Just yesterday it seemed that Smyrna Vinings home buyers had lots of options and were able to be picky. The market is changing and the homes that are priced right are selling quickly. Inventory has dropped and with inventory at a five year low, deals are becoming harder to find and disappearing very quickly.

You’ll see what I mean as we recap of the December home sales and our current Smyrna Vinings real estate market. If anything, we can say that sales have been very consistent this year. I know that you keep hearing all the negative press in the papers and the national news, but the Smyrna Vinings area is doing pretty well. Do we have room for improvement, sure. But it is getting harder to find those great deals for our clients as inventory continues to shrink. So let’s get to it and see what’s going on in the only market that matters most to you, your local Smyrna Vinings home market.

This chart shows you the past 12 months of home sales at any given point. As you’ll notice, the green bar is 2007 and we were selling a fair amount more homes in 2007. Sales dropped in 2008, with the drop becoming more pronounced toward the last quarter of 2008. That would be the beginning of the financial meltdown. 2009 home sales started off about 32% off the level just two years previously in January 2007. We saw Smyrna Vinings home sales continue to drop in 2009, but then leveling off in late summer and actually seeing sales pick up toward the end of the year. Typically, you expect sales to be higher in the late Spring and early Summer, but that hasn’t been the case in 2007-2010.

We’ve been very consistent in 2011 without any significant spikes up or down. We’re starting to see the new norm of about 500-525 homes being sold a year versus 900 some homes sold back in 2007. That’s a pretty dramatic decrease and what has caused a lot of pricing issues, it’s all about supply and demand.

This is our new base in terms of annual Smyrna Vinings home sales.

The Active Listings chart depicts Smyrna Vinings homes currently for sale. The general shape of the annual graphs are pretty consistent with what we would expect with more homes for sale during the Fall months. What is different is that we’re just seeing a lot fewer homes on the market than in years. We’ve seen the inventory numbers drop off every year in the second half of the year and the inventory numbers really haven’t jumped up that much to start 2011. As the inventory shrinks, you will expect to see homes sell quicker as there are fewer homes for buyers to choose from and when the right home pops up, the patients buyers will be ready to jump.

Some homeowners may feel like it’s time to stay put and some may feel like they just can’t sell in this market. 2011 inventory levels are at an all time-low for December compared to the last four years. If you’ve thought about selling and just aren’t sure, be sure to contact us or find out how much your home is worth. Less competition is a good thing if you’re ready to sell.

One other important statistic that we like to track is how the overall health of the Smyrna Vinings home market. Months of inventory is a calculation that takes the current amount of homes for sale and divides that by the number of homes that have sold in the last 12 months. What the result means is if no more homes were listed, how many months would it take, based upon the past 12 months activity, to sell all the homes currently for sale.

A result of 6 months is considered a healthy market, less than 6 months a seller’s market and more than 6 months, a buyer’s market. What we can see from the chart above is that we were close to a seller’s market at the beginning of 2007, with the highest amount of bloat and most severe buyer’s market in July of 2009 with significant improvement in 2010 on into 2011.

We’re still in a buyer’s market, but we’re at 8.2 months worth of inventory in December versus 9.7 just a year ago. We saw an increase to start 2011, but with consistent sales throughout 2011, inventory hasn’t kept up and the ratio has improved.

That is your Smyrna Vinings homes sales activity recap for December 2011. Hope that was helpful and don’t hesitate to contact us if we can help you sell your Smyrna Vinings home or find your new Smyrna Vinings home. We’ll be back next week to recap the top-selling Smyrna Vinings neighborhoods of 2011.

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