q4 2005	Q4 2006
California	21.6%	4.9%
Florida	28.6%	9.45%
N. Virginia	19.9%	7.46%
New Jersey	15.97%	5.8%
New York	13.27%	4.9%
Georgia	6.35%	5.58%
United States	13.25%	5.87%

The bit of a slowdown that we have felt here can be partially explained by the poor housing market in Atlanta’s feeder markets.  Atlanta attracts a lot of relocation from Florida, New York/New Jersey, Northern Virginia, California and the Midwest.  People would like to move to Atlanta but they haven’t been able to sell their homes in those other states - and I’ve definitely seen this effect in my own business. Home Builders (after all, this was a home builder forum) have reacted to the market by slowing their housing starts.  There were 12% fewer housing starts in Q1 2007 in Atlanta than in Q1 2006 and closings were down 8% as well.  It might look like there is new construction going up everywhere, but to the trained eye, there is clearly a slowdown, particularly in the higher price ranges where it has become very competitive and inventory is much higher than in other price ranges.  Some higher end projects have definitely be put on the slow track.  My experience has been that many builders in the high end market are willing to deal and we have worked out some good concessions for our buyers. However, in the $400-$500 projects are full steam ahead and the resale market is also healthy.  If the home is at all in decent condition it will sell relatively quickly, sometimes too quickly.  Last week we went to make offers on three houses in the Northview High School district in the $300k price range and they were all sold before we could present an offer. The situation in North Fulton (Alpharetta, Roswell, Milton and Johns Creek) is that land is now so expensive that any new construction is $500+ and that is forcing people to search in South Forsyth for homes they can afford. In the end, though, Atlanta’s and Alpharetta’s housing market is secure.  Property continues to appreciate at a slow but steady pace driven by Atlanta’s lumbering economy.  Job growth and job prospects are both positive and consumer confidence remains remarkably strong. Of course, Atlanta is a BIG city and conditions vary from zip code to zip code.  In North Fulton there is an overabundance of expensive property and in the last month or so, this is reflected in the sales  numbers (see chart).  In 2007, May sales were less than half what they were a year ago.  My hypothesis (and many struggling builders will readily agree) is that the high end homes aren’t selling quickly. However, in the sweet spot ($400-$500k) houses are selling.  If you have a house in that spot that isn’t then you need to ask yourself if you really have it priced correctly or if there is something about the condition of the property that is preventing its sale – because it isn’t the market.

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