When Did The North Atlanta Market Start To Slip?

Many in real estate blame changes in the last few years of real estate and point the finger to the decline. In our area they are wrong. They are in denial, and do not want to understand the truth. The North Atlanta real estate market took a big hit post September 11, 2001. There were a lot of back office clearing centers that cleared trades for Wall Street. The loss of jobs here was coupled with the fallout from the bursting Dot Com Bubble, and the bursting of the Telcom bubble. It was a lethal cocktail. Sales if looked at in North Fulton have never regained their former glory. They tried to revive the former glory days here in GA in late 2004 with the mass introduction of no money down loans. At one point our area gained the reputation for the largest percentage of no money down loans. Over 52% of most loans in our area required no money down. It was insanity, and yet no one rocked the boat. Back then we were leading the nation in foreclosures before foreclosures were even fashionable. Yet no one seemed to want to rock the boat despite the fact we were also # 1 in loan fraud for years in a row!

To fuel the excesses - during 2003 to 2006 the numbers of agents in this market increased 300%. We had 13000 agents in 2003 and it rose to 46000 agents in the later part of 2006. All of them said the market was great. Someone was lying.

In spite of this, we have done very well in this Atlanta market, and are continuing to do so. We had some of the best years we have ever had, but it is because we constantly refine the way we work. The reason we are successful is that we understand the nature of real estate and work it as a profession.

I decided to go in and pull up the units sold in single family detached homes sold in Area 14 (which is the east side of North Fulton County GA.) The numbers were just what I thought, and the trend is unmistakable! Sales as measured from August to August have dropped over 61% since August of 2003. Look at the graph! This was the area (Area 14) that once dominated the state of GA in real estate sales, income and tremendous growth. We will not return back there for many years to come.