Friday, July 31, 2009

End of the Month brings more Athens Home Sales Analytics

Well here we are again. End of another month, peak season as it were, and I am about to embark on another mission into exploring the sales data provided by the Athens, GA MLS into residential home sales in Athens.

Initially the data suggest that in the last twelve months through July '09 that the average Days on Market has increased to 206 days, the numbers of homes sold for Athens in this 12-month period has decreased, and average sales prices have decreased.

What I am most curious about however is whether or not Athens home prices have truly seen a decline or does this month's sales data only provide more validation to the idea that while first time home buyers are certainly in our market, the "step up" buyer is still missing.

For 12-months ending July '09 there were 822 homes sold in Athens with 21.2 percent of these having a sales price over $200,000. How does this compare with the same time period a year ago? Well at the end of July '08 there were 1337 homes sold in the Athens market. 368 of these homes sales were sold at over $200,000. A 27.5 percent rate of sales for homes over $200k versus 21.2 percent in the recent year.

The good is that inventory which had sky rocketed through 2008 is now off 18 percent from a year ago and a full one-third from the same period ending July '07.

Do these numbers so far imply that the Athens market has in fact not decreased in value. Not really. In fact, Athens like most markets is off some. Not as much as many markets in the area, much less statewide, but compare 12-months sales figures through June '08 to the most recent 12-month period (July '09) the average priced sale in Athens is down about 3 percent. Now in higher-end subdivisions or those neighborhoods with a large percentage of short sales or "distressed property," you will see a higher variance of list versus sales price, but on the average of what's actually selling in Athens, prices have fairly well maintained.

1 comment:

  1. Has anyone done a short sale in Real estate? Let me know what the lenders are looking for. Anyway thanks for this great post.

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