Archive for November, 2006
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
I keep hearing about all of the gloom and doom on the TV and radio. I hear many agents in my office complaining about their listings not being shown. But in the last month, we’ve had 3 buyers get beat out of homes by competing offers. All of them were in no rush because they thought it was a buyer’s market and they were in complete control. All three of them waited just a bit too long and allowed someone else to come in and buy it.
I’ve been also getting email inquiries on homes and then finding out they are under contract. I have a feeling that the market is turning back up. Interest rates are down, the stock market is up, the Democrats don’t seem like they will do too much damage.
The negative for the Atlanta market is the huge number of foreclosures. There’s been about 4000/month in the Atlanta area over the past few months. That’s a lot of inventory and banks are going to be pressured to start dumping some of them to get their ratios in line.
Also, if the other bubble markets get worse, people moving here from California and Florida will be delayed until their homes sell. If they have to sell at a lower price, they’ll have to settle on a lower priced home here. I have a few clients in that situation.
It’s a great time right now to pick up a good buy from someone who wants to sell before the end of the year. In a few more week, many sellers will begin to hold out for the spring time market to save the day and won’t be as willing to negotiate.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Atlanta market conditions | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006
Not much is heard about C.L.U.E. reports but a bad one could really mess up a transaction. Imagine this. A week before closing, your buyer tries to get home owner’s insurance. The seller has only lived there for 2 years and nothing was mentioned to him when he bought it about some water damage claims the previous owner had 5 years ago. Just like points get posted to your driving record, insurance companies have a shared database where they make notes of all the claims filed on a property address. With all of the black mold hysteria going around, some insurance companies will not even sell you a policy if there has been any sort of water related claims on a property. The standard contract in Georgia doesn’t have any contingency in it about getting insurance at a certain price or getting insurance at all.
A home seller can obtain a free report every year or buy one for $19.95. Choice Point is the company that has this database. But only the home owner can order one. So as a buyer, you need to write in a special stipulation requesting that the seller provide you with one. If they refuse, that should be a red flag that something isn’t right. Or I guess one could make it contingent on the buyer being able to get insurance at standard rates. I would coach the buyer to look into getting the insurance set up as quickly as possible before too many other things start moving along.
Here’s an extensive article with everything you ever wanted to know about CLUE Reports.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Atlanta Home Buyer traps | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006
Who can ever know for certain where the boundaries for a particular zip code are? If you have a typical Realtor map book you can go crazy going from page to page piecing together a zip code area. I found a great site where you type in a zip code and you get a Google map that has a zip code boundary overlay on it. You can zoom in to street level. It’s your typical Google map. Here’s the link to the zip code map.
This should help a home buyer when using various home search tools or help them define a targetted home search. Many times searching on city names doesn’t give you a well defined area as zip codes do.
Call me a geek, but finding a little, easy to use tool like this brings a little joy to my life. Hope you enjoy this tool also.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Atlanta real estate info, Atlanta home search tools | No Comments »
Monday, November 27th, 2006
The late Milton Friedman popularized the expression “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”. By listening to some very popular radio ads by an Atlanta mortgage company you would think that anyone who willingly pays closing costs for a mortgage is either an idoit or is being ripped off. This guy doesn’t charge any closing costs. His mortgages are free. That guy has to be making a lot of money to pay for all those radio ads. So where does he make money if he doesn’t charge closing costs?
Instead of charging closing costs to fund his company, he sells mortgages with higher interest rates that banks will pay a premium for. He funds his company from these bank premiums that he gets for the higher interest rate mortgages. It’s not anything special that no one else can do. Ask any loan officer to quote you a no closing cost mortgage. They all can.
The question you have to ask is which scenario is most beneficial to you. If you are going to stay in your home for less than three years then usually a no closing cost loan is better. You’ll pay extra every month because of the higher interest rate but it will take about 3 years for those higher payments to add up to the savings in closing costs.
If you plan on staying in your home for over 3 years then it’s usually better to pay closing costs up front in exchange for a lower interest rate over the life of the loan.
Closing costs aren’t a rip off. The rip off is a lender that only tells you part of the story to make you feel that you are getting a great bargain when in fact it might really be something that will cost you a lot over time.
I sell a lot of Atlanta real estate and have dealt with a lot of mortgage companies. My advice would be to seek a loan officer that will give you some straight advice on what all your options are so that you can pick the one that’s right for your situation.
Posted in Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 24th, 2006
Who would have thought of Atlanta as a place that someone would want to retire to. But in the last two years I’ve been working with people coming from California, Arizona and Florida who are finding Atlanta as a great place to retire. Most are impressed with the type of home that they can buy in the outer suburbs such as Forsyth county. They don’t have to commute so the traffic isn’t a big deal. There are some really nice golf club communities and the Mall of Georgia and North Point Mall are pretty close by.
The biggest incentive is the low property taxes. In Forsyth county, you don’t pay school taxes if you are over 65 years of age. That is huge. A $700,000 home would have property taxes of less than $1000 per year! (Forsyth tax faqs)
I was working with a couple from Florida where taxes for a $700,000 are $15,000 and home insurance was an additional $15,000/year. They couldn’t believe how cheap it was going to be for them in Forsyth county.
Cobb county also has a great tax break for seniors.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Atlanta real estate info | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
People moving to the Atlanta area are always asking about how long it takes to get to downtown from areas outside the perimeter. I always have to answer with “it depends on what time you are driving. A 20 minute trip on a Sunday morning could be a 60 minute trip on Monday morning.”
There is a very good site that gives you a graph of average travel times during the rushhours for various stretches of roads around Atlanta. Go to Georgia Navigator where they have historical trip times. Click on one of the arrows and you’ll get a nice looking gragh. For example, a 6am it takes 14 minutes to go from Old Milton to 285 coming in on 400. At 8am it takes 28 minutes for that same trip. These are average times so you’ll have to figure some days it will even take longer than 28 minutes at the peak times.
I always advise people to take the time and test those possible commuting routes at the times they will be on the road. You have to experience it in person to really know if it will be acceptable or not. Many times a person will say they are willing to deal with the traffic until we get stuck in it. When they experience it first hand they usually think long and hard whether or not they will be able to handle it every business day.
Also, it’s always good to have a detailed map of the area in order to map out possible alternative routes. I’m a big map person and always create a custom map for my clients that we use to chart out the tours of homes that we go on. It’s always nice to be able to show a client exactly where a home is located in relationship to their office and other points of interest.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Atlanta Home Buyer traps | No Comments »
Monday, November 20th, 2006
Wow, Princeton Square subdivision in Sandy Springs sure has a lot of kids. One of the many neighborhood events is the Halloween party. This year we had a hayride with a couple of really big horses pulling the wagon.
Tables were set up in the parking lot down by the pool and everyone brought a dish to share.
The big event was the costume contest. There were various age groups with a lot of original costumes.
On Tuesday night, the streets were packed with trick or treaters betwen 6 and 8pm. My house being on a hill didn’t seem to deter too many. My kids had a great time. We moved to this neighborhood 5 years ago because we wanted to be in an active family neighborhood. I think we made a good choice.
There are a few really nice homes in Princeton Square for sale right now. I think they are great values. I’d say that even if I didn’t live here. For some reason they are taking a little longer to sell than usual. I think it’s a great opportunity to get in to this subdivision before prices jump.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Atlanta subdivisions, Princeton Square, Sandy Springs Subdivisions | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 15th, 2006
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Posted in Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »
What's happening in the Atlanta real estate market? I'll tell you my humble opinion on things going on in my small part of the world. I'll let you know details about the subdivisions that I specialize in and details about the really nice homes that come on the market.
