How do you know if your housing market has reached the bottom?

November 20, 2008

All markets are different. During the next few years, some housing markets will turn around faster than others. How do you know when your particular market has reached its bottom? If you wait until others pick over the great deals, you'll miss the bottom.

Keep a track of how many properties are listed from month to month. Once you start to see a reduction in inventory then that may mean that buyers are starting to buy. There could be two reasons whey inventory is reducing – overpriced homes may be taken off the market and sales volume could be picking up. You can find out this information from your local real estate agent.

Keep reading national and local newspapers. If your local media reporters are now starting to interview experts in your market and asking questions like, “Have we reached the bottom?” then that might be a sign that there may be a shift.

Talk to your friends and co-workers. How are they feeling about your local economy and housing prices? Are they more optimistic now than they were 3 months ago, or even last month?

Consumer confidence will be a big part in the housing market turning around.

Be on the lookout for mortgage interest rates stabilizing and mortgage companies start to ease lending restrictions.

One of the biggest indicators is when prices have stopped dropping. The secret is to buy before they start to inch back up again!

I’m not suggesting that you wait till the absolute bottom of your market to buy. You have to look at a home as a place to live, not an investment. Only you can determine what an affordable monthly payment is relative to the value of the home you are purchasing. There are individual homes for sale that can be bought at the bottom of your market, even if homes in general have not reached that mark.

Talk to a trusted real estate agent – we can help!

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Local Information for Jefferson, AL

Latitude: 33.524755 -- Longitude: -86.81274

Other Area Cities: Gardendale Bluff Park Center Point Fairfield Homewood Hoover Hueytown Leeds Mountain Brook Trussville Vestavia Hills Pleasant Grove Fultondale Alabaster Bessemer Birmingham Pelham Irondale Pinson Tarrant City McCalla

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Birmingham has a strong-mayor variant mayor-council form of government, lead by a mayor and a nine-member city council. The current system replaced the previous city commission government in 1962 (primarily as a way to remove Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor from power). By Alabama law, an issue before a city council must be approved by a two-thirds majority vote (Act No. 452, Ala. Acts 1955, as supplemented by Act No. 294, Ala. Acts 1965.). Executive powers are held entirely by the mayor's office. The current mayor of Birmingham is Bernard Kincaid, who was voted into office in 1999. The Birmingham area is home to some of America's best schools. In 2005, the Jefferson County International Baccalaureate School in Irondale, an eastern suburb of Birmingham, was rated as the #1 high school in America by Newsweek, a national publication. Mountain Brook High School placed 250 on the list. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Alabama 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Birmingham	Alabama	United States
Population	242,820	4,447,100	281,421,906
Median age	34.3	35.8	35.3
Median age for Male	31.8	34.4	34
Median age for Female	36.2	37.2	36.5
Households	98,782	1,737,080	105,480,101
Household population	233,968	4,332,380	273,643,273
Average household size	2.37	2.49	2.59
Families	59,287	1,215,968	71,787,347
Average family size	3.09	3.01	3.14
Housing units	111,927	1,963,711	115,904,641
Occupied units	98,782	1,737,080	105,480,101
Vacant units	13,145	226,631	10,424,540

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