Health & Fitness
City of Decatur: 1Q Real Estate Results
A look at the City of Decatur's first quarter transaction volume.
Yesterday I wrote about two positive pieces of news regarding the national housing market: 1) the continued slide in interest rates in the 1st Quarter, bringing rates back toward historically low levels, and 2) the increases in transaction volume seen in 49 of 50 states.
News like this can be interpreted as a leading indicator of where the national market is heading, but as all good real estate agents know, markets are hyper-local. And, as it has often been said in the past several years, talking about the about the national housing market is like talking about the national temperature.
In the City of Decatur we've been able to buck many of the national trends.
Find out what's happening in Decatur-Avondale Estatesfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Most of the time, posting results that were significantly more stable than the rest of the Metro Atlanta area (more stable in price, more stable in days on market, more stable in volume). So, let's take a look at 1Q, 2011 and how it compares with the 1st Quarter of the previous two years.
Effectively, we are again bucking the trend, but this time, in not so positive a way. The City of Decatur's transaction volume in first quarter of 2011 was down 21.6% when compared to the same quarter one year ago. Basically, we got off to a very slow start in 2011. This was somewhat expected as the market is no longer benefitting from the 2010 Federal Tax Credit - that provided up to $8,000 in tax credits to almost anyone who purchased a home in the first half of 2010.
Find out what's happening in Decatur-Avondale Estatesfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
However, when we look at pending home sales in March and April (another highly watched indicator of the market), our pending numbers are doing very well. On May 8th, I blogged about our pending transactions for March and April (pending transactions are homes that went under contract in either March or April, but have yet to close). Our pending sales were dramatically improved in March and April 2011, showing a 46% increase when comparing April 2011 pendings to April 2010 pendings and a 29% increase when comparing March 2011 to March 2010.
Based on this statistic, and if the closings hold up, it should be a very good 2nd Quarter for the City of Decatur.
