As of December 2009, there was a little over 14 months of home inventory in Sandy Springs. Looking at the historical trend, especially in light of the real estate collapse, 14 months is a huge improvement. As you can see by the 3-year graph of Sandy Springs homes, the inventory started skyrocketing last January and peaked in March. Feel free to click the graph for a larger view.

The beginning of the year was the heart of the foreclosure frenzy. There was a tsunami of foreclosures hitting the courthouse steps and the banks were unprepared and ill-equiped to deal with the unprecedented levels of inventory on their books. There was a huge bottleneck. The banks had to process the homes and get aggressive on the offer prices. You can see the drop in Sandy Springs real estate inventory levels from March through December of 2009.

This graph shows the corresponding list prices and selling prices for the same 3-year period in Sandy Springs. You can see the corresponding nosedive the prices took in March while the inventory levels rapidly increased. Once this quintessential disparate “supply and demand” scenario was able to unfold, inventory levels returned to healthy levels. The average home price graph shows improvement as well.

It seems as if there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s just a question of how long it will take for the Sandy Springs market to return to pre-2009 levels. I’m optimistic about 2010 and can’t wait until this spring season to see if the Sandy Springs market really begins to improve.

The Sandy Springs housing market seems to have mirrored the Buckhead real estate market. This doesn’t surprise me as the two communities are neighbors and have similar demographics.

If you have any questions about the Sandy Springs market, please feel free to contact me.