Alpharetta Real Estate Homes for Sale

I was flattered with a call from the Milton Herald the other day.  They were doing some research on local housing and wanted some input for agents with feet on the street experience.  Apparently they can Google "Alpharetta Real Estate", too, and they found me!  I appreciate the call and wanted to share with my readership the input I gave the Herald.

They asked me a few questions regarding the Milton Real Estate market specifically.  (Please see my post from earlier today for a broader analysis of Atlanta and Alpharetta/Roswell Real Estate). 

It is difficult to isolate just the Milton sales data in the information available to realtors, primarily because Milton is a new city, so historical analysis based on City Name is not possible.  What I was able to do was select only sales data from Fulton County and the 30004 ZIP code.  Admittedly, that includes some of Alpharetta, but I excluded the parts of Cherokee and Forsyth Counties that are in 30004.

1.  Are homes selling like they previously were and what kind of numbers are we talking about?

Similar to Alpharetta as a whole, there have been fewer sales in Milton in the last couple of years, but the average sales price continues to increase.  In Milton, particularly, I attribute some of the price appreciate to the high end new construction.  Even though it is not selling as quickly as builders would like, every time a $900,000 house sells it definitely pulls up an average that is about half that.

2.  Are prices for homes sold in Milton staying steady, growing or slipping?

Average sales price is definitely growing and will continue to grow.  Don’t let all the market slowdown talk confuse you into thinking that home prices are falling.  Sellers may not be able to get what they want and there are stories of huge price reductions, but ON AVERAGE, prices are still growing.  Now here is the caveat:  that is for homes that are selling!  There are a lot of homes that are not selling.  There were 1,347 homes that expired from the market without selling last year - and these were just the ones listed with a realtor.

Many of these homes did not sell because they were either too expensive or not in good enough condition for the price.  So even while the average sale price was $450,000, there are a lot of homes that people would like to sell that are significantly below the market…otherwise, they would have sold.  To me that is why the $450,000 average is a little misleading:  There is this unseen weight on the market of unsold homes that is below "the average market."  That also helps explain why most people think their house is worth more than it actually is. 

Anecdotally, an expired seller in Crooked Creek told me the other day that she wasn’t going to sell her house because it was already "way underpriced" and hadn’t sold.  The only logic I can apply to her situation is that all those buyers who wanted to pay her undervalued price must not have known about her home; otherwise they should have flocked to it.  The market doesn’t lie:  Her house was likely still overpriced.  And it is sales like this, when they do happen, that will have downward pressure on the average sales price.  Of course, the seller’s retort is always:  "I’m going to wait until the market improves."  As if it is the market’s fault ;->

3.  How long are houses staying on the market and what is the trend?

Homes are definitely taking longer to sell, by about two weeks compared to last year.  However, at 74 days on average, that is still a reasonable amount of time to get it sold.  Over all the trend is fewer homes selling for more money is a slightly longer period of time.

4.  What are the contributing factors to the changes in the Milton real estate market?

In one word:  Florida.  What I mean by that is that Atlanta / Alpharetta / Milton are still areas that attract a lot of relocations from other markets.  These other "feeder" markets are depressed and the people who want to move here can’t sell their home where they are.  We personally have at least 20 clients in Florida who would like to move to the Alpharetta / Milton area but can’t get their home sold in Florida.  The same is true to a lesser extent in some other markets like California and the mid-Atlantic area, but nothing like Florida.  If we could break the Florida log jam, it would do amazing things to the Alpharetta real estate market, no doubt.

Other than the general national real estate malaise, our real estate market has good fundamentals.  The cost of housing is relatively low, property taxes are also relatively low even considering the recent reassessments and the sales tax proposals in the state legislature.  Job growth continues in the GA-400 corridor and our schools remain excellent.  If you don’t already live in Alpharetta / Milton / Roswell or Johns Creek, now is a good time to buy into the market because I believe that growth will continue in this area and this momentary housing storm will pass us mostly unscathed.