Atlanta has seen its housing inventory rise to pre-pandemic levels while one broad measure of pricing harkens all the way back to the wake of the Great Recession.
Recent data from Zillow indicates that about 30 percent of homes listed for sale in the Atlanta metro have been discounted, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported. The trend has emerged along with a slowdown in sales, which took the region from having tight supplies to having enough inventory to be considered a neutral market.
The shift towards price cutting a significant chunk of current listings is attributed, in part, to sellers getting jolted back to competitive reality after a red-hot run during the pandemic.
“A growing segment of homes that aren’t competitively priced or well marketed are lingering on the market,” Zillow’s Chief Economist, Skylar Olsen told the Business Chronicle.“For years, the housing market has been defined by fast sales and few options. Now it’s starting to look more like it did before the pandemic in terms of completion, if not costs.”
Indeed, the pandemic years saw housing inventory in Atlanta regularly fall to one month’s supply. Now, however, the market has about three-and-a-half months of inventory, still slightly lower than the national average and below the National Association of Realtors six-month benchmark.
Meanwhile, the level of listings offering discounts in Atlanta was about steady in June versus the prior month, but up seven percent from a year prior. Atlanta’s level of discounts is slightly higher than the national average of around 25 percent in June, the highest mark since 2018.
Rock-bottom interest rates helped fuel the boom in home sales during the pandemic and beyond, and Atlanta was a big beneficiary.
A cooling trend in sales has followed interest-rate hikes over the past two years.
The overall effect has the Atlanta metro as one of nine markets in the top 50 nationwide with a housing market that neither favors buyers or sellers, according to Zillow.
—Jerry Sullivan