Archive for June, 2007
Hawks Ridge Leads Alpharetta Grand Slam of Golf Courses
categories: Golf Communities, Stuff I like to talk about
It’s a day I’ve waited for since last summer when I first figured a way inside the gates at Hawks Ridge. The ticket, you ask: my son. When all else fails, exploit your children. The ends justify the means when the end is golf.
Yesterday, we made our now second annual trip to Hawks Ridge for an Atlanta Junior Golf tournament. I’m merely my son’s caddie, but any excuse to go to Hawks Ridge is good enough for me. I’m not proud. Hawks Ridge is a special place and I’m just glad to be able to enjoy a small piece of it.
As junior golfers, the kids only play on the par 3 course, but it is so much more challenging than the other par 3 courses they play that Hawks Ridge is played as a par 4 course.
As far as adults go, Hawks Ridge is at the top of the list in terms of privacy, exclusivity and quality. It, along with The Georgia Tech Club at Echelon, The Manor Golf and Country Club and The River Club, represent my grand slam of Alpharetta-area golf. Hawks Ridge, a Bob Cupp design built in 1999, is the top.
All these courses are fantastic, but what makes Hawks Ridge different is the serenity. Don’t get me wrong, the other courses are tranquil and quiet, but Hawks Ridge has something else about it that you just don’t feel at the other places.
Maybe it is a Golf Digest ranking.
I haven’t even played the course - maybe some day I will - but you can just tell by the feel in the air that it is something special. Golf Digest claims that Hawks Ridge is the 100th best course in the country. These lists are always a bit of a beauty contest, sort of like running for Prom Queen, but even it Golf Digest is off by 50 spots, that is still high praise. There are only five courses in Georgia on the list and on is Augusta and another is East Lake, where I own my personal best round, by the way ;->
Hawks Ridge is much further north than the other courses and in Cherokee County. The development centers on a 20+ acre lake and few of the homes are actually on the course. A major difference with Hawks Ridge is that it is an ESTATE community. There are only about 80 lots and most are well over an acre. About half the lots are in the 3-5 acre range with a few upwards of 10 acres. You can put a lot of house on 3-5 acres and people have. The sales range from $1.5M to $2.5M.
Sales haven’t been brisk, though. Last year, according to the MLS only one house sold in Hawks Ridge and that was in January for $2.5M. One lot sold, too, for $190k. Currently there are five homes listed from $1.7M to $3M
There are six lots currently on the market. Most are “smaller”, at about an acre and a half. There is a seven acre lot, the last of the larger ones, available for $515k. You can use your own builder in this neighborhood; golf membership is optional, but I don’t know who would want to live here and not be a golf fanatic. John Smoltz, the avid golfer, I mean hall of fame pitcher, didn’t buy one lot in Hawks Ridge, he bought two side by side. John obviously knows his golf.
Golf membership is by invitation and right now there are only about 150 local members plus another 25 out-of-sate. Getting a tee time is not a problem. Getting a membership, well, every good course is a challenge.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Martha Stewart Homes Selling Like Hotcakes
categories: New Construction
Just an update on Martha Stewart since my earlier post: She is out of jail, but I guess that is old news.
What might not be widely known is that since getting out she has been busy selling houses. Well, that is not entirely accurate. The name “Martha Stewart” has been selling the homes along with the KB Homes sales staff at the Wynchase subdivision in Woodstock.
For all I know, she already does this, but Martha Stewart should market and sell pancake batter too. That’s because the homes in Wynchase are selling like hotcakes. Since March when they started selling Phase 1, thirty-three of fifty-four homes have been sold. No homes are completed yet, although a half dozen or so are under construction. The first closing is not scheduled until August.
Prices are going up, too. Since March, there have been three price increases already. The 3,616 square foot floorplan started at $275,000 as the base price and today is listed at $293,990. Fully appointed, this floorplan will wind up costing you between $400-$450k. Buyers spend about 20% of the base price on upgrades - and upgrades there are.
I’m not blown away by the aesthetics of the neighborhood, at least to start. After all, these are mass production homes built by a high volume builder. However, I’m sure that once the neighborhood is built out and matures it will be quite nice. There are some big power lines that run through the neighborhood that aren’t going anywhere. Plus, in Phase 1 there are only four basement lots, which is too bad because basements make a home much more valuable, let alone livable.
In this marriage between KB and Martha, KB clearly married up. The interior designs, floorplans (each plan is modeled after one of Stewart’s actual homes) and upgrades available make what might be ordinary houses pop. Walking into one is just like opening the cover of the Martha Stewart magazine: Clean, crisp design and great colors. How do you describe that look without using the words Martha Stewart in the description? You can’t. It is just like chicken tastes like, well, chicken. Martha Stewart designs looks like, well, Martha Stewart. And customers are eating it up, I’m sure to KB’s delight.
Some of the things I noticed, and remember I’m a man and only supposed to notice the yard, basement and number of cars you can fit in the garage, included the tub sinks in the bathrooms and the thick white balusters on the stair railing. While most high-end builders are using iron balusters, Martha has reverted back to white, albeit a thicker, heavier white for more substance that the typical ones you find in fifteen year old homes.
Also in white are the kitchen cabinets. No where else do you see white cabinets in a 2007 home. Everyone says they want cherry and maple cabinets and that white cabinets are passe. Not Martha. When accompanied by dark counters, dark floors and stainless hardware, fixtures and appliances, the feeling you get is not that you’re in a hospital, but rather inside the pages of her magazine.
All I know is that my wife would love it and we all understand the balance of power between the genders in the home selection process. Good move KB; you have a true product differentiator in Martha.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Atlanta Builder Forum Reveals No Housing Bubble in Atlanta or Alpharetta
categories: Local Market Conditions
I know that you’re out there: people who understand the difference between the median and the average; people who live outside two standard deviations of the national understanding of statistics; people who know that statistics lie.
But trends don’t - or at least it is harder to trick you with trends. Trends are statistics put in context of each other: strength in numbers.
Last week I attended a forum sponsored by the Atlanta Home Builders Association on The State of the Atlanta Housing Economy. I went because I love the numbers, I love the analysis and I wanted to see if what the “experts” saw in the numbers jibed with what I saw in my experience. I was the only realtor there: Strange, I thought everyone would be interested in polishing up their bell curves.
The analogy used at the forum to characterize the Atlanta housing market was that we have been running at about 90 miles and hour for the last few years. Now we have slowed down to about sixty, but we are still moving ahead at a “normal” pace. This is a mere tap on the breaks on GA-400.
The numbers show that Atlanta has not experienced a housing bubble like other cities and therefore has not experience a bubble burst either. Homes in Atlanta have appreciated at about 3-5% over the past few years; annual appreciation in the US as a whole has been 8-14%.
In 2006, the annual appreciation in the US has gone from 13.3% down to 5.9%. In Georgia, it has gone from 6.4% to 5.6%. That is a big difference. No bubble here.
| Annualized Home Appreciation | ||
| State | Q4 2005 | Q4 2006 |
| California | 21.6% | 4.9% |
| Florida | 28.6% | 9.45% |
| N. Virginia | 19.9% | 7.46% |
| New Jersey | 15.97% | 5.8% |
| New York | 13.27% | 4.9% |
| Georgia | 6.35% | 5.58% |
| United States | 13.25% | 5.87% |
The bit of a slowdown that we have felt here can be partially explained by the poor housing market in Atlanta’s feeder markets. Atlanta attracts a lot of relocation from Florida, New York/New Jersey, Northern Virginia, California and the Midwest. People would like to move to Atlanta but they haven’t been able to sell their homes in those other states - and I’ve definitely seen this effect in my own business.
Home Builders (after all, this was a home builder forum) have reacted to the market by slowing their housing starts. There were 12% fewer housing starts in Q1 2007 in Atlanta than in Q1 2006 and closings were down 8% as well.
It might look like there is new construction going up everywhere, but to the trained eye, there is clearly a slowdown, particularly in the higher price ranges where it has become very competitive and inventory is much higher than in other price ranges. Some higher end projects have definitely be put on the slow track. My experience has been that many builders in the high end market are willing to deal and we have worked out some good concessions for our buyers.
However, in the $400-$500 projects are full steam ahead and the resale market is also healthy. If the home is at all in decent condition it will sell relatively quickly, sometimes too quickly. Last week we went to make offers on three houses in the Northview High School district in the $300k price range and they were all sold before we could present an offer.
The situation in North Fulton (Alpharetta, Roswell, Milton and Johns Creek) is that land is now so expensive that any new construction is $500+ and that is forcing people to search in South Forsyth for homes they can afford.
In the end, though, Atlanta’s and Alpharetta’s housing market is secure. Property continues to appreciate at a slow but steady pace driven by Atlanta’s lumbering economy. Job growth and job prospects are both positive and consumer confidence remains remarkably strong.
Of course, Atlanta is a BIG city and conditions vary from zip code to zip code. In North Fulton there is an overabundance of expensive property and in the last month or so, this is reflected in the sales
numbers (see chart). In 2007, May sales were less than half what they were a year ago. My hypothesis (and many struggling builders will readily agree) is that the high end homes aren’t selling quickly.
However, in the sweet spot ($400-$500k) houses are selling. If you have a house in that spot that isn’t then you need to ask yourself if you really have it priced correctly or if there is something about the condition of the property that is preventing its sale — because it isn’t the market.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
If I Had a Million Dollars … I’d Buy You a House, But Where?
categories: Buyers
Remember the old Bare Naked Ladies song? “If I had a million dollars, I’d buy you a house …” Well, if you were looking in North Fulton or South Forsyth for that million dollar house, the odds are that you’d wind up in either the 30004 or 30097 zip codes.
I’m struck by the imbalance of high-end homes throughout the area’s zip codes. The largest concentration by far of million-dollar homes is in 30004 and within that zip code they are concentrated in the City of Milton and in the far northern reaches of the City of Roswell along Cox Road.
| Zip Code | # of $1M Homes | County |
| 30004 | 168 | Fulton/Cherokee |
| 30005 | 22 | Fulton |
| 30022 | 81 | Fulton |
| 30041 | 51 | Forsyth |
| 30040 | 25 | Forsyth |
| 30097 | 135 | Fulton/Forsyth/Gwinnett |
The other major concentration of million-dollar homes is on the eastern side of Alpharetta, Johns Creek and into Duluth in the 30097 zip code. The vast majority of these homes are in Sugarloaf (Gwinnett County), St. Marlo (Forsyth County) and then a smattering in St. Ives (Fulton County) and some other smaller neighborhoods.
If you’re looking in 30022, then start in The Country Club of the South where there are currently 71 active listings, 47 of which are over a million dollars. Whereas 30004 is mostly new million dollar construction, the 30022 zip code is “old money” for the area. If you don’t want the gates, guard house and cache of The Country Club, you can pick from the Charleston-esque Ellard on the Chattahoochee or the top end of the Falls of Autry Mill.
Surprisingly, “Eastern Alpharetta” demarked by the 30005 zip code had the fewest representatives in the million dollar club. If you want to buy there, you have only one choice: Windward.
Head to Forsyth County and the 30041 (East) and 30040 (West) zips codes and you don’t have quite as much to choose from. The bulk of Forsyth County’s housing market is in the 400-500k range. If you want to spend a million dollars, then your choices are Creekstone and …. Even Windermere, one of the high end anchors of Forsyth county with its Davis Love golf course tops out in the mid $900’s.
If you go west of GA-400 in Forsyth, you’ll probably be looking at acreage or “estate homes”. There are no million-dollar neighborhoods yet in 30040. The area is quickly being developed but there are still plenty of chicken farms. Don’t forget: Georgia is the number one poultry producing state in the Union. The chickens have to live somewhere, too.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
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