A Look At The Numbers- There have been some good signs within the Birmingham, Alabama real estate market in 2012. Over the past several years new home sales have been weak at best, so I thought I would take a look at the past two years to see if there has been any signs of life. Taking a quick peak at the latest month with complete data we find that Birmingham, Alabama new home sales for November of 2012 was at 124 units, which was a decrease of 2 from October of the same year, and the YTD (Year To Date) total was at 1,338 units. In November of 2011 the total number of new homes sold was 107, and the total YTD was 1,262. While there was a decrease from the previous month, there was a 15.89% increase over the previous year. The difference in YTD totals amounts to an increase of 6.02%. This is good news for the Birmingham area as it indicates that there is some signs of demand for new homes.
How Do We Compare With The Country?- So this raises the question of how does the Birmingham area compare to the rest of the country? Well, in 2011 there were approximately 282,000 new home sales in the entire country, compared to 338,000 for 2012. This translates to an increase of 19.86%. When compared to the country as a whole we are under performing, however there is some good news when looking closer at the performance of the nation though. The southern states accounted for approximately 63% of total sales. Looking ahead we can at least hope that the local numbers will follow suit with the region.
Where Is The Growth Occurring?- Taking a closer look locally at where new construction is occurring we see that most of it is taking place in Hoover. I’ve listed below the top 5 subdivisions for new home sales by county and subdivision.
In Jefferson County four of the five subdivisions with the most new construction are in Hoover, with the fifth neighborhood, the Cotswolds, being in unincorporated Jefferson County. Looking at Shelby County we find the subdivision with the most new construction to also be in Hoover. The other four neighborhoods are located in Chelsea, Calera, and Birmingham.
In the past, the Birmingham area has not been one of those cities where values skyrocketed, but they have slowly increased, and the real estate market has been more stable. Those cities that had outrageous price increases also seemed to fall harder and lower than our area. While we are not at the level of the nation with new home construction we are still seeing slow and steady progress. These numbers indicate to me that builders are confident enough to take a risk at building and selling new construction, and buyers are ready to buy. What signs of new construction have you seen? Leave me a message below I would be interested in hearing your opinion.
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