The Real Estate Market - How Bad Is It?

Now, that's a question I hear 3 or 4 times a day...and the answer I usually give is, "It depends on who you are..."

Unfortunately, there's no clear-cut way to answer it. Obviously the market conditions look much different to a builder trying to sell a large inventory of homes than they do to a buyer with good credit and no property to sell. To the builder, the market couldn't be much worse, but to the buyer, the market is outstanding. So the answer for most of us is probably that it's somewhere in between.

Of course, it's impossible to ignore the fact that so many houses are on the market. As of July 17th, 2008 there were 496 single-family homes listed for sale in Richmond Hill...and only 72 (or about 15%) of them were under contract. With that kind of competition for buyers, prices will undoubtedly fall. However, it should make us all feel a little better to know that we're homeowners in Buckhead. As of the same date, there were 25 homes listed for sale in Buckhead and 8 (or about 32%) of them were under contract...over twice the success rate of Richmond Hill as a whole. In addition, home prices in Buckhead have remained somewhat steady this year-to-date as compared to the same period in 2006 when the market was considered to be "booming" (an average of $134/square foot in 2006 as compared to an average of $127/square foot so far this year).

So, let all that soak in, and combine it with the fact that Richmond Hill was just ranked in the top 3 places to buy in the U.S. by Real Estate analyst Dr. Danielle Babb on Fox News, and you have to admit...things may not be so bad after all.