Archive for the 'Buyers' Category
Bank Foreclosure Gets It Right
categories: Buyers, Foreclosures
Or maybe the title of this post should be “Creating demand in a tough market”.
I have an investor client that has been looking at everything that hits the market in his price range, waiting for that great deal, like almost every other buyer seems to be. Occasionally a listing will hit the market at a great price and this one did. A nearly new foreclosure home in Canton that was priced at 88k, 12k below the most recent sale.
Now, $12,000 doesn’t sound like much but in that price range it is significant. Within hours multiple offers were submitted and that bank asked for “highest and best” from everyone. We raised our already-over-the-asking-price offer even higher. While I don’t yet know what the final accepted price was, we do know it was far in excess of the lowest comparable in the community.
So, what is the take-away here? Well first off, if you are a buyer looking for a deal and didn’t realize this already - EVERYONE is looking for the same deal you are. So be ready for it when it shows up, and when it does-move on it.
But the other take-away is that there are buyers out there and they will move when motivated. For sellers, it’s all about price and condition. It’s not always true to say “if I price it that low then the offers will come in even lower”. They may come in lower but if you are priced attractively against your competition, there will be demand and there will be offers. I would rather say no to 4 low offers than get no offers, what about you? What you have to ask yourself as a seller is “Can I sell at an attractive price?”.
Posted by Bob Strader | Currently 1 Comment »
Would you like a $1.2M home for $750,000? | Bargain Hunters Part II - North Fulton
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Buyers, Luxury Homes, Milton Real Estate, New Construction
Milton, Ga. - This is inside information and you are getting it before anyone else. We informed the readers of this blog about 4 amazing deals in January, you can see the post here: $700k homes for half price, and we sold them in four hours….yes, 4 hours. So, this is fair warning, if you are interested then contact us now as this is first come, first served.
Nearly 40% of all sales are foreclosures or short sales and most of those are GOOD deals. But everyone is looking for really GREAT deals and believe it or not, really GREAT deals only come up occasionally. You can choose one of these 3 nearly $1,200,000 homes for $750,000.
They are all new homes and built by a well respected custom home builder who has built hundreds of million dollar homes in various North Atlanta communities. These are all 4-side brick and stone, 3-car garages and pre-planned terrace levels that have high ceilings and open plans. All with very custom features & finishes and all on 1+ acre lots.
I hate clichés but with interest rates this low and the economy beginning to show signs of improvement-this is the proverbial no-brainer. I challenge you to find another home like these at prices even close to this in North Fulton.
But wait, there is more. We know of a nearly $800,000 new construction home you can get for under $600,000 and the owner will finance. For more details on this one-you have to call.
Posted by Bob Strader | Currently No Comments »
Final Recommendation District Map Posted for Birmingham Elementary
For as many changes as School Board staff made between rounds two and three in the redistricting process, there were almost no changes from the Final Draft district map to the Final Recommendation map .
And it is not like they didn’t get any comments: Eighty-three pages of comments are posted on the redistricting website in case your Ambien is not working.
There were fourteen pages of comments taken at the Round Three meeting and sixty-nine pages of comments collected online. Thirty-four of the sixty-nine pages were PRO the map. When half the people are for something and half are against you have reached a decision.
The only change I could find on the recommended map was that the condos along the west side of Morris Road, including Morris Lake, were moved from Cogburn Woods back to Manning Oaks, where they currently go.
Now that the final recommendation has been made by staff, the full School Board will vote - and make changes as they see fit - to the plan in February. The transfer of government power in a democracy and the redistricting of an elementary school in a public school system: two tasks completed without violence and with orderly process that never cease to amaze me.
Now, I didn’t say there wouldn’t be some politicing; just no National Guard needed.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
Would You Like a $700,000 House for About Half Price? | South Forsyth Executive Homes Hit Bargain Basement Prices
Vickery, South Forsyth - Here’s the deal, and you hear it only here. The economy is cinching the rope around builder’s necks. I know an incredibly well respected builder who has built literally hundreds of million dollar homes in the North Atlanta suburbs and not to sound like a car advertisement, says: "Everything Must Go."
You can choose one of these four nearly $700,000 homes, each four sides brick, five bedrooms, four full baths with three car garages and full unfinished basements on half acre lots for the low low price of only $370,000 .
I know I sound like a cheesy radio car ad, but deals like this only come around once in a long while. If you are a bargain hunter - and whose not in this market - here’s your bargain. If this is a buyer’s market, and it is, then buy!
The homes are located near Vickery in South Forsyth. This is a growing part of the county with a new high school, local amenities including The Avenues shopping on 141 and GA-400.
At $370,000 it is hard to make a mistake, particularly with mortgages around 5% or less. This is my version of a local economic stimulus package.
Call me and tell me which of these four homes you like best before they are gone…and they will be gone at this price, but only your and I know that price.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 3 Comments »
Seller Financing and House Trade Program Aim to Break Real Estate Market Impasse | The Snorkel Business
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Buyers, Lending, New Construction, Real Estate Industry
ALPHARETTA - Expanding on yesterday’s post about house swaps and real estate log jams, here is a slightly different angle to this problem.
Take builders. I didn’t talk about them yesterday.
They are the opposite of the first time home buyer. They don’t have anything to buy, only a lot to sell - as opposed to not having anything to sell and only dealing with a single home to buy like a FTHB.
Builders, of course, are dependent on buyers. Builder are having trouble selling though because, as much as John Q. Public might like to buy, he either can’t sell his house or he is underwater in his house, in which case he needs a snorkel - I mean he might be selling in order to downsize.
The buyer might be credit challenged; sometimes the buyer has a sizable down payment but can’t get a loan because they are self-employed, or don’t have American credit because they are from another country.
So what do builders do about the situation?
Some of them don’t do anything. These are the ones you hear about going bankrupt.
Others get more creative and agressive. They partner with a lender to do low rate or “buy down” loans where the builder pays to buy the interest rate down for a period of time. I saw today where McCar homes is partnering with SunTrust for loans at 4.5% if they close by January 31st. The purchaser must have a 680 credit score to qualify, though.
Some builders will offer to purchase the buyer’s existing home so that they can buy the builder’s new home. This strategy could help, but sometimes the builder is just trading one head ache for another.
I was involved in a deal last year where a builder offered to buy my client’s house. He was going to pay them about 20% less than what it was listed for: His calculation was that my client would ultimately net about that once he paid real estate commission, price concessions and repairs. The deal didn’t work out, but the offer was certainly there and I know similar deals have been struck.
Finally, owner financing is another option that you see builders offering these days and owner financing is closer to what I feel is really going to help break the log jam.
We have a market failure where willing sellers and willing buyers can’t transact because prices are out of whack and credit is extremely tight. However, where there is a problem, there is always a solution in a free market.
What I’m seeing now is more sellers and particularly builders offering financing. In Cherokee, Forsyth and North Fulton counties, there are currently 222 properties for sale where the seller is offering to finance. Most of the same rules apply as a typical loan except your bank is the seller. Like a bank, the seller is assuming the risk that you pay on the loan. If not, they can foreclose…just like a traditional lender.
Even more interesting, now we are starting to offer seller financing coupled with a house trade program to help buyers and builders break the market impasse. Again, where there is a will, there is a way: a free market allows for creative solutions. The lenders screwed things up, so now other parties must assume the role of a bank to unscrew us all.
If you would like to buy a new construction house, but need to sell yours first, we can help with a trade program; or we can seller finance your new purchase if getting a loan is your roadblock. We could also privately finance the sale of your home so you could get it sold in order to buy the builder’s new house.
Our current inventory is sixty homes ranging from $285,000 to the $800’s throughout north Atlanta.
Builders are anxious in this market to understate the situation. They have asked us to do anything and everything to help break the log jam and get their inventory sold. I hate the expression “thinking outside the box” because I think it is thoughtlessly over used, but I do believe some new thinking is required in this market in order to get things done.
The alternative is not pretty. Reference the builder who does nothing. We are now in the snorkel business.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 3 Comments »
I’ll Show You Mine If You Show My Yours | Solving the Real Estate Log Jam Problem
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Buyers, Sellers, Stuff I like to talk about
ALPHARETTA - We’ve all been there - or at least I think we have - when in order to get something you have to do something uncomfortable first.
It’s the old dare: You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. No! You first, I said. Really … I’ll show you mine. Really … I will.
I lost that dare when I was pre-pubescent to the judge’s daughter in her basement around the corner. She permanently scarred me from believing that people are fundamentally trustworthy. She took advantage of me at such an impressionable age. I took the risk back then, though. The payoff was HUGE and the potential loss small.
Fast forward thirty-five years and it’s still the same game just with different stakes.
There are scads of people who would like to sell their homes and they are even realistic about having to reduce the price to get it sold. However, they are reluctant to show you theirs, so to speak, because they are afraid that when they become a buyer that you won’t show them yours.
Buyers have repeatedly told me: "I’d be more than willing to lower my price $50,000 if I was sure that I could save that $50,000 when I purchased my next home." The thing is, we all have our own judge’s daughter in our past who has made us distrustful of our fellow man.
The Problem
The result of this situation is a huge real estate log jam. No one can buy because no one can sell - and many first time homebuyers, who don’t have anything to sell, have already purchased in the last two years or now have more trouble qualifying for a mortgage and/or coming up with the required downpayment. So how do you solve this trust issue where today’s sellers don’t trust tomorrow’s sellers?
The Solution
One solution has been the "Buy This House and I’ll Buy Yours" program. You may have seen this on a for sale sign rider. These programs are run by realtors who are ostensibly trying to help their client sell their home. The idea is to remove any obstacles from keeping a prospective buyer from buying - you might call this a mini log jam solution, because the programs are really targeted to a single transaction, not an entire marketplace that is in gridlock.
This program is closely related to the "I’ll Buy Your House If It Doesn’t Sell in 90 Days" program. The buy out prices in these programs are typically so low that you’d probably not want to sell at that price and mostly the purpose of these programs is to generate listing leads and appointments for realtors. The low buy out price has some shock value in getting sellers to glimpse what their house may truly be worth, but in reality, the realtor doesn’t really want to buy your house. He wants to sell it and if, indeed, he winds up buying it, his program has failed.
Property Swapping
Another solution, aimed more at the systemic gridlock of the real estate market is the house swap option.
Over the past year, I’ve had more and more people approach me about swapping their home instead of selling it.
The idea here is that by not going out into the broader marketplace you insulate yourself from the possibility that you won’t be able to buy low if you have to sell low. Remember the judge’s daughter? I sold low but couldn’t buy low.
If you enter into a swap agreement, both parties are simultaneously obligated to each other - that is the key. You jointly buy and sell at the same time, agreeing on the relative value of each other’s properties. Everyone shows everything up front - no chance to be have sold low and now be able to buy low - or at least for both parties to have taken roughly equal discounts.
I know a family with a 4+ acre horse farm on Hopewell Road in Alpharetta (Milton), shown on the right, who would like to trade for something smaller in a subdivision. They say they can’t reduce their house to what it would take to sell it, but they could possibly trade.
I’ve also known people in the area who were having a tough time selling and voiced interest in trading with someone from Florida. There are scads of Floridians who would love to move to GA, but can’t sell their house in FL. How about a trade, Mr. Gator?
These trade opportunities are great, but how do you find them when they are floating around in the heads of local realtors?
To that end, there are some new property swapping website that are coming online. They are in their infancy, but the opportunity is there for them to make a dent in the real estate log jam. Check out, for instance, www.PropSwapGlynn.com , which is a site focusing on property in St. Simons and Brunswick, GA. Anyone want to swap their permanent residence for a vacation property on the beach?
There is also a brand new site for property swapping in Atlanta at www.PropSwapAtlanta.com . If you want to sell your home, it would make sense to work with a realtor who will also market your home for swap, not just for sale. You can’t put too many irons in the fire in this market.
If only I had had the internet back when I was interacting with the judge’s daughter. We both could have gone online, found each other and negotiated our exchage and commitment before we - or at least I - put our tender feelings on the line only to get snubbed. Lesson learned - and applied to real estate.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 6 Comments »
New Boundaries Proposed in Draft Plan of Birmingham Elementary Redistricting
ALPHARETTA - Two things are abundantly clear: First, one of the chief reasons that North Fulton schools are as good as they are is because of incredibly strong parental involvement.
Last night’s third round Birmingham Elementary redistricting meeting was attended by approximately 750 people - and this was down from the roughly 1,000 that attended each of the first two meetings. One can only assume that turnout would have been as high as earlier meetings, but some parents must have previewed the draft plan earlier in the day online and were satisfied enough to stay home. None the less, measuring by the turnout, parents obviously care, and are involved and organized regarding schools issues that directly affect their families and children.
Speaking to the level of interest and involvement in the process, School Board staff said that more public comments have been received during this redistricting process than any previous redistricting.
Over 1,000 comments were taken during the Round Two break-out sessions and over 3,500 comments were submitted online after Round Two, albeit some of those comments were copy and pasted by organized neighborhoods and suggested by email chains. Still the level of participation is to be commended.
The other thing that was abundantly clear is that not everyone is going to be happy with the final plan. You simply can’t please everyone. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much public comment the board seemed to take into consideration in the draft plan. I expected of one of the three proposed plans to be pushed forward as the draft plan. That wasn’t the case The School Board’s draft is truly a fourth plan that reflects many of the concerns discussed around the three previously proposed plans.
Here are the highlights of the proposed plan:
Birmingham Elementary Redistricting Round Three Draft Plan (1.2 MiB, 400 hits)
Roswell North ’s district will not change. They will combat crowding with planned expansions. Roswell North parents had strenuously resisted adding any of what is currently Esther Jackson or Mimosa districts to Roswell North ’s and they appear to have gotten their way.
Mountain Park will pick up some area along both sides of HWY 92 including Grace Hill, Sterling at Crossville, Glens of Crabapple and Greenway Hills. I never heard much debate about this one way or another. The objective is to relieve crowding at Sweet Apple .
To relieve crowding at Crabapple Crossing , its district is still being reduced per all three preliminary proposals. However, instead of the area that is in the north part of that district (everything north of Dorris Road and Landrum Road including Providence Lake and Atlanta National subdivisions) going to the new Birmingham Elementary , they are proposed to go to Summit Hill . It was explained that this was because there was a lot of feedback about the danger of the intersection of Providence Road and Birmingham Highway - can’t argue with that, its a death trap - and residents of Providence Lake thought it would be safer and easier to go straight through that intersection than take a left onto Birmingham Highway.
That change in Crabapple Crossing ’s district impacted the new Birmingham Elementary ’s district: Triple Crown was included in the Birmingham instead of Summit Hill district, which makes sense in my opinion. As a result, The Manor was then assigned to Summit Hill instead of Birmingham Elementary as had been proposed in Preliminary Plan B.
Harrington Falls neighborhood was taken out of the Summit Hill and returned to Alpharetta Elementary , leaving Alpharetta Elementary ’s district unchanged. I understand that this is a postive for the school because a large proportion of the PTA resides in Harrington Falls and this plan retains the stability the PTA provides.
Most of the debated centered around Cogburn Woods Elementary and Crooked Creek. Crooked Creek residents had openly been lobbying for a plan similar to draft proposal B that kept all the neighborhoods along Cogburn Road at Cogburn Woods and limited the amount of area east of HWY 9. What they got, was what was proposed in draft C. The good thing about the draft Cogburn Woods district is that it does still include the neighborhoods of Gatewood and Coventry, which are practically next door to Cogburn Woods and had been slated to go to Manning Oaks under proposed plan A. Those neighborhoods were very vocal and organized in their opposition to plan A and they appear to have had their voices heard.
As for Manning Oaks , Hembree Springs and Mimosa , Manning Oaks ‘ draft district extends south to encompass some of what is now Hempree Springs to alleviate overcrowding there. In turn, Hembree Springs is gaining everything north of Mansell Road that is currently zoned to Mimosa.
The Winners and the Losers
So who are the unhappy 5%? Crooked Creek without a doubt. One of the most interesting things in the meeting was the analysis of public comments. The School Board staff plotted on a map each comment they received online. Clearly this was a north versus south debate.
Birmingham Elementary Round Two Proposed District Maps (2.8 MiB, 353 hits)
For Plan A, the negative comments were in the north and the positive comments were in the south. Plan B was the inverse: the north (areas in and around Crooked Creek) favored it and the south (areas around Hembree Springs) opposed it because it resulted in huge overcrowding at Hembree Springs. With Plan C, the negatives were north and the positives were south. The proposed plan is more like Plan C than anything else with some tweaks in the south for Roswell North.
In the draft plan, the School Board staff seems to have addressed many of the issues with the proposed plans, but you can’t address the overcrowding of Hembree Springs without upsetting someone else’s apple cart and that someone else is Crooked Creek. My guess is that Crooked Creek is a victim of its size. As a neighborhood of 600+ homes you can’t send them to Summit Hill, as parents were suggesting at the meeting last night. There are just too many students in Crooked Creek to do that.
Has anyone played Blokus ? In Blokus, the best strategy is to play your big, oddly shaped pieces first because you might not be able to play them later as the board fills up. The same goes for school redistricting. Big neighborhoods like Crooked Creek have to be assigned early in the process and then the smaller neighborhoods around then can be used to fine turn the district boundaries.
Let’s face it: Many schools attendance zones are going to look very different next year, including Summit Hill, Hembree Springs, Manning Oaks and Cogburn Woods. Change is always difficult but also a fact of life in a quickly growing area. We must have new schools. I do give the School Board staff high marks so far in listening to the issues and actually making changes to the plans where possible.
And in the midst of this all, Manning Oaks goes out and gets itself named a Georgia School of Excellence .
The game is not over yet. The final proposal will be made to the School Board in January. Some changes can and might still be made. Then the School Board members can make changes on their own. Public comment is still open on the online discussion forum until 5pm tomorrow night. I’m absolutely positive that North Fulton is making its opinions known.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
White Columns Pre-Foreclosure Finally Becomes Post-Foreclosure
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Buyers, Foreclosures
MILTON - Finally.
I’m not gloating. Really, I’m not. In fact, nothing bugs me more than to listen to newscasters reading market statistics or the dow jones average for the day and hear that small amount of glee that sneaks into their tone. You don’t hear that when they read that the market was up 300 points … that’s ho hum news.
So, with no glee whatsoever, I announce that 885 Colonial Lane in White Columns was finally cried on the court house steps earlier this month and is now a "full-blown" foreclosure.
The reason I say "finally" is because this house has seemingly had nine lives and almost as many offers to buy it as the price dropped from $625,000 a year ago to $450,000 most recently. The combination of flaky buyers, a mismanaged asset management company and a bitter seller resulted in failed attempt after failed attempt.
Reportedly, the last offer on the house - that was ultimately rejected apparently - was $350,000. Imagine that, $350,000 for a 5 bedroom 3,600 sq. ft. house, not including the unfinished basement, on 1.6 acres. That accounts for some of the seller’s bitterness.
And there is not a darn thing wrong with the house that a few hundred dollars of paint wouldn’t cure. I know, because I’ve had the house inspected.
Like everything, the bank refusing the $350,000 was a calculated gamble. At least one hopes so and that it was not bureaucratic inertia or organizational dysfunction that kept them from making the deal.
Now the house will be in limbo for a short time while the bank finds a new broker and relists the property. It will be extremely interesting to see what they relist if for and what it ultimately sells for. Yes, it was finally foreclosed on, but the saga is anything but over.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently Comments Off
