Summer 2024 Market Report For Lake Martin in Alabama

For my summer market report, I’m going to first tell you about the top home and lot sales on Lake Martin and where they are located. Then, I will explain to you the overall market and what’s going on with the numbers of sales. Lastly, I will tell you what this might mean to you. There might be a trick in those numbers if you only look at the headlines and do not look a little bit more deeply.

Introduction

I’m John Coley with Lake Martin Voice Realty, and I do these market reports all the time. If you find value in these blogs and videos, then subscribe to our YouTube channel. This is the best no cost way to show me they are of value to you. They also help you keep up with the Lake Martin real estate market.

Highest Lake Martin Alabama Homes Sales for July 2024

First, let’s go over the home sales. There are three home sales that were the highest for the months of June and July. This is important because Lake Martin is a waterfront home sales market, and so most of our sales happen in the warm months. Therefore, we pay close attention to what’s going on in June and July.

So, what were the top three home sales at Lake Martin in the months of June and July? Number one was a $5.8 million sale in The Ridge on the central side of Lake Martin near Chimney Rock. Number two was a $3.75 million sale in Willow Glynn. Willow Glynn is on the Northwest side of the lake near Russell Crossroads. Number three was back in The Ridge. It was a $3.6 million sale. 

Top Lake Martin Lot Sales for July 2024

Lots in the month of June and July were some of the most interesting places to look for market activity. The top three lot sales all happened in the same neighborhood called The Heritage. The Heritage is a new subdivision by Russell Lands. The top sale was $2.7 million for a lot in the Heritage. Number two was sold for $1.5 million. Number three was $1.4 million.

Locations of the Top Summer 2024 Home and Lot Sales

To give you a little bit better closeup, The Ridge was first and third for home sales. Willow Glynn had the number two spot for home sales, and then The Heritage had all of the waterfront lot sales. 

Comparison of Lake Martin Waterfront Home Sales and Inventory in Summer 2023 and 2024

In the month of July, we had 26 home sales. This is all agents and all brokerages all over the Lake Martin Multiple Listing Service. If you compare that to last year of only 15, then we had a 62% increase in waterfront homes sold. That’s a a little bit different of a trend that we’ve seen from last year. How does that compare to year-to date? This month put us up about 10% as compared to the prior year. Therefore, sales-wise we’re tracking above 2023.

However. the counterpoint to that is inventory. Looking at the inventory number, we had 200. If you compare that to 133 last year, we see that inventory is up about 54%. July had about 163 waterfront homes for sale last year, and this year we had 205. That’s 26% above our 5 year average. This is the fourth or fifth month in a row where we’ve been above our 5 year average. We haven’t beat our 5 year average in inventory probably since 2017 or 2018. That’s why this is notable, and that’s why I think the slight increase in our sales are counterbalanced.

Right now, the market does not feel hot. It feels like a balanced or maybe even a back buyer market in some segments. I also want to point out that in 2023, August was a huge month. I don’t think we’re going to have that huge of a month. We’re probably going to lose to the prior year for the month of August, so this is going to average it out. Obviously, only time will tell, but we have one thing we didn’t have back then which is increasing inventory numbers like these. So, it’s going to be interesting to see how that works out.

Comparison of Lake Martin Lot Sales and Inventory in Summer 2023 and 2024

For the month of July, 25 waterfront lots were sold. If we compare that to 6 last year, then that is a huge increase. For July 2024 year-to-date, we have 54 waterfront lots sold. We had 33 this time last year, so that’s a difference of about 64%. As compared to the inventory, we had 82 versus 73. This is an increase of about 12%. When you have sales numbers that jump year-to date, 64% inventory is only up 12%. That’s what makes this month so interesting with waterfront lots.

What happened in July? The Heritage at Russell Lands released, sold, and put a lot of phase lots in the MLS in the month of July. That’s what caused this big aberration of things hitting the sales all at once. These are all phase three sales in The Heritage that’s sold by the developer, so these aren’t civilians selling these lots. As a matter of fact, I took a look at the numbers of the 25 sales in July and found that 17 were from Russell Lands, 4 were from Alabama Power, and the remaining 4 were from other or civilians. So, 17 of that 25 are in phase three of The Heritage. 4 is from Alabama Power, which are not a developer but really the only land owner.

I’ve said before, the land ownership situation at Lake Martin is very strange. Really we only have two big land owners. That’s Alabama Power, a utility company, and a company called Russell Lands. These two land owners sold 21 lots last month. I’m glad as an independent real estate agent that they put in the data like that, because we can see what’s happening. Also, you know more data is a good thing. However, you just have to remember and realize that, in July of 2024, they put in 17 phase three developer sales. That caused this data dump which caused this huge aberration.

If you’ll remember from earlier, 3 of these top sales came from The Heritage. If you look at days on market for these 17 lots they sold, they all have zero days on market in there. This is because they put them in for data purposes which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, but if you’re just looking at the headlines or skimming the top level information, then you don’t realize that. Alabama Power’s for sale have 70 days on the market, which is normal. When you have 17 of 25 with zero, it throws your averages way down. That’s why I always caution people to look beyond the headlines, because you have to figure out if this is what is going to apply to you when you’re thinking about selling your property at Lake Martin. If you don’t, then you can make some radically different decisions.

This is also true if you are thinking about buying a lot at Lake Martin or buying a home at Lake Martin. If you’re looking at only these headlines and think that 17 out of 25 sold at zero days on market and were well above a million dollars, then you could get a totally wrong picture. That’s why I always counsel people and help them figure out what these numbers mean. I’m John Coley, and I sell real estate on Lake Martin Alabama. If you have questions, I’d love to help you out. You can give me a call or a text me at the number on the top of this page. You can also reach me through my email or by using our Contact Page. 

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