HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Slowing down might be a stretch when it comes to Huntsville's residential demand over the past year. The 2023 Huntsville Development Review showed the city’s population is continuing to grow even as the real estate market for single-family homes moderates.
"It goes through primarily all the major sectors from residential, multifamily, commercial office and industrial growth," Shane Davis, the City’s Director of Urban and Economic Development shares. "It's our self-measure report card, you know, where are we doing well, what the trends look like? and, over the last couple of years, we have been trying to catch our breath mainly on the residential side. It hadn't been that long ago in Huntsville the average time on the market for a new or used home was less than a week. It was days not multiple weeks or not or months and that that really told us what we had to go work on."
Davis goes on to explain how the relationship with realtors are helping in more ways than one. "We would work a lot with the realtors association and what you really want to see is a good 30-to-45-day timeline in the market for homes that are for sale," Davis explains. "What that allows us to do is moderate pricing, you know, and not escalate cost of living and affordability.
Not everyone agrees that the market is affordable and Davis shares that that has been a big focus. "One of the top things the administration is looking at we've always been really heavy you've heard us talk about roads and restore roads and investing in infrastructure and quality life building new rec centers and parks and we're doing all those things greenways and we're so heavily focused on that, but affordability and attainability is on our list and it's quickly moving up the list," Davis shares. "You know, I think U.S. News World report last year for 2023, Huntsville was the second most affordable metro in the U.S. That sounds good on a national scale, right? You say, hey, we're doing really well, we're very affordable, but if you live in this community, you probably get a different view of that, right?"
The city is currently looking at ways to better control the price point. "Real estate prices up 54% over the last 24 months you know, it's good to say, well, on a national scale, we're very affordable, but I think this administration, what we're looking at is the way rental rates and housing has kind of moved the needle the last couple of years due to all the growth," Davis explains. "We want to make sure we control that to some extent so we're really looking at some new zoning to have new product come on the ground that would be at a different price point that, you know, still high quality but it's much different than what you typically see in the south and we think there's a demand for that."