Atlanta, Georgia Real Estate is Stalled

If you live in the Atlanta, Georgia area, you have already seen the signs-for sale signs. New construction properties are not selling quickly and more and more individuals are putting for sale signs on their lawns. You have only to take a short drive in any direction in the Atlanta area to find empty homes, homes that are now bank owned or repossessed and extravagant cash back or other incentive offers from builders with too many homes in inventory. One was offering $40,000 off the home price of selected homes! (Over priced from the start?)

Even the most casual news watcher or listener cannot help but be aware of the causes for this stall in property sales. However, just in case you missed them, here they are again.

1) For a period of time, lenders put a heavy focus on specialized loans that started with great "teaser" payments or rates. This low payment, along with relaxed paperwork and even more relaxed verification processes put those with fair to poor credit into homes-some of them excessively large expensive homes.

2) Despite the still relatively low unemployment rate, there are people losing their jobs to downsizing (or rightsizing, whichever term you prefer), who didn't have a clue this was coming. There will likely be more in the future, because of the slowed economy.

3) The teaser payments or rates are expiring and moving to higher payments or rates.

4) Millions of people are currently in default on their home loans.

5) Even though interest rates are still low, lenders have tightened their lending practices and a larger number of people are unable to qualify to purchase homes, because of these tighter policies.

In a nutshell, there are fewer people in a position to make a home purchase today, in the Atlanta, Georgia area, than there were as little as six months ago. And, there are more people trying to sell their homes. This is happening in varying degrees all over the United States.