The good news and the bad news!

The good news is that as the economy continues at the current pace, we cannot have a “double dip” recession. Why, because that would imply we have had a gain and recovery. In our mind that hasn’t happened…therefore it is only up from here!

Now the bad news…continue to read.

Metro home prices drop to 1999 levels. Sales index dip to lowest level in 11 years. Experts say some indicators point to improving market.  An index measuring metro Atlanta home prices slid to it’s lowest point in 11 years in January. According to the latest Standardc & Poor’s Case Shiller Index, released Thursday, existing single-family home sales prices declined by nearly 7 percent in January compared with the same month in 2010. Atlanta’s index sagged to 99.59 just below the 100 benchmark, score representing prices at the start of 2000. It was the first time metro Atlanta’s score was below 100 since December 1999. Still, local real estate experts say they see improvement in indicators such as pending contracts. “This is a moving target, ” said Steve Palm, president of real estate data firm SmartNumbers. Locally the index dipped .5 percent from December 2010, which also saw a record low. The index has been in decline since August. Nationally, the 20 city index fell 3.1 percent from a year earlier. But most cities remained above the 100 benchmark. “Looking across some of the markets, we see that Atlanta has joined Cleveland, Detroit and Las Vegas as markets where average home prices are now below their January 2000 levels,” said David M. Blizter of Standard & Poor’s. He said the worst case scenario is that a double-dip “may be materializing”. But “You have to have… made some improvement to double-dip”, Palm noted earlier this year, speaking of metro Atlanta. “We’ve been pretty much declining, so without some appreciable improvement, there can be no double-dip”.