Winter is Coming

All counties on my monthly watchlist have shown the same trend over the course of the summer - with July being no exception. As you can see in each of the graphs, both blue and red lines have sloped down in July indicating a little bit of a slowing down on the homes that are being listed and homes that are being purchased.

The biggest change was in Fulton County’s homes being sold - a 27% drop from the previous month of June. Second biggest drop was homes being sold in Forsyth County at 24%. And Cobb, the strongest county of the 3, had a drop in homes sold at17%. The overall drop in home purchases mimics the same pre-summer activity of the month of March of this year. Perhaps this signals the end of the hot summer market or this is all about the rising mortgage rates combined with general buyer hesitation due to general economic leeriness and “proceed with caution” knee jerk reactions that are remnant of the all too familiar downturn of 2008.

What would have been more surprising is if homes that are being listed remained at same summer levels while homes being purchased dropped significantly - then I would have been a bit more worried. Seeing both trend lines be directionally correlated tells me that both buyers and sellers are both reacting to an outside market influence and general feeling - and that sellers are not going into disposition mode while buyers are becoming completely gun shy with purchasing real estate.

All was fine in the real estate world in July and I am looking forward to August - which will determine how soon real estate winter will come this year. And, as in every year, it’s no secret, and Jon Snow from Game of Thrones knows - "winter is coming."