If a homeowner is serious about selling his or her house in this market, be prepared to accept market value. What I like to tell my sellers is, look at your home as stock. If General Motors stock was trading (selling) at $49 per share 4 years ago, and it's now trading at $25 per share, how much would you expect to pay for a share of General Motors stock? It doesn't matter what you think it's worth, it only matters what someone is willing to pay for it - which is usually market value.
By Rachel Tobin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The median sales price of a home in metro Atlanta dipped by $14,600 to just under $100,000 in March, according to new data from the National Association of Realtors.
“We’re back to almost 1997 levels,” said Steve Palm of housing data firm SmartNumbers. “It’s pretty bad and it’s not going to get better either.”
The volume of home sales in the area also dipped -- by 6.5 percent compared to the same month a year ago -- according to the data released Wednesday.
Palm said getting the housing market in better shape hinges on the economy, which he believes has not turned the corner.
In a speech to the Atlanta Press Club on Wednesday, Gov. Nathan Deal said this of the housing market, “It is truly one of the most troubling parts of our economy.”
It is a situation, he noted, that affects local governments more than the state, which gets a small percentage of the taxes paid by homeowners.
“What we have to do is create greater job opportunities,” Deal said.
Nationwide, the picture was slightly better than metro Atlanta. The median single-family home price in the U.S. fell $9,000 to $160,500, while sales volume declined 6.9 percent.
The South saw an interesting trend: Sales of existing single-family homes in the mid range -- between $100,000 to $500,000 -- declined significantly, while sales of homes from $500,000 to $1 million or more increased significantly.
The markets showed the best improvement in March were San Antonio, where the median home price increased 3.6 percent, and Washington, where it increased 1 percent.
The worst markets in March were St. Louis, with a 20.2-percent drop in the median home price, followed by Cincinnati’s 18.4-percent drop and Minneapolis-St. Paul’s 15.2-percent decline.
4 comments:
Not so happy with this article, especially I just got moved out of Vanderlyn. I am happy you have a slightly different take on it. Any new thoughts on how the redistricting will impact house values in Springfield?
I - all the neighborhoods that were in Vanderlyn and are now in Dunwoody Elementary will take a hit, at least short term. Hopefully once grades for the new school become available (and provided they match up with Vanderlyn), the values will increase.
For information purposes... the test scores at DES were 12-15 higher than when the 4th-5th grades were at their home schools before DES was created. This was an "experiment" that actually worked well! At least 2 PCMS teachers also reported (to me, anyway) that DES students came in much "readier" for middle school, since kids at DES benefitted from an 'older kid' teaching model that was hard to provide at their home schools (that had to work out the school master schedule taking into account the K-3 needs, as well). I hope these good results won't be diminished by expanding DES to a K-5.
Bob, reading in the AJC where some homes in S. DeKalb lost 50% of their value. I know the assessment on our home did not change, did the values of homes here in Dunwoody stay stable?
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