Earlier today I had a conversation with a reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about real estate market values in Gwinnett County. He is working on a story about the effects to the market last year and wanted a “from the trenches” perspective. We had a great conversation for over an hour.
There were a few things i took away from the conversation.
First, he had a great grasp on what was going on in the market already. Instead of just looking at national or regional numbers, he was looking at specific ZIP codes and asking why some were strong and others weren’t. While I agree with the NAR stance that “All Real EState is local” I think that many agents are trying to use that to rebut reality.
The next thing I took away is that my blog is effective. Google searches and alerts from my blogs were the reason he contacted me. Blog posts from LaneBailey.com and Active|Rain, as well articles from GarageHomesUSA.com take four out of ten slots on the first page of Google for Gwinnett County Market Report or Gwinnett County Market Report Real Estate. One of the things that the reporter said was that while assembling information for the story, my name and material kept coming up.
Finally, as a reporter, he knew that the only way to examine the market was in the rear-view. The numbers that had been assembled for him were for 2007. While we were talking, he wanted to know what was happening since January. We also talked about how even the numbers posted for May weren’t complete, and wouldn’t be until July. And even if the numbers were accurate and posted right up to today, they wouldn’t reflect pending sales and those are the most recent transactions.
As I told him, if we are at “market bottom” right now, it might be next year before we know that. And by that time, the bottom would be gone. MLS statistics generally lag by about a month. We have May numbers, but many transactions weren’t entered until the start of June. Tax records and County data take about 2-4 months to show up. So, for a transaction completed in May, it may not be reflected until September or October. Academic and institutional data, like Case-Shiller tend to take a few months as well. But, more importantly, we can’t identify the bottom until there is a strong trend away from it. And we need a couple months of data to see that trend… because one or even two months isn’t a trend. So, if we won’t have May numbers that we can rely on until September, and we need numbers for June, July and August, we might not be able to identify that May was the bottom of the market until January.
Please note, I am not saying that we are at market bottom, I am saying that if we are, we won’t know until that opportunity has passed. I do feel that Gwinnett County is close to its market bottom. But I can’t say that the data supports that until the data is out and verified.
