The Atlanta Buyer’s Market

December 31, 2007

Everyone knows that we are in a Buyer’s market. You hear about it on the network news and read about it in the Atlanta paper…. in the Atlanta area we are in a Buyer’s Market!

One of the big brokerages has billboards around Atlanta which show how many homes are on the market today. It was up to 109,000 about a month ago and now it is down to 101,000. You will normally see it refresh and have the numbers change as you drive by. It catches my attention every time I drive by! The company is attempting to advertise the web search tool that they offer, but in my opinion, the only message it is really sending is that there are a boatload of houses for sale today in Atlanta Georgia!

I think the billboard undermines any feelings of optimism that may be brewing out there and they may be turning more Buyers off than they are turning on! 

 ….Really, the opportunities for home-buyers, especially first time home-buyers, are great! The interest rates are still at historic lows and prices are way down as well.

It isn’t that every single house is reduced or can be bought at a discount, there are still plenty of homes that sell for roughly what they always have sold for. What is happening is that in the Atlanta area there are literally thousands of foreclosures and pre-foreclosures in the market and that is where the real bargains are.

What a lot of Buyers aren’t understanding is that there are plenty of homeowners who have taken beautiful care of their homes who are not in any kind of financial difficulty who aren’t going to be bullied into giving their home away. One of the truisms in Real Estate, is that even in a Buyer’s market is that the real "steals" are almost always a little run down. The "have to sell" types generally don’t have the clean, perfectly decorated home that the happy contented homeowner has. So although you will occasionally see some perfect homes at a discount the vast majority will be some kind of a fixer upper.

Realtors today are contending with Buyers who are finding themselves frustrated. Because the media leads everyone to believe that the prices are down across the board, the Buyers are suprised when after months of searching, they finally find a house in their price range that looks like Martha Stewart’s dream cottage and they discover that those Sellers wont reduce the price by 20%! It’s Murphy’s law! The perfect home is virtually never negotiable, these Sellers normally have great pride of ownership and have worked hard on maintenance. This is not a hard and fast rule but it’s good to know it going in, because the person searching for great schools, space style and decor, will probably have to make offers on 50 wonderful places in order to find one that will reduce the price drastically.

 

Posted by danconnolly | Filed Under General Real Estate Info 

Comments

One Response to “The Atlanta Buyer’s Market”

  1. Ken in Chicago on February 17th, 2008 12:27 pm

    Dan I wrote a blog post about why buyers should be buying in todays market (click on my name). It is amazing how many people are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the market to “pick up”. Well the fact is once the media actually reports the market picking up it will be to late to get the best deals, home prices will have already risen, and there won’t be the amazing selection of homes on the market. The media is always way behind in this type of news and just about the worst source of information a buyer can rely on.

    As for the billboard in your market, there is no question that it would make some buyers think twice about purchasing. Agents need to think about what type of advertising they are doing and how the public will view it.

Got something to say?