Forecaster Got It Right
Last night on the local evening news the weather forecast was for rain and thunderstorms in North Georgia today. Now I know that we have made fun of weather forecasters in the past but this is one time that everyone in Metro Atlanta should want this forecast to be correct. After all we have not had much rain in Atlanta since mid November when I asked for Spare Water.
It’s A Good Rain
Recently we have had small trace amounts of rain that really did not provide any measurable relief to the drought. They were helpful in replacing some ground water which will make today’s rain so much more beneficial. It is currently a very steady rain and according to the weather maps, much of it is falling over the Lake Lanier and Lake Allatoona basin’s. This will be extremely helpful in replenishing some of the water we so desperately need in these lakes.
Can They Be Partially Right
Part of the forecast for today is for thunderstorms. Even though we need the rain, getting it too quickly can be bad for erosion. So I hope the forecasters are correct in that we will get between 1 and 2 inches of rain today, just not all at one time in a violent thunderstorm.
Extended Forecast
Saturday should be clearing slightly and the rains return on Sunday. If the forecast is correct we should receive another 1 to 1-1/2 inches of rain Sunday. These two days of rain will definately help with the lake levels and may be just enough to prevent 2007 from being the driest year on record in Georgia.
Atlanta Real Estate Market Summary 2007
What The Experts Say
Long recognized as one of the industry leaders in the following and reporting of home prices in the United States, Standard & Poors Case-Schiller Home Price Index sheds an interesting light on the Atlanta Real Estate market. The Index, while showing statistics back to January of 1987, has each of it’s 20 metropolitan areas on a level playing field in January of 2000 with an index rating of 100.
As of January 2007 the Atlanta index was at 133.45 and with the October report, which was released on December 26, 2007, the Atlanta index was 133.79. While the increase is small, the indication is that real estate in Atlanta continues increasing in value.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight latest quarterly report also shows some positive results for the Atlanta Real Estate Market. This report shows a 2.61% increase in value over the last year, a decrease of 0.56% for the quarter and a 20.18% increase in value over the last 5 years.
Why Is Atlanta Better Off?
Some will ask why is this the situation in Atlanta while other metropolitan markets have suffered so greatly? Just as an appraisal is a reflection of the value of a home in a specific location, values for an area are based on that area not what is happening in another area of the country. I guess you would have to base Atlanta’s ability to maintain even minimal growth on the fact that the region’s housing prices are fueled by relocation and job growth rather than speculative buying as happened in some areas of the country.
Additional databases that lend information to the overall real estate landscape in Atlanta is from our local listing services. One of the important statistics currently shows that the inventory in the Greater Atlanta Market is shrinking. As inventory is reduced, pricing should continue to increase.
What Does It All Mean?
So what does all of this mean? Simply stated, prices will probably not be going down in the Atlanta Real Estate Market. Couple this with the fact that interest rates are very favorable right now and you have a great time to buy a home in Atlanta.
Southern Charm in Lawrenceville
Part of our family holiday tradition is to ride around looking for interesting light displays on personal homes. Sure Lanier Islands, Stone Mountain Park and Calloway Gardens can put together light displays that will almost take your breath away. What about the individuals who put the time and effort into decorating their homes for the holidays. Certainly there are some homes that deserve to be included in the lighting display honor roll.
Every neighborhood seems to have that one person who is kind of the Martha Stewart of the subdivision. It seems like everything they touch turns to decorated to the max. In Flowers Crossing at The Mill in Lawrenceville such a person exists. I thought you might just like to see the exterior decoration of this home. Now is that southern charm or what?
Dominick’s Italian Restaurant in Lawrenceville
As we were finishing the last of the Christmas shopping yesterday evening the conversation turned to dinner. We had been so busy that we totally forgot about eating. Millie remembered that one of our neighbors had told her about a new Italian restaurant in downtown Lawrenceville and we decided to give it a try. To say that we were very impressed would be an understatement. This was one of the best Italian meals we have ever eaten.
So our newly found favorite Italian restaurant in Lawrenceville is Dominick’s. The Lawrenceville location is the newest as they also have a location in Norcross. Their slogan “Little Italy, Lotta Food” is very fitting. Not only is the food fantastic, but the portions are family sized. Fortunately our waiter warned us about this. We each had half orders of our dinners and had to get to-go containers also. A full order will probably feed a family of four. From what we understand, you will be well advised to have a reservation if you plan on going to Dominick’s on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday evening. I hope you enjoy Dominick’s as much as we did.
The Week Before Christmas
Twas the week before Christmas and the search engines were slow, shoppers were searching for places to spend their dough.
With mom on her laptop and me on the pc, we knew that the family would be happy as could be.
On VISA, on MASTERCARD, on AMEX we spend, will this internet shopping spree ever come to an end.
Email accounts were totally ablaze, Credit Card companies wanting our limits to raise.
Overnight deliveries are now the only way, UPS and FedEx the dividends they will pay.
Now it’s all ordered and we have time to think, Oh what the heck I’m just going to have a drink.
We will get it all wrapped, some how, some way, And my wish for you is a wonderful Christmas Day.
Atlanta Buyer Seminar
After writing the article on new home buyer beware yesterday I began thinking why and how this could happen. Why would 50% of all new home buyers’ elect to buy directly from the builder or the builder’s agent? Several thoughts came to mind and I want to share them with you.
My first thought was that buyers driving around come upon a new homes subdivision, pull in and before they know it they have become best buddies with the new home agent. I can see this happening as many of the new home agents are some of the most friendly and most personable people in the world. My next thought may carry a little more weight regarding Atlanta Real Estate as that is my market. In the Atlanta market there is a huge push by the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association called Get Home Atlanta. This campaign entails advertising about why now is a good time to buy a home along with advertising a first time buyer seminar.
I, for one, have no problem promoting that now is a good time to purchase a home. I truly believe that it is! Interest rates are notoriously low and for new construction, the builders are making serious concessions to buyers in order to move the standing inventory. Several years ago during the hay day of real estate sales in Greater Atlanta, some builders didn’t even want to see us coop agents. There was plenty of traffic in their communities and if we didn’t bring them a buyer, a buyer would probably show up on their own. Well those days are gone and now the builders are begging agents to bring buyers to their subdivisions. They are even offering to increase our portion of the commission. One builder is even offering 8% to the buyer’s agent.
Here is where the rub comes in. Atlanta First Time Buyer’s, attending a seminar on purchasing a home that is presented by a builder group is like leading the sheep to the wolves den for safety. I firmly believe that every buyer should be educated in the home buying process. This education should be done by someone who has the buyer’s best interest at heart. Someone who has, say a written agreement with the buyer to represent them as required by Georgia Law. That’s right; Georgia Law requires that in order for a buyer to be represented in a real estate transaction there must be a written agreement. So who should this educator be? You guessed correctly if you said the Buyer’s REALTOR®. If you are a first time buyer in Atlanta, do yourself a favor, get with a qualified agent and learn what is involved in purchasing a home. Then, with your agent at your side, go take advantage of the wonderful home buying environment that exists today.
New Home Buyer Beware
Recently I attended a meeting where part of the discussion was about a study done by The National Association of REALTORS®. This particular study is titled "2007 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers" and contains one set of statistics that quite frankly is scary. I hate to think how much money buyers have lost nationally just by not implementing one simple strategy when purchasing new construction.
For years now consumers have heard that it is in their best interest to use the services of a REALTOR® when purchasing a home. This still remains the best practice for a buyer to follow. According to the study 88% of all buyers purchasing pre-owned homes utilized the services of a REALTOR®. Here is where the scary part comes in. 50% of all buyers purchasing new homes were not represented by an agent. That’s right 50% of new home buyers bought their home utilizing the services of the agent that represented the builder. WOW!
Perhaps the REALTOR® community has done better job promoting the attributes of our services for buyers purchasing resale properties as opposed to new construction. Personally I don’t believe that this is the case. I think buyers perceive that the services of a REALTOR® are needed more for the purchase of a resale home. After all, there are the inspections to deal with, coordinating the moves and of course warranty concerns. Well guess what folks; you have just as many concerns on new construction. You still need to have an inspection, you still need to coordinate the move, you still have warranty items that arise within the first year of ownership and the list goes on.
Let’s examine some of the reasons why a buyer would want representation in purchasing new construction:
- Making certain that you, as the buyer, obtain the right home, at the right terms and conditions is the goal of your REALTOR®
- Not having representation to provide relevant sales data before making an offer, including how much the builders have been contributing to closing costs and handling the negotiations for the entire transaction can be expensive for a buyer
- The buyer’s agent does not cost the buyer anything, the seller pays the commission. So the thought that you can save money by not utilizing the service of a buyer’s agent may in turn cost you money.
- Understanding the contract and it’s time frames so the buyers interests are protected
- Handling the inspections and preparing any amendments to remove the inspection contingencies
- An educated buyers agent in Atlanta can compare relative data from various subdivisions and neighborhoods to provide buyers with the best comparisons to use in their decision making process, including detailed school information.
By law in the State of Georgia a buyer is entitled to representation. The law is called the Brokerage Relations in Real Estate Transactions Act. Georgia was one of the first states to enact legislation to protect consumers in real estate transactions. As the buyer of a new home in the Atlanta Real Estate Market, make certain that you are properly represented and that you have all the comparable data that you are entitled to so that you can make a truly informed decision. After all knowledge is power and you want to deal from a position of strength.
Mack Perry is an Accredited Buyers Representative, ABR, and represents buyers of both new construction and resale properties in the Atlanta Real Estate Market. For a confidential meeting to discuss your real estate needs and the exact criteria for your next homecontact Mack today.
Green Holiday Lights
They are beautiful to look at and in many cases provide us with countless hours of conversation, so whats the big deal with the energy required to operate outdoor holiday decorations? A little higher power bill for the month of December has come to be expected. The problem is that when you take a major metropolitan area like Atlanta, and figure that outside lighting adorns probably 50% of all homes, when added all together there is a tremendous waste of power by simply not controlling how long the lights stay on. Energy efficiency has to do with, not only what kind of lights you use but also how long they remain illuminated.
Timing Is Everything
There is a simple way to fix this delima. Go to your local home improvement or hardware store and purchase a timer to use on your outdoor lighting. These timers can be as simple as allowing you to set the amount of time for you lights to remain on daily to containing photo cells to turn the lights on and off for you depending on when dusk arrives. All in all the photo cell timers are my favorite. You only have to set it once and that is when you are installing them initially. As an added benefit, if it is raining or has turned surprisingly cold, you don’t have to go out to do anything with these photo cell timers. They just come on and go off automatically and you determine the duration of how long your lights remain on.
Christmas Tree Decorating
As has happened in years past, decorating the Christmas Tree around our home starts early in the morning with the assembly of the tree. To hold all the ornaments we have a nine foot tree that requires around 1400 lights. Once the tree is up and the lights are on, our trip down memory lane can begin. You see, over 30 years ago when Millie and I got married we started collecting Christmas Ornaments from every where we traveled too. Soon enough family members saw how much we enjoyed our ornament collection and elected to add to it with ornaments of things they noticed that we enjoyed; Barbie Dolls, Harley Davidson, Atlanta Braves, and of course Georgia Bulldogs just to mention a few. Today we have over 600 special ornaments along with over 100 filler ornaments that go on our tree.
So as you can well imagine, decorating the tree involves discussion about when and where we acquired certain ornaments, our first Christmas together and the "Baby’s First Christmas" ball from when our son was born. Perhaps a bit of this tradition is being passed on as we gave our son and his wife a "Baby’s First Christmas" ball to hang on their tree. I guess it goes without saying that we are really looking forward to Christmas Day and our son, daughter-in-law and grandson Lincoln coming over for the day.
I can only hope that as you are decorating for the holidays you have as much fun and as many fond memories as we do. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays To All.
Bank of America Mortgage Fees
At the end of October the was an article published in a San Diego Real Estate Blog about Bank of America doing away with their wholesale mortgage division. The article quoted officials at Bank of America saying that they would be concentrating on direct-to-consumer lending. The article went on to state that Bank of America had introduced it’s no fee mortgage program which would eliminate several hundred to a few thousand dollars in costs associated with closing a home loan.
At the time it was written, I stated that I have seen many instances in which a mortgage broker was able to offer better terms to a buyer than a Bank of America branch office. Guess what, this holds true today. Yesterday afternoon I went into a local Bank of America branch and saw on their bulletin board that they were offering 5.5% 30 year fixed rate mortgages. Wonderful, I thought. Here comes the kicker, the buyer had to pay 1.835 points to get the loan. Now what would that equate to on an average home? Let’s assume that the sale price of the home is $250,000 and the buyer is putting 20% down, that would leave a loan amount of $200,000. Now with 1.835 points (or 1.835%) the buyer would be charged $3,670.
A 5.5% interest rate on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage can be obtained through a morgage broker with out having to pay points. So the question is, why not utilize the services of a mortgage broker who shops various lenders every day in order to provide clients with the best possible terms available in the market.
