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Alpharetta Real Estate Market Update on Home Values
By Ryan Ward | April 25, 2008
The latest numbers for March are out for statistics from the FMLS and the overall Metro Atlanta real estate market is not beginning to show signs of an upswing. In fact, prices in Metro Atlanta as a whole are still declining. The chart below is for Alpharetta and goes back one year. As with most of the individual cities that make up Metro Atlanta as a whole, sales on a monthly basis are not large enough to prevent large swings in values because one $3,000,000 home sale can affect values for the whole city so what we have to do is look at the statistics over a longer period of time than one month and insert a trendline that shows the overall direction we are heading. For Alpharetta, home values are heading down. Not much, but down none the less. Here is the chart:
Furthermore, total monthly sales have declined and homes going under contract is not increasing significantly enough to indicate that the spring market will provide and substantial correction to the current housing slowdown.
What This Means For You
Fundamentally what this means is that if your home doesn’t present the best value at its price point, it simply is not going to sell. I recently ran across a post on the Bloodhound blog that linked somewhere else that I felt sums up short and sweet what you as a seller need to understand about the market. If you are thinking about listing your home for sale, don’t until you have read this.
Fundamentals and Better Marketing Are the Key to Sales in a Buyers Market
The link above will get you well on your way to understanding the fundamentals as you need to know them as a seller and marketing - better marketing - is what you need from your agent to get your home noticed in an increasingly crowded real estate market with 35% fewer buyers than a year ago.
Lots of agents have great ideas and we love to toot our own horns about what we can do to sell your home, but, really - how many of these marketing strategies do you think are actually effective? There isn’t much we can do to to market to other agents - they have to have buyers looking for a home like yours and they are going to look for it in the MLS when they have that buyer so don’t buy into the hype that your agent has some new and/or more effective way to market to agents because there isn’t one. That’s just a fallacy they will tell you to make you and them feel better.
Effective New Strategies Rely on Marketing Homes directly to Buyers
I don’t believe there is any need whatsoever to spend 20 minutes extolling the virtues of the internet and the fact that buyers use it to find homes so instead you just need to find an agent who has effectively been able to penetrate an increasingly difficult area of marketing. We all say we use it to market homes and I have been saying for months now that this statement, while on it’s face is true, does not provide you with anything tangible because everyone does it thereby lowering the overall effectiveness. If everyone is using the same techniques to market Alpharetta real estate than that marketplace simply gets more crowded and less effective.
The Real Answer is Being Able To Get Eyes on Your Home and Only Your Home When Searching For Homes Like Yours
That’s the closest thing to a magic bullet and I think we have found some unique ways to fire that gun. I’ll have another post running through some of these exciting techniques later.
Topics: Alpharetta Real Estate |
April 25th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I think what you are seeing in Atlanta is similar to the rest of the nation here in Arizona (especially Phoenix and Tucson) the downtrend has been much more sever. I dont think Altlanta would experience a downturn like we have seen here, but it will for sure test the sellers who are not 100% serious about selling their home.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Well, the numbers look pretty bad for sellers right now and I don’t think it’s necessarily fixable by small price adjustments as much as it is about marketing and getting the eyes of buyers directly to the listings. We (Metro Atlanta) are down 35% in total sales volume from one year ago. To me that means a couple of things; lots of homes are still selling AND the ones that are are getting better exposure and are solid value propositions based on things that use to get overlooked. Things like wallpaper, types of flooring…basically things that buyers cannot change easily or relatively inexpensively are hurting sales. If the house isn’t better than everything else AND priced the same as the competition, people aren’t buying. There is no more “premium” for premium houses. Hey, I think that’s a good blog post
April 25th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Good post. With all the changes in the industry of late, it’s a challenge keeping up. Thanks for the great info.
April 26th, 2008 at 7:27 am
Thank you Chuck. It’s definitely challenging to keep in a changing market.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Good Post Ryan,
Though my area is doing fairly well, I have a listing which is in a less desireable area, but priced very aggressivly. Getting people into the house is proving difficult. Though like you I do many modern web 2.0 things to get the home in peoples faces so to speak.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Sometimes in a slow market, just getting more eyes on a house is not enough. You can’t contol buyers. We as listing agents have a responsibility to get our listings in front of them though so that we have a chance to get them into the houses. Whether a house sells, is actually not in our control - all we can do is get them to consider it. Nothing better than internet exposure for that.