Atlanta new home inventory is at a near all time low. In fact all new home and resale inventory is extremely low.  How low? Well Steve Mapes, Chief Business Development Officer with FMLS says that inventory is down from 17,703 listings in July 2020 compared to 12,309 in 2021. This is down more than 30% year over year.  If we broaden our timeline to the pre-pandemic market, inventory is down even further from 25,065 residential homes for sale in July 2019 which is more than a 50% decline to 2021.

Looking at FMLS’ entire service area, which covers all of north Georgia, residential-detached average sales prices have risen 34% over the last 24 months – dating back to the pre-pandemic market in July 2019.

For additional context, the chart below includes Year-Over-Year comparison for the “Greater Atlanta” area (which the Atlanta REALTORS® Association defines as Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, Dekalb, Douglas, Fayette, Forsythe, Fulton, Gwinnett, Rockdale & Paulding Counties):

RESIDENTIAL DETATCHED

• New listings are up 3.8%
• Pending sales are down 17%
• Closed sales eased by 1.7%
• Average sales price YoY up from $369K to $485K or 31.5%
• Inventory down from 10,866 in June 2020 compared to 6,392 in 2021 – off 41.2%

We asked Steve his perspective on how July finished.  His unaudited and preliminary results show:

• Average sales price remained generally flat – possible down a fraction
• New listings will be down slightly from June
• Pending & closed sales will both be slightly down compared to June
• Inventory will be slightly up from June but still at historic lows

We also reached out to John Ryan, Chief Marketing Officer for Georgia MLS.  To answer our questions he supplied several graphs representing a two-and-a-half year look back of residential listings that were entered in Georgia MLS system encompassing the entire Georgia MLS membership. Georgia MLS membership is made up of 49,000+ agents and 4164 brokerage offices. Because 2020 was such an anomaly year they chose to go back to 2019 for a longer trend analysis. The beginning data point begins on January 2019 and runs to current.

According to Georgia MLS, currently there are 772 homes listed that are categorized as New Construction. This represents the third lowest total of New Construction homes over the two-and-a-half year year period. Additionally, there are 377 Under Construction listings, and 120 “To be built” listings currently in the MLS.

The high data point for Under Construction was 648 listings in March of 2021, with the low data point being 302 in February of 2019. The high data point for “To be built” listings was 237 in March of 2021 and the low data point was 93 in December of 2019.

What Is the typical average?

• The New Construction listing average over 31 month’s is 1245.5 listings.
• The “To be built” listing average over 31 month’s is 161 listings
• The Under Construction listing average over 31 month’s is 454 listings.

As a summation of the graphs from Georgia MLS, here is the definition of the categories:

• New Construction – Listings that are newly built and completed
• To Be Built – These listings are land parcels that are ready “to be built upon” where buyers have the option of which house plan they choose to have built on that parcel.
• Under Construction – Homes that have been started, but yet to be completed.

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