Adams Realtors sums up residential real estate action over the past 12 months in the City of Decatur and the specific neighborhoods of Glenwood Estates, Oakhurst, Great Lakes and Winnona Park – along with Pine Lake and Avondale Estates – over on its blog.  Here’s a the top-line summary…

According to our October 2010 survey, all of the Central DeKalb markets, except Avondale Estates, had a year over year drop in Average Sales Price. The Number of Days on the Market was down in Decatur and Avondale Estates and up in Pine Lake. Pine Lake and Decatur, as well as the Decatur neighborhoods of Oakhurst and Glenwood Estates, were markets that experienced an increase in the Number of Units Sold over the last year. Pine Lake, Glenwood Estates, Oakhurst and the City of Decatur were the only markets that had an increase in Annual Sales Volume from 2009 to 2010.

For more neighborhood specific analysis, check out their full blog post.

h/t: InDecatur

If you’re a news-junkie with ink-stained fingers or um..carpal tunnel, you know the AJC has gone whole hog on evaluating tax assessments across the metro area and is reporting it’s findings in an in-depth series.

But the shocker being played up by the AJC, namely the widespread discrepancy of tax assessments to sales prices across much of the Atlanta metro area, doesn’t seem to shake out for ol’ 30030, according to the AJC’s zip code breakdown.

In fact, while Decatur’s sales value of homes increased nearly 10% from 2007 to 2008, tax assessments in the city went up only 3.6%.  Meanwhile, residents who filed tax returns requested a 19.2% drop in value.

So, according to this AJC analysis (story HERE, cool interactive map HERE), Decatur’s assessments aren’t currently that out of whack.  To see what a real problem looks like, take a gander at South DeKalb, or much of South Fulton, where sales value can be as much as 50% less than the property’s tax assessment.

As for the reason why assessments are so much higher than values, most across the Atlanta metro tax offices were pretty upfront with the AJC.  If assessments truly reflected current costs, local governments would go into a operational tailspin.

Is this reason enough to keep assessments up?  If you’re a city or county government unprepared to deal with massive services cuts or a political leader unwilling to propose a tax increase, probably so.  If you’re a homeowner struggling to make ends meet, probably not.