According to Georgia state law all property tax assessment notices were to be in the mail by July 1. That means for some counties the property tax appeal deadline will be mid August. Most of the Metropolitan Atlanta counties had appeal deadlines that have already passed. If you didn't get your Georgia tax appeals filed in a timely manner there's always next year. Also, according to George state law you will be getting an assessment notice every year.
The bottom in the real estate market has been called over and over again since the market peak in 2007. Once again, the so-called experts are out in force, saying that the data doesn't lie, the housing market is in recovery. But with an unemployment rate that is still over 8% and economic shocks, such as European debt crisis and the fiscal cliff, looming at the end of this year I doubt there will be any sort of robust recovery in the housing market.
There are a lot of mixed messages regarding the amount of distressed housing that is still out there, that the banks haven't foreclosed on or the banks haven't put on the market yet. CoreLogic recently said that the shadow inventory fell 15% from a year earlier to about 1.5 million homes and that represents a supply of about four months. In contrast, Standard and Poor's, has estimated that the distressed housing supply represents a shadow inventory that will take 46 months to clear. Who are we to believe?
Regardless, real estate is local and we all know that the Atlanta market has been harder hit than most real estate markets in the country. Over the last couple years, house prices have risen in the spring and then slumped. We will have to wait and see what the rest of the summer and fall bring. If you haven't filed your Georgia tax appeals yet there will be opportunity in 2013. There is no way that this real estate market can a turnaround on dime and start heading straight up again.
I've been analyzing single-family residential values in neighborhoods throughout Fulton, DeKalb, and Gwinnett counties. The vast majority of these neighborhoods are still showing value weakness over the past 12 months as compared to the prior 12 months. Many good quality neighborhoods have peak to trough declines that are well over 20%. This isn't bad compared to many of the lower value neighborhoods that have peak to trough declines nearing 50%. Only time and additional market data will tell whether or not values in the Atlanta area are bottoming.
