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MLS Moments: Atlanta Real Estate Market Review

03/08/08 | Kathy Drewien | Category: Atlanta Real Estate, MLS Moments

I've just finished reviewing the mls listings activity through February. As a reminder (disclaimer), this is market information that I have compiled, not the Atlanta multiple listing services. The geographic focus is the North Atlanta suburbs. (See the zip codes included.)

The number of closed sales may continue to adjust as reports are filed with the local mls office.

The reported year-to-date numbers through February 2008:

7230 active mls listings UP

776 are "under contract" pending closing UP

664 sold and closed UP

$380,929 average sales price DOWN

95 average days on market. UNCHANGED

You can see the number of single-family houses on the market are up from last week's report. So are the number of properties closed. However, the increase in new listings (168) continues to out pace the increase (90) in mls listings reported as closed.

The number of homes for sale (inventory), in contrast to the number of homes closed, enables us to calculate the absorption rate for our market area. This is simply a numeric way to report supply and demand trends.

It's important to note the absorption rate can be quite different between price ranges and zip codes. Earlier this week we gave a good example of what our client wants to buy, and how few matching homes are available for sale.

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Your comments are invited. Look for Comments in the title bar.

Read Comments

Posted by Bo Wagner on 03.13.08 9:51 am

Overall, the only thing that I take away from this is that this is POSITIVE info… Why don’t we hear more of this info in the media??? Keep spreading the word! Let’s sell and close some houses!
Posted by Kathy on 03.13.08 11:35 am

Hi, Bo. Thanks for stopping by to comment. One of the reasons we don’t hear more about the positive data is that market value is highly localized. Location. Location. Location, remember?

The national media, of course, speaks out using national home sales data; and the escalating problems tend to be more newsworthy. Even at the local level, the Atlanta housing market stats are drawn from a tremendously large geographic and financial base.

What we are doing here is focusing on a more localized area - North Atlanta. Within that geographic range we see that prices - in comparison to prices this time last year - are on the rise. This is not to say homes that are currently for sale are not lowering their prices. But, most of those I see with marked price reductions were originally priced way out of line with the market value.

By narrowing our scope even further, using price ranges, for example, we can identify the ideal price points for getting these houses sold — which is the service we provide our sellers.

Maybe we’ll look at price ranges next week.