AJC Reports Metro Atlanta Homes dropped to 1999 value

Housing price index sags to ‘99 levels

By Michelle E. Shaw The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Real Home Solution ran an article about his back in Feb of this year. Read it here! Let Real Home Solutions show you how to buy now and take advantage of todays prices for buyers and show sellers how they get get out of their bad investment quickly and easily!
An index measuring metro Atlanta home prices slid to its lowest point in 11 years in January.
According to the latest Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Index, released Tuesday, existing single-family home sale prices declined by nearly 7 percent in January compared with the same month in 2010. Atlanta’s index sagged to 99.59, just below the 100 benchmark score representing prices at the start of 2000. It was the first time metro Atlanta’s score was below 100 since December 1999.
Still, local real estate experts say they see improvement in some market indicators such as sales volume and pending contracts.
“This is a moving target,” Steve Palm, president of the real estate data company SmartNumbers, said recently.
Locally the index, which tracks repeat sales, was down .5 percent from December 2010, which also saw a record low. The index has been in steady decline since August.
Nationally, the 20-City index fell 3.1 percent in January from a year earlier.
“Looking across some of the markets, we see that . . . Atlanta has joined Cleveland, Detroit and Las Vegas as markets where average home prices are now below their January 2000 levels,” said David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s.
Nationally, Blitzer says, the worst case scenario is that a double-dip “may be materializing.” But local experts like Palm aren’t willing to call what is happening in Atlanta a double dip.
“You have to have . . . made some improvement to double-dip,” he said earlier this year. “We’ve been pretty much declining, so without some appreciable improvement, there can be no double-dip.”
Blitzer said S&P previously defined a double dip as seeing the 10- and 20-city indices set new post-peak lows. As it stands, the 10-city index is 2.8 percent above its April 2009 low and the 20-city index is 1.1 percent above, he said.
“But both series have moved closer to a confirmed double-dip for six consecutive months,” he said.
Atlanta home price index for past year
(100 represents value at start of 2000)
Jan. ‘10 — 107.04          Feb. — 105.65      March — 103.73            April — 105.69
May — 107.86               June — 109.72      July — 110.02                August — 108.95
September — 106.39       October — 103.30      November — 100.83       December — 100.03
Jan. 2011 — 99.59
this will increase the number of homes in Metro Atlanta homes that are underwater to about 40%, of all homes, and put more pressure on individuals and families to choose foreclosure and short sales to get out of their bad investment h0mes! If you bought a home in the last 10 years, it could take 5 to 7 years to get back to break even! Those who bought between 2004 and 2008 are more likely to have lost over 50% of the value of when they bought!