Average home prices for large homes have fallen since last May in Atlanta. Here's a look at the data.

ATLANTA — In the last week, Google reports twice as many people have been searching, “Will housing prices go down?"

Housing inflation has steadily increased since 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but could be at the precipice of a decrease.

Emory University Goizueta Business School Associate Professor Raymond Hill breaks down what these trends mean. 

"If you look at a couple of trends though, one of them is that... if you compared May to a year ago, average home prices actually have fallen," Hill said. "We had a peak that had been going up lately, but year-on-year home prices fell. They fell the most for the biggest houses... I don't think they fell at all for smaller houses."

Hill said that's how you can tell the housing market is slowing down. 

"That's what you would expect to happen with housing and mortgage rates going up," he added.

Hill said housing market indexes look backward. And they don't adjust quite as fast as the real market in real time. He said the housing prices remain high because everyone keeps moving to Atlanta.

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"There's a good side and a bad side to this," Hill said. "One way to get housing prices down is to make Atlanta a terrible place to live and work, but we don't want that to happen. And so, part of this is just a reflection of a very healthy Georgia economy and a very healthy Atlanta economy as well."

Hill said nationwide – the inflation rates are an effect of the federal deficit, COVID money running into the economy, plus federal spending with slow reactions to raise interest rates by the federal government.

Though the future isn't certain, he said watching the inflation rate is your best indication of what could happen with housing prices.

"I don't see a spike," Hill said. "I just see that we're all going to be unhappy with the rate of inflation for... some months to come. And people who are thinking we're going to get back to the fed's target of two percent, well, I don't see that."