A View From the Top | Perspectives on the Alpharetta Luxury Home Market
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Johns Creek Real Estate, Local Market Conditions, Luxury Homes, Milton Real Estate, Roswell Real Estate
ALPHARETTA- A reader of this blog recently contacted me about the prospects of selling his home. It turns out that he lives in a custom-built home in one of Milton’s new neighborhoods. He has invested over $1,000,000 in the lot, construction, landscaping and pool.
When talking with him we were gauging the probability of selling the home in this market - and that probability is directly related to how many buyers there are in that price range.
A quick run of the numbers revealed that since January 1st of this year, only twenty-three homes over $1M have sold in the Milton High School district, which is the closest approximation of the City of Milton’s boundaries.
Compare that to 2007 when fifty-five million dollar homes sold. The market for a million dollar house is half of what it was a year ago.
Looking at the list of what has sold this year, there were some noticeable absentees: for instance, not one home in White Columns has sold for over $1M so far this yearl and currently there are ten homes listed for sale in White Columns for over $1M. Hampton Manor, Cooper Sandy and Canterbury on the Lake are all no shows for million dollar sales in 2008 so far.
The Manor Golf and Country Club leads the pack for million dollar sales this year; so far, they have seven. Last year they had sixteen according to the MLS. Crabapple Brook had three $1M+ sales and North Valley and Six Hills each chipped in a couple. In 2007, though, Six Hills had four, now they are down to two. Again, everything is basically half of what it was a year ago.
For grins, I ran the numbers for the other areas of North Fulton. Below is a chart showing a summary of million dollar sale activity broken down by high school attendance zone. The major finding: Every school zone is down roughly half in terms of number of transactions. However, the average sales price has remained relatively stable.
[Note: See my other posts regarding current Alpharetta real estate market conditions .]
This is similar to my analysis of the Alpharetta real estate market as a whole: volume is down by 40% or so but average sales price is relatively stable.
The exception is Alpharetta High School, which is comprised largely of Windward real estate.
In Windward, there have been three large transactions that have skewed the numbers, a $6.3M sale in January and two $3.6M deals this Fall. Still, those sales count; just like in golf when you get lucky and bounce it off a tree into the hole…it still counts. I just wanted you to understand the underlying basis for the increase in Windward.
The average sales price is also up in Centennial, but there have been only three sales this year over a million dollars so we don’t really have that many data points.
2007-2008 Million Dollar Sales Activity in Alpharetta and North Fulton
| High School Area | 2007 Sales | 2007 Avg Sales Price | 2007 Sales Price / List Price | 2008 Sales | 2008 Avg Sales Price | 2007 Sales Price / List Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpharetta | 7 | $1,241,429 | 85.8% | 12 | $1,997,833 | 89.9% |
| Centennial | 8 | $1,278,741 | 93.7% | 3 | $1,992,333 | 93.5% |
| Chattahoochee | 20 | $1,529,438 | 91.5% | 9 | $1,529,722 | 89.4% |
| Milton | 55 | $1,421,144 | 97.8% | 23 | $1,488,788 | 97.0% |
| Northview | 12 | $1,411,520 | 88.2% | 9 | $1,601,326 | 91.2% |
| Roswell | 25 | $1,425,943 | 93.3% | 12 | $1,360,978 | 93.0% |
Very interesting insights into the reality of the 2008 market.