The North Fulton Blog

I was just looking over the latest Case-Shiller Home Price Index report released yesterday.  It seems that the Atlanta market, among others, is backsliding in home values.  Everyone is talking about the "recovery" of the real estate market, but maybe that recovery is really soft.  The numbers seem to indicate a downward trend.  An article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle, citing the CS Report  says that Atlanta home prices were down 0.9 percent from February, 2009 (The Case-Shiller Index has a 2 month lag time, hence the figures are for Feb).  The house prices also were down 1.5% from December 2009 to January 2010 and again from January to February they were down another 1.3%.  The report also indicated that Atlanta, Boston, Denver, New York and Tampa have had 6 consecutive months of negative monthly returns.  Charlotte and Cleveland have had 7 months of these downward turns.  Makes one wonder if we're really out of the woods yet on home prices and values, not just locally, but across the nation. 

The foreclosure market continues to affect everything in the real estate market.  An interesting point in the bank-owned property area (commonly called REOs) is the practice of the banks holding their foreclosures and only releasing them on the market a little at a time.  This creates an artificial demand for the properties, allowing banks to control or at the very least, influence the market.  In one city, the "shortage" of properties "created a buying frenzy."  One real estate agent stated that they were getting multiple offers on almost all of their listings and buyers had been offering above the list price for several months.  He also said the market was seeing a "false bottom" that lenders are helping to create by delaying the influx of new REO properties on the market.  By regulating the flow of properties coming on the market, the foreclosure crisis is prolonged.  Proponents say the softer impact of these foreclosures hitting the market all at once is better for maintaining home values.  It's one of those areas that you have to decide for yourself.  One fact that remains, however, is that there were 3,957,643 foreclosure filings in 2009, according to RealtyTrac, a foreclosure tracking firm.  Now that's something to think about!