Atlanta Housing Market Softens in Face of Quiet Georgia Mortgage Activity
Lela Hinson put her Campbellton Road house on the Georgia housing market last fall just as the U.S. real estate market plunged into its deepest sales slump in years.
Working without an agent, Hinson only managed to draw a few lookers and no takers. Month after “stressful” month, her house languished on the market.
“I did get a few calls, but mostly people just wanting to look at the house and who were not prequalified,” said Hinson, 28, a paralegal. “Nobody was really interested.”
Throughout metro Atlanta, agents and home mortgage brokers are reporting slowed sales and rising inventories of unsold houses, even as national reports indicate month after month of falling sales and prices now projected to last well into 2008.
Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reports that the current national oversupply of unsold houses would take two years to sell off.
Metro Brokers GMAC agent Katrina Wood said she works closely with sellers now to negotiate the tricky choices the soft market imposes.
“Are you willing to list your home slightly below the market value in order to make the sale?” she asks them. “Some sellers are not willing to do that and some are.”
From May 2006 to May 2007, inventories of unsold houses in the metro Atlanta housing market soared in every county, climbing between 18 percent and 70 percent in just one year, depending on the area.
Cobb County seems to have struck the best balance in the softening market, holding its inventory to less than an eight-month supply, an increase of just over 21 percent from the year before. Hardest hit were Rockdale County, where inventory increased more than 70 percent to more than one year’s supply, and south Fulton, where a 53 percent increase pushed supply to almost 13 months.
Dac Carver, marketing director for Metro Brokers GMAC, said Atlanta’s market slowdown began last spring and “the bottom fell out at the end of the year.” There were just no Georgia mortgage borrowers in the region.
“South Fulton,” Carver said, “a few years ago was the talk of the town. Everybody was flocking there. Then, the months supply [of unsold homes] just rocketed up.”
Soft-market strategies
After mulling her options, Hinson, whose home was in that tough south Fulton market, decided to call in an expert. She had met Metro Brokers GMAC agent Debra Wilson this year when Wilson stopped by to look over the property.
When Hinson hired Wilson, the agent made a careful analysis of the property’s value. Impressed with the ine-acre lot and attractive interior features, Wilson actually advised Hinson to raise her asking price to $130,500 from $120,000 based on sales of comparable properties in her area.
Then, Wilson started handing out fliers and held an open house. “You have to price it right, and you have to generate traffic,” Wilson said.Two weeks later, Hinson and her real estate agent had a firm offer. The property is set to close at a price of $129,500 on Tuesday — more than six months after she first began her efforts to sell.
Wilson admits she doesn’t always fare as well with her listings in the current real estate climate.
“It’s just taking longer to sell. Buyers have so much to choose from,” she said. “A home might be out there 60, 90, even 120 days now.”
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