Average Atlanta home prices slipped in the late fall while national prices continued rising, according to a closely-watched report.
Metro prices slipped 0.3 percent in November, while the U.S. average edged up 0.1 percent during the month, according to today’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index.
However, the long-term trend has been up: Atlanta prices were still 5.7 percent higher than a year earlier, while the national average was up 5.3 percent in that time, according to the index.
And adjusted for the time of year, when sales normally slow, Atlanta’s average was up 1.0 percent during November. Using the same adjustment, the national average rose 0.9 percent.
Several years of steady price hikes are largely because most of the action has been in the higher price points. One reason: the flow into the market of first-time homebuyers – typically young adults – has been so weak.
“It’s not because they don’t way to play,” said Shirley Gary, managing broker with Engel & Volkers in Atlanta. “It is because they don’t have the ability to play.”
Some national housing associations have predicted that this is the year that will change. Gary isn’t so sure.
“Millennials are renting apartments, building up credit and building up down-payments,” she said. “I don’t think they’ll be back in until 2017.”
While home prices in some parts of the region are still depressed, the average for the Atlanta market has been surging for more than three years – with much of the strength on the north side of town.
Sales have picked up the past year in parts of the south metro area as well.
Nationally, only a handful of metro areas have surpassed the levels reached before the housing bubble burst and prices began to slide.
Atlanta is one of the regions where the average remains below the pre-recession peak. Atlanta’s average price has risen 52.3 percent since its low in 2012, but is still 7.9 below the previous crest, reached in mid-2007.
“Home prices continue to recover from the collapse that began before the recession of 2007-2009 and continued until 2012,” said David Blitzer, managing director at S&P Dow Jones Indices, which calculates the Case-Shiller data.
Among the 20 largest metro areas, only three – Dallas, Denver and Portland – have reached new all-time highs, according to Blitzer. “San Francisco is even with its earlier peak and Charlotte NC is less than 1 percent below its previous peak.”
This is the closest to “normal” that the housing market has been in many years, said Svenja Gudell, chief economist for Zillow, a Seattle-based housing research firm. “Home value growth has largely stabilized at a sustainable level and the runaway appreciation that marked the last few years has passed.”
Atlanta’s slippage shrinks when seasonal patterns are accounted for, although the national picture was much stronger, according to Case-Shiller.
The Case-Shiller report “suggests the U.S housing market may be entering yet another expansionary period headed into 2016,” said Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist at Trulia, a San Francisco-based home listing company.
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