Duluth, GA 75°F
By Nancy Minor Re/Max Greater Atlanta
Over the past few years I have analyzed the real estate market and shared my analysis with Inside Gwinnett Magazine. I look at Zip Codes 30092, 30097 and 30071 and The City of Norcross and Sugarloaf Country Club.
One big difference this year from years past is all the talk about “short sales”. That name has not been used in my updates until this year. That’s not to say there were no short sales before, but the figure at least for our market was so small it hardly deserved a mention.
Short Sales As An Option
Homeowners, lenders, and real estate agents have discovered that a short sale may be an option to foreclosure. Short sales, for those not familiar, occur when the price does not cover the loan amount owed by the homeowner, but the lender accepts this short fall in lieu of watching the home go into foreclosure and losing even more money on the home.
According to experts, a short sale impacts one’s credit score less than a foreclosure. I would encourage anybody who has become delinquent in their mortgage payments and are unable to sell their home and cover their loan balance to investigate this as an alternative. However, it is very difficult to find a buyer and do a short sale one week before your home is to be sold on the courthouse steps. It is a very slow process, and you must be willing to provide all necessary documentation. You must take action as soon as possible.
Keeping the trend of short sales in mind, let’s return to the state of the market today …
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The City of Norcross had 159 sales with an average price of $141,779. In 2007 there were 149 sales with an average sales price of $197,543. Of the homes sold in 2010, almost two out of three of those homes were foreclosures and short sales. The highest price paid for a City of Norcross home in 2010 according to the FMLS was $495,000 and lowest came in at $36,000. Both excellent buys!
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Peachtree Corners (30092) had 116 homes sold in 2010 with the average price of $326.049. That is a drop from the 2007 average high of $391,811. The sales in Peachtree Corners saw buyers buying up luxury homes at bargain prices, and a smart investor buy a small ranch style home for $125,000 which could very well be the “must have” piece of property in a large commercial development. The average prices in the two largest subdivisions in the area were Amberfield with 10 sales at $459,000 (in 2007, 16 sold with an average price of $548,087) and Peachtree Station with 8 sales with an average price of $351,162 (in 2007, 25 sold with an average price of $395,428).
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In 2009 I reported on Sugarloaf Country Club real estate. This community has made a remarkable turnaround in two years. It had 32 foreclosures and 126 homes on the market with a three-year supply of homes for sale in 2009. Today there are only two homes that are marked as foreclosures in the FMLS. There are 10 others that are listed as short sale or lender owned. In 2009 homes were selling at a rate of about 3.7 per month. Today that rate is 6.67 homes per month with 58 on the market with prices ranging from $579,000 to $6,750,000.
There is an 8-month supply but still excellent from where this community was in 2009. There were 80 homes sold in 2010. The search for the end of the housing slump in our market continues. Dave Liniger, CEO and Co-founder of RE/MAX, spoke recently on the state of the real estate market. He echoed the message that we have been hearing that before there is any kind of growth in the market, we must see the foreclosed homes sold. Unfortunately, he tells us that there is a shadow market out there of homes that are in the early stages of foreclosure, but have not actually been foreclosed. When asked when things would get back to normal he stated, “There is a new normal for the next three to five years.” He believes the bottom of our market will hit at the end of 2011 and then we will begin to see our market change.
Information is in part from the First Multiple Listing Service (FMLS), which has no responsibility for its accuracy.
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