Archive for January, 2007
Eat Mor Chikin
categories: Milton Real Estate, New Construction
City of Milton press releases offer the following blurb at the bottom describing the city: “… some 20,000 residents in Northwest Fulton County. With its numerous horse farms, family-friendly neighborhoods and limited commercial development spread out over 23,000 acres, Milton offers a rural, small-town atmosphere that still affords easy access to the big-city amenities of nearby Atlanta.
That’s all true, but what about the cows? No one ever mentions the cows! It’s the horses that get all the press.
There are about 8-10 active cattle pastures still in Milton. There is even one that I know of still in the City of Alpharetta and they don’t even flaunt their ruralness. The cattle litterally stare at you as you drive to Milton High School in the morning. Personally, I like that. I’d rather look at cows than at Starbucks or even the newest neighborhood.
While there are still scattered pastures in the area, the dirt growing that pasture grass has become more valuable and the cows are disappearing. The latest example of this is at the intersection of Cogburn and Bethany Roads across from the new King’s Ridge Christian School. That pasture used to have about 25 head of cattle on it and it was always such a nice scene with the hills on that land. It was your last view of tranquil countryside before you hit the commercialism that is now Windward Parkway; it was the Hereford Line.
What I hear is that there is going to be condo or townhouse development on that parcel. Apparently
the developer was able to get sewer access from the adjacent commercial property to the east that fronts HWY-9 and this will allow for higher density development. I don’t know the price point or completion date yet for this project.
The intersection has already been upgraded from a stop sign to a light - plus they added curbs, which is a trend at other major Milton intersections as well. The part I don’t understand is why they didn’t redesign the intersection with some turning lanes, particularly on Cogburn Road.
Bye bye, cows. Eat mor chickin.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 1 Comment »
More Schools to be Built in North Fulton
categories: Schools
There are six Fulton County high schools north of the Chattahoochee; soon there will be seven and maybe even eight. There are also plans to add a new elementary school in the Milton High School Cluster. At this time, I’m not aware of any plans for new middle schools in North Fulton.
High Schools
Of the six existing schools, four are east of GA-400: Centennial, Chattahoochee, Alpharetta and Northview. Alpharetta High School is the newest of these four, having open in August 2004 and its enrollment is already 170 students over its 1,875 state capacity.
That’s the good news, Centennial is 290 students over capacity; Chattahoochee is 433 over capacity and Northview is 712 over capacity. That’s 1,600 students over capacity across the four high schools.
To relieve the over crowding, a new high school is planned in the northwest quadrant of State Bridge
Road and Medlock Bridge Road with construction starting in July, 2007. The first planned classes will be August 2009. The school site is immediately adjacent to the Medlock Bridge subdivision and across the street from St. Marlo Country Club.
There are also a lot of rumors going around about a third high school west of GA-400. Roswell High School is 711 students over capacity and the new Milton High School, which is a physically new school but doesn’t represent new capacity since it replaced the old school, was almost 200 students over capacity when it opened last year.
The question is where to locate a new school, which would need about a seventy acre site. There is no public sewer in most of that part of the county and building a high school on septic is not something the school district is eager about, I’m sure. If you think about locations north of Milton High School that have sewer, that leaves only locations along Highway 9. Mum is the word though for now; when in site acquisition mode, the school district is radio silent.
Elementary Schools
There is almost certainly going to be a new elementary school on Birmingham Highway at Wood Road. The school district already owns forty acres there, just south of the west entrance to the gated portion of White Columns. The remaining question now is how to pay for the school. The district is holding out for the SPLOST vote in the spring, which is the existing sales tax program that supports capital projects. The SPLOST is due for renewal and if passed again will provide the necessary funding.
If SPLOST is rejected, the district has hinted that it will still build the school but will have to finance it with bond issues or other funding mechanisms, which would increase the cost of the school by about 30%. Either way, it sounds like at this point that there will be a new elementary school opening August 2008 to serve White Columns and areas north of there.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 1 Comment »
Milton Fee Party
categories: Johns Creek Real Estate, Milton Real Estate, Stuff I like to talk about
Fee or tax? Tax or fee? If it looks like a tax and it smells like a tax and you have to pay it regardless if you want to or not, then it must be a tax … no matter how many times it is called a fee.
State Representative Jan Jones, regardless of her backpedaling on this issue, got it right when she said, “Some like to call them fees, but the revenue is not dedicated, it just goes into the general fund. They are not a user fee, they are just another tax.”
All the ruckus is about the “franchise fees” that both the new cities of Johns Creek and Milton have levied against the utility companies as well as the cable and waste management companies. (I wonder if there will be a franchise fee levied against BellSouth too, affecting our residential phone service.) The utilities, most notably Sawnee EMC, have just passed the fees on to the customer in the form of a 4% increase for service.
Mayor Joe Lockwood says that all 528 cities in Georgia require utilities to pay a franchise fee and “the choice of whether to pass that cost on to their customers or absorb the costs lies solely with the utility companies.” I’m willing to bet that in all 528 cities that the costs are passed on to the customer. When have you seen a utility absorb anything?
The net result is that residents of Johns Creek and Milton feel like they have been newly taxed as a result of becoming municipalities. The residents are paying the fees so it doesn’t matter what you call them. Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise to residents, as franchise fees, which in Milton equate to about a million dollars in revenue and about 8% of the budget, have always been part of the budget model. It is just that residents didn’t realize that until they saw the increase on their utility bill. Not many residents stayed up late at night review the legislation and proposed budgets.
Our elected officials want to make sure that we know they didn’t slip in a new tax because they don’t want to be labeled as “tax increasers.” The plan to levy franchise fees was always part of the plan, just to make sure we are clear. By statute, the cities can’t increase taxes even if they wanted to without consent of the voters.
The part I don’t like, though, is that to the best of my knowledge, Fulton County never charged franchise fees. Franchise fees are supposedly charged for the “use of public right-of-way” to provide service. I’m not exactly sure what cost is borne by cities in providing the right to use the right-of-way. Perhaps the cities might have to keep some trees trimmed or roadsides maintained in order for utilities to service their poles and cables and what have you. However, usually when I see the tree trimmers out, they have utility company logos on the vehicles.
I can’t image what right-of-way the cities maintain for the waste management companies other that the roads - and we all know the dump trucks from the construction sites are the ones tearing up the roads.
So the part I don’t like is that I don’t see the cost to the cities that is being offset by the fees. The cities charge the fees simply because they can, because every other city charges them and because they have to in order to generate enough revenue to operate. And the fees are indeed a tax. Period.
Having said all that, if you have an average monthly electric bill of $250, a four percent increase is $10, or $120 per year. I don’t like the fact that the franchise tax was a surprise, even though it shouldn’t have been, but I can handle ten bucks a month if it means I have my own local police and fire and more local control of local issues.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Most Expensive House Sold in Atlanta and North Fulton in 2006
categories: Buyers, Miscellaneous, Stuff I like to talk about
The National Association of Realtors recently divulged that the most expensive home sold in the United States in 2006 was a 10,000 square foot Alpine, New Jersey mansion on 63 acres. Located only 5 miles from Manhattan, it’s nice digs if you don’t like a long commute to the city. It went for $58 million.
I thought it would be fun to look at Atlanta (and Alpharetta for that matter) million dollar homes and see what the most expensive home sold in 2006 was.
According to the First Multiple Listing Service, 2006 was puncutated in November by the sale of a $9 million dollar estate off Mt. Paran Road just north of Buckhead. The home was only three years old and sits on 16 acres.
The tax records say the home is over 15,000 square feet and has ten bathrooms and amazingly the house was only on the market for 58 days.
Closer to home in North Fulton and Alpharetta, the most expensive sale was actually in Roswell on King Road. The winning home was a ten-acre horse farm that sold for an even $3 million. It weighed in with only five full baths, but it has an eight-car garage. Throw on top of that a seven-stall barn, riding ring, pool and a baseball field and you get much more for your money in North Fulton than in Buckhead, not to mention New Jersey.
It will be interesting in a year to look back and see how 2006 will compare to 2007. Currently in North Fulton, there are 25 homes on the market listed at over $3 million with 12 of those being in Country Club of the South. The most expensive is listed in Glenayre, which is in Roswell off Jones Road, for $7.25 million.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Buckhead has the Restaurants; North Fulton has the Grocery Stores
categories: Local Market Conditions, Stuff I like to talk about
Living in Alpharetta is nice because you’re close enough to the good restaurants in Buckhead for nice meals on special occasions but also near a growing collection of really great grocery stores.
I’m not talking about Kroger and or even the new Publix at Birmingham Crossroads, of course. It’s much better than that. To the West, North Fulton is host to
the newest Trader Joe’s on HWY 92 at King Road. To the East is a monster Whole Foods on State Bridge Road at Medlock Bridge. In between is a Fresh Market in Newtown and Harry’s Farmers Market off HWY 9.
The other day, my family ventured into the new Whole Foods. I don’t know whether to call it a grocery store or a restaurant because they have some many “food stations” where you can eat, not to mention the salad bar and hot bar. We all wound up having dinner there.
When I first graduated college, I lived in Palo Alto for a time and Whole Foods had just opened its first store in California there. I used to ride my bike there and buy fish for stir fry - heck, everyone road their bike, it was California! The store, back then, was nice enough, but it was small and quaint. The
store in Alpharetta is the Taj Mahal of grocery stores.
Harry’s Farmers Market was purchased by Whole Foods a couple of years ago, and while the store underwent a facelift and reorganization, it retained a lot of its original market warehouse feel. It still has a huge fish counter, blue crabs in the box during season and reindeer in the parking lot for Christmas.
Harry’s (and its brother store the DeKalb Farmers Market) were founded as international food markets and my European father-in-law who now lives state-side disappears for long periods of time to Harry’s on every trip to Alpharetta. He always returns with great selections of wine, cheese, pate, breads, honey, jam and, of course, chocolate. Anyone addicted to the Truffled Walnuts like I am?
From a housing perspective, if you want to live somewhere where you can get good eats, North Fulton is the place. I had a client once tell me that the way she picked where she wanted to live is by studying where Jersey Mike’s and Fresh Market opened new stores. She said those companies had a stated plan of looking for high-end demographics and she used them as her leading indicator.
It is certainly not a scientific method, but relying on the research of large corporate chains can’t be all wrong because they are selecting North Fulton over and over again to locate their stores. And in the end, even if the grocery chains get it wrong - which they haven’t - at least we will eat well and that is really want matters!
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Fulton County Schools Start 2007-08 on August 13
If you are like most parents tonight, you are only too ready for your kids to return to school on Monday. Winter break is nice and all, but enough is enough. Fulton County Schools aren’t returning until a full week after the new year’s, which has spawned a whole cottage industry of “Winter Camps” for parents you had to return to work on the 2nd.
The return of school has gotten me thinking about when summer will be here and when the next school year will start. For the 2007-08 school year, Fulton County will start on August 13. That means that summer break will only be just a little more than two months or only about five times longer than Winter Break.
It seems that summer vacation is a lot shorter than it was when I was a kid. Back then, we had a full three months off: from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
The current school calendar impacts real estate seasonality because home buyers who want to move during the summre only have about two months to get the timing right. In order to close on a new house during the summer, you should start looking no later that April/May. Give yourself 30 days to find something you like and another 39 days to get the sale closed.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Supersize It - Would You Like a 4-Car Garage With That?
categories: Miscellaneous
We all know that Americans like it big: Big screen TVs; big SUV’s; Big Gulps; and big garages.
It used to be that everyone wanted a three-car garage; how did we ever survive growing up with only a two-car garage? Where the heck did our parents put all our stuff back in the day?
You can certainly tell the age of a house by how many garages it has. Today, barely a house is built with fewer than three and clients will outright specify to me that they must have a three-car garage in their new home.
Well, three is starting to be too small, too. Heck, by the time you put two cars in the garage with one of them being a super-sized Yukon, and the third bay is filled with bikes, scooters, lawn tractor, skidoos and motorcycles, where do you put the third car?
People are now starting to ask for four-car garages…not every day, but they are asking. Right now, you’re only likely to find four-car gargages on million dollar homes and up. There are fifty homes in North Fulton listed in the MLS as having 4+ car garages. Only nine are less than a million dollars.
What we are also finding, though, is that people are buying homes with two car garages and adding a detached two-car garage, often with an office or guest quarters over the garage and a breezeway to the house. Aesthetically, this looks very nice, you just have to make sure that the lot (and the HOA) allow this sort of addition.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Two-fer Tuesday on the Second
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Buyers, Listings, Milton Real Estate
In honor of the number 2, on this second day of the new year, I thought that I’d mention two properties that are not on the market yet, but will be momentarily. For those early birds out there, this represents an opportunity to get first dibs on these homes. Both are in the Milton High School district.
You might be saying to yourself: “But it’s January and not exactly a seller’s market…why the rush?”
My answer to that is that you’re right, to an extent. As we enter 2007, the local real estate market is more in equilibrium than anything else: There is about 6 months of inventory on the market and the “Days on Market” is between 65-70. However, you have to look at the market in price segments - and homes priced between $400,000 and $700,000 are still selling briskly, particularly if the house is at all in decent condition. It is the higher end of the market that is slower and dampening the overall market.
Within that context, here are two homes that I suspect will sell relatively quickly. The first is in the Crabapple Crossing Elementary school district and is in one of the few newer sub-divisions. Three-years old, three sides brick and three-car garage — hey, I thought this post was a tribute to the number two! Anyway, this home has 5 BR and 4 BA, fireplace in the master and a full unfinished basement. The asking price will be $522,000.
The second house is on an acre lot with woods in the back. It has 6 bedrooms, 6.5 baths three-car garage, too. It has a finished basement with entertainment room. It is $700,000 and for the money a better buy than comparable new construction because the basement is already finished and the house is in top condition.
These homes will hit the Multiple Listing Service in the next week or so, so get the worm now, if you’re inclined.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Download my vCard for your Outlook Contacts
