Well welcome to my first post on the new Athens / Decatur AL Real Estate Guide. Its that time of month, so I have decided to start with a couple of posts highlighting the details of our local real estate market. Each month I will be posting separately about Sales and Price statistics in the Athens and Decatur areas so if you’re in the market you might want to book-mark the site or simply subscribe to our hyper-local real estate feed so you won’t miss an update.
Wow, what a difference an expiring Home Buyers tax-credit can make on market behavior. Morgan and Limestone county home sales jumped a respectable 19.3% from 150 closing in March to 179 units sold in April of 2010. Even when taking seasonality into account, home sales are up some 24% over both April 2008 and April 2009. Certainly, with the exception of a normal mid-winter slump, the last 6 months of local home sales have certainly illustrated a market that has stabilized from a decline brought on by the national housing crisis that began in earnest in 2007.
I realize that the above Decatur Homes Sales chart is a bit busy given that it shows 4 1/2 years of statistical data, however I think it is important to see how the local markets in both Athens and Decatur have fared given the national financial crisis. As can be seen from the dark blue moving average illustrated above, local home sales declined significantly through 2007-2008, while during the later part of 2009 and thus far in 2010, we have experienced some stabilization and in fact have seen local home sales move off their 2008 lows.
However the 800 pound gorilla in the room is the difficult question: How is the market going to react over the next few months now that there is no underlining buyers tax-credit to support the demand side of the equation?
Well obviously we don’t know the answer to this question yet. Nevertheless you will want to stay tuned to our monthly market updates because we will know it, all too well, in the very near future and we will keep you updated as events develop right here on these pages. If you have any questions in the meantime don’t hesitate to email or give me a call256-340-0004.
- Jason
