Home Inspection Hysteria
Posted by Hank Miller on
As we get back to a normal real estate market, contingencies that buyers waived during the covid crazy months will return. Due diligence periods are back and with them, the main contingencies of appraisal, finance, and inspection. It’s reasonable to say that everyone needs to get reacquainted with home inspection hysteria and the rule of making mountains out of moles hills. The inspection is a critical component of the purchase process and certainly one of the most contentious and misunderstood.
The Imperfect Home Inspection
No home is perfect, ever. Homes are not built in labs, they are built on site, by hand and comprised of dozens of different materials. They are impacted by weather conditions, use, age and maintenance levels. Inspectors find…
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disclosure after contract? Standard real estate answer..."it depends". Issues with the seller's disclosure tend to be the most common thing buyers and sellers lock horns over. Contracts fall apart as buyers claim things were omitted, information wasn't accurate, something that was to remain was taken...the list is ever growing. Remember all of those buyers that waived the contingencies during the lunacy of '21 - early '22? Now some are having issues and looking to assign blame. A bit late for that, remember that while sellers in Georgia are obligated to disclose latent defects, they are not obligated by law to…
of 2022 will show the pull back and move toward a balanced market, but as with everything real estate related, the devil is in the details. At the macro level, buyer activity slowed, days on market increased, months of inventory increased and the general balance of power is moving from sellers to a neutral position. On a granular level however, how homes are presented for sale makes all the difference.
emanating from the media, time was given for patterns to develop? What if the Atlanta real estate market isn’t going to crash? What if this is a period of adjustment and a return to normal? How effective is anticipating stock performance by watching the ticker and reacting every few minutes? What if we back out, let the situation develop and look for past patterns to anticipate future trends? Yeah, what ifs are risky and there are many variables. However when time is taken to consider the data, real estate falls into pretty consistent patterns.
The great Atlanta real estate market adjustment of 2022 is upon us. As everything shifts, the main players are whispering around the water cooler...will low appraisals be a problem now? Probably not a bad question as the changes in quarter 2 of 2022 were dramatic. As the Fed fights rampant inflation, buyers are faced with dramatic rate increases and sellers with a comparative lack of activity. Lenders and appraisers are also impacted; both industries are circling the wagons just a bit tighter as everyone waits for this market to settle.
killer inflation is ending the run this time. The Fed has to get control of this rudderless economy and the withdrawals from handouts and the free spending are here. The insane advantage enjoyed by home sellers over the last few years is ending, time for sellers to remember how to list a home for sale. That said, let's not misconstrue what we're looking at (as of the end of June '22 anyway); the Atlanta real estate market is not crashing. What we are seeing, are signs of a return to normal. What we are hearing are cheers from the buyers - the one's left in the game anyway.
the signs were there, we felt it all through early spring and at the start of May we asked "Is the Atlanta Real Estate Market Shifting"? That was rhetorical, we just didn't have the data to support it because real estate lags. Well we do now. The charts below are the counties that most national organizations call the "Atlanta market". Astute and well educated readers of this blog (like you) know that all real estate is hyper local. However, we're not fighting that battle now. Here we'll look back to the beginning of the year in two week increments. For consistency…
from historic inventory shortages and home buyer frustration finally started? That argument can be made...and while the data lags by several weeks, the radar of many experienced agents is lit. The feeling in the field can't always be immediately confirmed but we're beginning to see the data evidence. It'll take a few more months as markets always tend to "feel" before the "proof"; that's just a challenge of the business. One thing that's not debated, the mortgage rate increases (with more promised) have been an ice bucket challenge to the market.
housing inventory in Atlanta increase during the first quarter of 2022? Well that answer is more than a yes/no binary option, context is needed and that’s best done by looking back a bit. The first quarter of any year around Atlanta tends to set up the second one. Traditionally, the months of May and June see the most new listings as the school cycle hits – graduating families sell and rising families buy. This year however, rocketing mortgage rates and other economic challenges may change that.