It seems to me as if real estate in Atlanta Georgia has finally hit a bottom and is now on the upswing. I’ve written before about how some of the local Atlanta housing indicators are showing positive signs.
Smartnumbers has recently compiled the July Atlanta real estate data, and it looks promising.
Here is what Steve Palm had to say regarding the July data:
It is not official yet, but after lags are reported single family detached will have a positive year-to-year increase in closings for July. It still looks like single family attached (condos and townhomes) will be negative, but combined with single family detached, total closings will still be positive. This is very encouraging, but we need consecutive year-to-year monthly increases before we even consider this as our turnaround. I am going to be optimistic, as I believe we will.
In a strict technical sense, he doesn’t believe we are in a turnaround, but I think Atlanta is awfully close to an upswing. If you’re looking for the housing market bottom, you may have just missed it. I think timing the market could be a dangerous game. Of course, if the Federal Government doesn’t stop printing money as if we are a third world dictatorship, then all bets are off.
As Palm says below, the market could heat up very quickly:
I am predicting back to back positive year-to-year monthly closings, as I believe August will be positive too. There were 8,778 pending sales for all single family at the end of July compared with 6,825 at the end of July 2008. If lender liquidity could improve, this market could heat up fairly quick.
The inventory report on the right shows the reduction of houses on the market. It is a positive sign. I think a good portion of the inventory reduction is from the banks unloading a lot of their bad assets, which in turn will decrease the downward pressure on Atlanta housing prices. I mentioned, on a previous post, that Synovus has made a big push to unload bad real estate assets of its books. Some of the other banks have complained that it’s hurting the market. I liken it to removing a band-aid, you can go for the quick-pull / fast-pain or the slow-pull / long-drawn-out-pain.
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