Georgia Mortgage Activity Slows in Northeast of State
The yellow frame house on Riverside Drive was Jody and Shelley Ray’s dream house. The couple remodeled the 1938 home by adding a few modern conveniences, including an in-laws suite in the basement.
Jody is a United Methodist minister and had been serving a church in Dahlonega while his wife worked as a nurse midwife with Longstreet Clinic in Gainesville.
Last year, Jody accepted the call of Mount Bethel United Methodist Church in Marietta as an associate pastor.
The dream house went on the Georgia housing market in October and six months later, a “for sale” sign still is posted in the front yard of the four-bedroom, three-bath house.
“It’s frustrating,” said Jody, who now commutes from Gainesville to Marietta.
Real estate agents have regularly brought prospective buyers, but have yet to find a new owner.
The Rays are not alone. The once robust resale market in Gainesville is not as strong as it was a couple of years ago.
“Last year, I predicted that 2007 was going to be close to 2003 in sales,” said Frank Norton Jr., a Gainesville real estate executive who compiles and publishes an analysis of economic trends. (The real estate market) is strong in spots and weak in spots. It’s strong in homes $250,000 and under.”
Ed Phillips, executive vice president of the Homebuilders Association of Georgia said that throughout the state there are pockets of good and bad news when it comes to Georgia mortgage activity.
“It’s all over the map,” Phillips said. “There are places where it’s dead.”
He said that some areas have too much housing inventory on the market. But there are bright spots.
“The retirement home and second home business is still going strong,” he said, adding that builders statewide are taking a conservative approach in building speculative houses. I think the banks are helping lead that effort; nobody wants to get caught. Our business is down, but in Georgia I don’t think you’re going to see problems like huge devaluations that we have seen elsewhere.”
“When you look at the national data and then look at a snapshot of Gainesville and Hall County, you get a different picture,” said Doug Carter of Don Carter Realty. “Certainly, overall sales have slowed some, but I don’t think we’ve been hit nearly as hard as a lot of other areas in the nation.”
Carter, who is the developer of Windsor Forest, a new subdivision on Ledan Road, said the market for custom homes in his development is good. But he said Georgia home loan interest in Hall County, as a whole, remains strong.
“We’ve got plenty of new business coming in and the growth of the medical community,” Carter said. “The number of inquiries coming into the chamber of commerce is as strong as I’ve seen in a long time.”
Carter, who joined his family’s real estate business in the late 1980s, said any downturn today is a far cry from what he saw in 1989 and 1990.
Susan Barkley, a home mortgage loan specialist with United Community Bank in Gainesville, said the Hall County and North Georgia market is much stronger than what is taking place nationally.
“The upper end home is more of a niche market, however, there is still activity in the $200,000 to $300,000 price range,” she said. “I have seen people having to come down on their prices, taking less than they would two or three years ago, because there is so much competition out there.”
SOURCE: The Gainesville Times