Atlanta’s Spring Real Estate Market is Here!

What’s most notable about our Atlanta Real Estate Market right now is that as we enter the Spring seasonal market, we are witnessing a consistent drop in number of Active homes on the market each month since September of last year.  At the end of September, Atlanta Metro had 29,624 Active listings.  Each month that number has dropped to 25,303 at the end of February.

Another notable number is that the number of Pending sales, which are sales that are under contract and due to close sometime in the future, is at its highest level since October of 2009 which marked one of the first tax credit expirations from the government for first time home buyers, which we consider to a bit of a false market trend.

What does this mean?  It’s GOOD NEWS!  The number of pending homes and the ratio of pending homes to active homes is a great indicator of what the near future will hold.  With a pending ratio of 20.5% at the end of February, we are likely to see the months of inventory come down.  For Sellers and home owners, this is a good thing because we will not see prices increase as a whole until the months of inventory gets down to 6 or 7 months.  We are currently at 11.1 months.  As number of listings falls and number of pendings rise (without any government incentives) we begin to see reliable data that supply and demand are beginning to get back to where they need to be for home prices to rise.

Buyers, this is not time to sit on your hands.  Interest rates have begun to rise and are expected to continue to rise.  Home prices have been bouncing along the bottom for some time now, but as these supply and demand indicators reflect, their are less homes on the market which means more competition and less choice.  With less choice and more competition, you Buyers will begin to lose some of your power in this Buyers market, so if you are thinking of buying this year or next, putting that off is probably not going to be your best financial decision.  Contact me to set an appointment to discuss your housing needs and we can put a plan in place to best fit your specific situation.