Holding, but hopeful

The prevailing wisdom in the national media has been that real estate will lead the economy out of the recession.

MLS numbers here suggest we’ve still got a way to go. That’s important, for all sectors of the local economy because so much depends on home sales.

When people move into a new house, they buy a lot of new things, and hire crews to make the house more their home. When they purchase land as the building site, their plans pump dollars into everything from material sources to construction crews. Store owners, carpenters, laborers, etc use the money earned to buy buy lunch and the family groceries, meet their mortgage obligations, shop local stores, etc, etc.. When housing slows, so goes the local economy.

April saw modest sales of 14 homes listed with the MLS RealTracs in DeKalb County, a modest decline from the 19 sold April 2008. But year to date sales paint a more dramatic picture. Through the end of April 39 homes in our MLS sold. A year ago, by the end of April 64 homes had sold here. That’s a 39 percent drop, and a sure hit for local commerce.

Land...it’s just not happening. In April, just one parcel sold, and it for just $8K —in a month when the daily average was 551 parcels for sale on RealTracs. That’s only a 30 percent decline from last year, when two parcels sold. Year-to-date sales from the MLS reveal a more telling hit: through April of this year a total of 10 parcels have sold, compared with 57 through April 2008.

With so little activity, and so much for sale, one would think we’d be experiencing a buyer’s market. But buyers, even investors, need some sense of confidence the worst is behind us, most evident in the free flow of available financing back into the system. Sooner or later, that will happen, but until the market seems stuck in a holding pattern.