What’s Up with Decatur’s Real Estate Market?
Decatur Metro | March 4, 2010You know that home-sales chart from city-data that I’m always resurrecting? You know, this one!
Well believe it or not, there’s a bit more to Decatur real estate than just a crummy mass-produced slide found in the bowels of the internet.
This evening from 5:30p-7p, Decatur residents and real estate agents, Terry Michel and Sean Dammann, are hosting a Decatur Real Estate Forum of area agents, residents and community leaders at Decatur’s Keller Williams office at 315 West Ponce to give an overview and discuss the health of Decatur’s real estate market.
While once an event geared exclusively to local agents from various realty groups around Atlanta, Dammann and Michel decided to open this quarterly event to the public and focus exclusively on the Decatur market as a service to their community.
According to Dammann, some of the questions to be answered during the forum include…
- What is the average sales price in Decatur?
- How has the Decatur Market compared to the rest of Atlanta?
- Is Spring really the best time to sell your house?
- Has the market bottomed out yet?
The event is free and opened to all parties interested in the health of Decatur’s real estate market. You can R.S.V.P. to Terry Michel (tmichel@mindspring.com) or Sean Dammann (sean@seandammann.com) or register on the home page www.decaturmarketstats.com
P.S. Here’s one of the more interesting slides I discovered, which I believe will be presented tonight…
Latest from Decaturish
I occasionally take a look at Zillow.com to check out my homes value and it’s been in a pretty drastic decline for the past six months. But less drastic and much later than my friend’s home in Grant Park. Not sure if other Decatur home owners have seen the same decline. Luckily, I’m still not upside down as they say.
I’ve noticed the same. Our home’s value on Zillow went into a freefall from October-January, dropping 19% over that period. We are now valued $100k less than an almost identical house (with one fewer bathroom) down the block sold for in August 09.
Zillow is an enigma wrapped in a riddle.
I won’t make the event tonight, but I’m wondering if agents are finding any strategies to getting realistic appraisals these days? The new arms-length appraisal ordering rules that went in last year caused lots of scenarios where appraisers from Conyers were doing work in Decatur, with the result being that they used comps for houses in Kirkwood or East Lake, because they have zero knowledge of the area, borders, or school district differences.
We’ve experienced something similar with our house.
And I completely agree with your assessment of Zillow. I also think that it has something to do with all the foreclosures recently. When looking for recent sales for comps, Zillow and appraisers look at homes of similar square footage in the area and assume they’re all on par with mine, with little thought to location, condition, etc.
My husband will be going to the meeting tonight. We are getting ready to put our house on the market. My realtor has told me of one home where the appraisal came back below what the OFFER price was and the entire deal had be been reworked. I will be interested in hearing if it is possible to get a “fair” appraisal in this market…
Moonmommy…this is par for the course. We put our house on the market in June and got two offers in two days. Got list for it and then had the appraisal come back $35K less than the accepted offer.
In cases like this, most national banks will send out the aforementioned appraiser from Conyers or Rockdale or whatnot.
so, we had to convince the buyers to go to a local bank to get new financing(which will remain unnamed here…as they are a DM sponsor…ahem)
Local banks are not under the same govt. restrictions regarding appraisals as national banks. Plus, they have a better understanding of the local market.
Needless to say, it all worked out in the end and saved the dealio.
On a side note, we refinanced our new home BEFORE we moved in to get a super low rate. The appraiser came to the house (had to do it AGAIN!) in sweatpants.
Sweatpants.
Yeesh.
Thanks, Left Wing. That is great advice. I hope we have the same selling luck you did!
Moon –
Appraisials have definitely become a larger challenge in today’s market. It used to be we worried about inspection once a house went under contract. Now it is appraisals. There are several factors that play into the current appraisial market.
Foreclosures used to be the exception not the rule. Realtors and appraisers were pretty quick to disregard them when pricing and appraisiang houses . In today’s market, forclosures are very much a part of the equation even in town.
Additionally, Federeal lending guidelines were completely overhauled in May 2009. It used to be that lenders and banks picked their appraisers directly, Now they are required to use third party appraisal companies that randomly assign an appraiser to each property. The intent was to eliminate the conditions that were leading to rampant mortgage fraud (DeKalb was one of the worst counties in the nation). Unfortunately, it also led to appraisers working in areas that they were not familiar with. There is a very fine line between Decatur, unincorr DeKalb, East Lake, Kirkwood, Emory, Fernbank, etc…. where two blocks can literally mean the difference in over $100K in value. An appraiser from say Woodstock or Canton might not have the intimate market knowledge of someone accustomed to the intown market. You have to be able to apply market knowledge to the data you are using.
We have taken to meeting appraisers at the door when we get houses under contract to personally hand them comps we used to price the property. The process for challenging appraisals is more difficult, too.
I could go on for hours about the impact of appraisals in today’s market. Tell your husband to introduce himself tonight and I can cover it in more depth if he is interested.
Definitely will have him talk to you! Thank you for your help, Sean.
Very interesting stuff. The median days on the market shows very substantial increases across the board, with the 500k to 750k price range more than tripling from 2008. Price a home in that range at your peril, unless you actually want to wait a year to sell it.
Have to think that’s in large part a result of many houses in that price range being badly mispriced to begin with. I am still amazed sometimes when fairly modest homes go up for sale with jaw-dropping asking prices. Many people seem to think that if they bought the home in 2006 or 2007 it is still worth what they paid. It isn’t. In some cases, it’s not even close.
And to think, in 2009 we had some extraordinary government measures in place to prop up the market, like massive tax breaks for many home buyers, plus absurdly low interest rates, efforts to slow foreclosures, etc. We might still be at the point where an end to those measures will cause another crisis in housing. The market sure doesn’t seem very robust.
I would “thumbs up” your comment if I could!
You’re right that the days on the market chart is especially striking for the 500k-750k range. It’s even higher than the $750-$1mil days on the market!
I’m also pretty worried about what might happen when the gov’t measures run out. What’s the time frame on stuff like the new homeowners tax credit? Didn’t it just get extended?
DEM, I think the reason this stratum is so high regarding days on the market, is that it is VERY effected by move-up buyers. Before the era of foreclosures, when a ~300k house was purchased, that owner would buy a more expensive house, and this would trickle up the chain. What has happened with foreclosures is that when a foreclosure is purchased (usually a ~200k-300k house), there is no owner to move up since the bank owns the property. This results in fewer move-up buyers.
In a weak market without foreclosures I don’t think these houses would be overpriced. I think this current statistic may be largely an artifact of the foreclosure phenomenon. I think that once the foreclosures slow, then this will have a huge positive ripple effect across the housing market.
But that’s just my 2c.
“The tax credit now applies to sales occurring on or after January 1, 2009 and on or before April 30, 2010. However, in cases where a binding sales contract is signed by April 30, 2010, a home purchase completed by June 30, 2010 will qualify.”
– http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com/faq1.php
There is also now a tax credit for repeat home buyers. Same deadline.
If you are a “new” homebuyer (ie haven’t owned a house in the last three years), the credit is as much as $8,000 (income limits). You may be eligible for a $6,500 credit if you meet income restricutions and have lived in your home for 5 of the last 8 years. Same deadlines as Moonmommy lists.
Can anyone summarize what was said here? I emailed them and got no reply. I learned about this event after it happened.
My Decatur condo went from $1.3 million to $315,000 in just six months on Zillow. I’d be crushed by my million-dollar loss, except that the property is appraised at about $240,000, so I’m actually $75,000 up. In other words, don’t take Zillow too seriously…