Happy Holidays everyone!!

I'm in the Metro Atlanta area. I have several listings right now. A couple of my clients have contacted me to find out "why", "things are slow in the market right now and how can they get their home sold!"


My main question to all of you is: How would you answer that question? Properties are priced right and they are being marketed (MLS, RE publication, virt. tour, online & 800 call capture).

I'd like to hear some of your ideas on this.

By the way, how is the market in YOUR area?

I am in Ga too and I have lived here ALL of my life but have traveled of course.I grew up in Woodstock,ga.When I was a kid we had the thousand acres where Towne Lake now sits.Bells Ferry was a dirt road that had one grocery store and gas station on it.Boy I wish I had bought land back when I turned 18!!

The answer is simple in Ga's market.Back in the height of the boom of 2005 there were only about 55,000 homes for sale and demand was high.many developers and builders from other states were clamoring to build here and lining up project after project in the metro atlanta area which comprises about 12 to 13 counties.As of today there are about 106,000 homes for sale not including fsbo's.

Most of the buyers that could fog a mirror have bought and there were some subprime buyers that should have never been allowed to purchase.Right now regular sellers are competing with sellers in pre-foreclosure and Banks that have REO's selling at 10 to 25 percent or more UNDER market value.Unless a sellers home is in a prime location for commercial development or the house is just awesome and outshines the rest in price point,design,square feet then the regular homes aren't moving.

This market won't change until about the beginning of 2009 when builders start re-entering the market when inventory levels go down and risk is low and all of the arm's and I/O loans have been refinanced or foreclosed and sold reo by the banks.Then the market will start to shift more to a sellers market.

It depends on what the price point of the homes you are selling also.If it's above the VA and FHA maximum's for the area then you are going into the jumbo mortgage market which is really hard right now for a buyer to get financed because investors don't know how many bad jumbo loans were funded that wereen't supposed to when the real estate boom happened.

Most buyers are finding out that with the re-priced risk to investors on wall-street that the interest rates buyers are qualifying for they would rather rent.So before with a low interest rate the mortgage payment would have been only say 100 to 200 more a month to own a home.Now since the teaser loans are gone and the interest rate is higher buyers are looking into ownign a home and seeing 1 to 3 percent higher interest rate quotes and a mortgage payment 400 more than there aprtment payment and saying no thanks we will wait for the market to change.This is awesome for apartment developers but not regular sellers.

My advice to sellers has been to NOT sell right now unless you have a good reason job relocation,divorce,job loss,death,sickness,facing foreclosure,etc.

Of course this is just my opinion and not legal advice of anykind.

I agree, my advice to many home sellers has been to rent out the property until things turn around.

Of course everything will sell ----- at the right price.

Super Realtor,

Thanks for your reply. I share most of your sentiments regarding the market. My husband is a spec home builder and developer, so I know exactly what I'm up against. Most seller's don't want to hear the ugly truth, however, I give it to them anyway. I don't necessarily discourage them from selling. As you know, statistically speaking, there will ALWAYS be someone needing to Buy or Sell.

With that being said, reality is that the average dom, has now increased tremendously because of what has happened as a result of "bad lending", abundance of inventory, media hype, etc, etc...

Most of the agents that I know are now looking for a J-O-B. I'll be here to take up the slack and gladly list those properties that have a motivated seller w/equity behind them. I'll even help those who don't have equity and are facing foreclosure. Short sales are a whole different ballgame, though and I do have some recent experience with those.

I agree that we probably won't see a change for a couple of years. In the mean time there will be "some" properties selling and "some" buyers - buying...hopefully, I'll be at the right place at the right time!

I'm in the Northeast Atlanta area (Gwinnett)...where are you located now?

I am still in Cherokee county and also do work in Cobb.I have another broker friend in Gwinnett.

I used to residential and then I switched to just doing pre-foreclosures and also short sales.I hate REO because of the cash outlay and the property management and waiting to be reimbursed is not my thing.I was doing a bunch of short sales but for the time invovled I thought I could improve my return on time spent.

Now what I mainly do is help mixed-use developers revitalize old shopping centers or assemble land for new projects.I enjoy the commercial side much more and love the paychecks.Commercial is done more during business hours and lunch meetings.

Hopefully your houses will sell!

The Realty TV Shows have made "Flipping" look so easy everybody jumped into it with doing their homework, over spent and getting Foreclosed on.

The Media is doom and gloom in regards to Real Estate and everybody needs to sell. There are to many houses on the market for the buyers to choose from. The prices have to be overpriced in alot of cases, because the seller owes more than the home is worth.

The Mortgage Crises of late and the tighter lending standards knocked alot of the once qualified buyers out of the the arena, at times in the middle of purchasing. Alot of the options that were once available to a risky credit scored buyer is no longer awailable.

My market is slow - but the sellers are not desperate to sell. This is where we have the problem.

The buyers are listening to all this hype about how prices are plunging blah blah blah...so they come in and bid $50,000 to $80,000 or more under the asking price and expect the sellers to eventually come down.

Now in some cases we are dealing with a property that is overpriced to begin with. That's a different situation..and that's where the sellers need to come to grips with reality and shame on their realtor for listing their property at an unreasonable price.

I had a guy call me one day about a house listed at $169,000. A little high, but not bad...should be somewhere in the $150,000 range. He said "Do you think they'll take $70,000 for it?"

Our market has a large number of second / vacation homes. The sellers don't care what the media says...they're content to wait for their price; if it doesn't sell this year, then they'll enjoy their lake house another season and keep trying to sell...but they're not about to give it away. Trying to tell some of the buyers this is like banging your head against the wall sometimes.