Metro Atlanta Market

[Ryan Alexander]

Hi BP community, 

Being a real estate agent in and around Atlanta we, like agents in most other areas, have seen a meteoric rise, some homes almost doubling in price over the past 3-4 years. As we all understand, this is not sustainable and we are starting to see this here as the average interest rate climbs to 5.75%-6%. The rising intrest rates coupled with home prices holding at all time highs (for now) have pushed many home buyers out of the market entirely. Now with a basic understanding of supply and demand we can infer that if supply stays the same and demand falls the price must fall as well. According to market stats provided by First multiple listing service, in January the months supply was at 1.1, this means that it would take 1.1 months to sell through the inventory at the time the calculation was taken. As of June we were at a 1.8 months supply. Now this metric is indicative of the current supply, but the same economic principles apply and that is that if the supply increases by 60% in 6 months the price must also fall. Now to go full circle, the truth is that the supply did not just randomly jump, the rising intrest rates have pushed buyers out of the market resulting in a surplus of inventory. 

Now that we certainly are experiencing the market shift beneath our we can do one of two things. 

1. Freak out because the world is on fire and we are all going to die.....

2. OR we can pivot our strategies by having high level conversations and taking tips from what we see in this group. 

My conclusion, I wish I had a crystal ball but I don’t and probably none of you do either. So we must rely on facts and statistics.