Archive for the 'Milton Real Estate' Category
The Foreclosure That Is and Wasn’t and The Foreclosure That Wasn’t and Is
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Foreclosures, Luxury Homes, Milton Real Estate
MILTON - There is a house in Highland Manor pictured on the left; you may have seen it. It’s the first house on the right as you pull in.
It has been on and off the market for the last two years. It was the last lot sold in the neighborhood a number of years after all the other lots were built. A builder who builds over in The Manor bought it and built a spec home which he wasn’t able to sell. That was a couple of years ago. The house was listed then at $820,000.
It is a great house as far as houses go. The builder does a very nice job: huge kitchen and keeping room, top of the line cabinets, amazing ceilings, spiral entrance stair case, beautiful floors and trim, four-sides brick and stone, cedar accents, large unfinished terrace level basement with lots of windows.
The problem has always been that it suffers from FHOTR syndrome. That is, First House On The Right, which means that the side yard abuts to Birmingham Road. While the location of the house in terms of the traffic is not ideal, the lot is level, which can’t be said for many lots in Highland Manor and there is a row of Leland cypress planted along the road to provide privacy. When inside the home, you don’t hear any street noise at all.
This house is listed in the MLS as a foreclosure. The thing is: It isn’t.
Yes, the builder, who has been living in the house himself to cut expenses, is very motivated to sell. The price has been reduced to $599,000 and I dare you to find as nice of a house for $600,000 within Milton. But it is NOT a foreclosure.
I asked the listing agent why it was listed as a foreclosure and he told me to "try to generate some interest for the seller." No doubt it is working because every buyer seems interested in foreclosure properties. But is this fair play. I joked with some fellow realtors a few months ago that we all ought to list our properties are foreclosures even though they weren’t … this guy has actually done it.
Regardless of the ethics of this marketing maneuver, never fear. The house will be a foreclosure in short order no doubt. Why would someone who is interested in buying the house deal now? The distress has been advertised. Why not wait until it actually forecloses and then try to get an even better deal?
Do you think this marketing technique is cleaver or is bound to be counter productive? If you like the house, though, and you can deal with the lot, we should take a look because someone is going to get a steal of a deal eventually.
The House that Wasn’t Listed as a Foreclosure But Is
Then there is the case of the actual foreclosure that wasn’t properly marketed in my opinion.
The picture on the left is not the house, but the barn. This is a 5-acre horse farm / french country estate for LESS THAN A MILLION DOLLARS ($949,000 actually) on Wood Road.
Wood Road is a dirt road running between Freemanville Road and Birmingham Highway. There are numerous family horse farms dotting the country side along Wood Road and a community of its own.
If I could chose any place to live in Milton, it would be either Wood Road or North Valley. I don’t even own horses and I love Wood Road and often cut through just so that I can enjoy the scenery.
So, I repeat, 5 acres, 6 bedrooms / 4 baths, French county estate, working horse farm, all-season riding ring. The barn is nicer than many houses. Check out the picture below to see how comfortable that horse looks.
This house was not marketed as a foreclosure in MLS. The only way I found it was accidentally in the tax records.
Now the listing agent had put some remarks in the comments section noting that it was a pre-foreclosure and to "bring all offers," but the buying public can’t search on that field and agents generally don’t know how to.
The best thing to do in a pre-foreclosure situation, and this is becoming common practice with agents, is to go ahead and list it as a foreclosure. The criteria for a pre-foreclosure would be that a short sale has been agreed to by the lender and/or the property has been advertised for foreclosure and a courthouse sale date set. This house met that criteria; the house in Highland Manor does not as far as I know…yet.
This horse estate where humans also get to live is not currently on the market now that it has foreclosed. I’m sure it is in the process of being relisted by the bank and will be coming back on the market shortly. For some horse-loving humans and human-loving horses, this is going to be a fantastic future home at a fraction of what you could buy this sort of property for two years ago.
I can hear a horse now living in some drafty barn prodding her owner to call me go take a look. Come on, your horse is worth it.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 2 Comments »
A View From the Top | Perspectives on the Alpharetta Luxury Home Market
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Johns Creek Real Estate, Local Market Conditions, Luxury Homes, Milton Real Estate, Roswell Real Estate
ALPHARETTA- A reader of this blog recently contacted me about the prospects of selling his home. It turns out that he lives in a custom-built home in one of Milton’s new neighborhoods. He has invested over $1,000,000 in the lot, construction, landscaping and pool.
When talking with him we were gauging the probability of selling the home in this market - and that probability is directly related to how many buyers there are in that price range.
A quick run of the numbers revealed that since January 1st of this year, only twenty-three homes over $1M have sold in the Milton High School district, which is the closest approximation of the City of Milton’s boundaries.
Compare that to 2007 when fifty-five million dollar homes sold. The market for a million dollar house is half of what it was a year ago.
Looking at the list of what has sold this year, there were some noticeable absentees: for instance, not one home in White Columns has sold for over $1M so far this yearl and currently there are ten homes listed for sale in White Columns for over $1M. Hampton Manor, Cooper Sandy and Canterbury on the Lake are all no shows for million dollar sales in 2008 so far.
The Manor Golf and Country Club leads the pack for million dollar sales this year; so far, they have seven. Last year they had sixteen according to the MLS. Crabapple Brook had three $1M+ sales and North Valley and Six Hills each chipped in a couple. In 2007, though, Six Hills had four, now they are down to two. Again, everything is basically half of what it was a year ago.
For grins, I ran the numbers for the other areas of North Fulton. Below is a chart showing a summary of million dollar sale activity broken down by high school attendance zone. The major finding: Every school zone is down roughly half in terms of number of transactions. However, the average sales price has remained relatively stable.
[Note: See my other posts regarding current Alpharetta real estate market conditions .]
This is similar to my analysis of the Alpharetta real estate market as a whole: volume is down by 40% or so but average sales price is relatively stable.
The exception is Alpharetta High School, which is comprised largely of Windward real estate.
In Windward, there have been three large transactions that have skewed the numbers, a $6.3M sale in January and two $3.6M deals this Fall. Still, those sales count; just like in golf when you get lucky and bounce it off a tree into the hole…it still counts. I just wanted you to understand the underlying basis for the increase in Windward.
The average sales price is also up in Centennial, but there have been only three sales this year over a million dollars so we don’t really have that many data points.
2007-2008 Million Dollar Sales Activity in Alpharetta and North Fulton
| High School Area | 2007 Sales | 2007 Avg Sales Price | 2007 Sales Price / List Price | 2008 Sales | 2008 Avg Sales Price | 2007 Sales Price / List Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpharetta | 7 | $1,241,429 | 85.8% | 12 | $1,997,833 | 89.9% |
| Centennial | 8 | $1,278,741 | 93.7% | 3 | $1,992,333 | 93.5% |
| Chattahoochee | 20 | $1,529,438 | 91.5% | 9 | $1,529,722 | 89.4% |
| Milton | 55 | $1,421,144 | 97.8% | 23 | $1,488,788 | 97.0% |
| Northview | 12 | $1,411,520 | 88.2% | 9 | $1,601,326 | 91.2% |
| Roswell | 25 | $1,425,943 | 93.3% | 12 | $1,360,978 | 93.0% |
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 1 Comment »
Foreclosure Sale Extended | Opportunity Remains in White Columns
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Buyers, Foreclosures, Milton Real Estate
MILTON - This house has nine lives. 
The foreclosure sale on this White Columns property did not happen this month. It has apparently been extended to the December sale on December 2nd. I never thought that this house would make it this far into the year; someone should get a nice Christmas gift.
Will someone please buy it so that I can stop blogging about it. I feel compelled to tell the story of this house to the very end, but the end won’t come. I may have to buy it myself.
The other White Columns foreclosure deal we’ve been tracking (red brick house shown at right) went under contract. It was reduced from $515,000 to $489,000 at the end of September and went under contract yesterday. Let’s see if it closes this time, as a previous contract fell through. This is an amazing amount of square footage for the dollar in Milton.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 1 Comment »
Buy a Million-dollar House for $50 | What a Stinking Good Idea
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Buyers, Milton Real Estate, Miscellaneous, Stuff I like to talk about
Annapolis and Milton - You can buy a million-dollar house for $50 in Annapolis. Now here is the catch: It’s a raffle. You buy a $50 raffle ticket and are entered into a drawing for the house (shown to the right with the porch). Ten percent of the proceeds also go to support a local charity.
When I see things like this I think: "Why didn’t I think of that?" What a creative way to sell a high-end property in a challenging market. While I might not always have the original idea, I’m not above replicating something that works. The people in Annapolis didn’t come up with the idea either. They got the idea from someone in western Maryland.
I’m marketing a couple of properties that would be good candidates for this - what am I thinking? All my listings would be good candidates for this if it gets them sold.
I have a couple of $700,000 properties in Milton that are rally fantastic: finished basements, one-acre lots, best schools and swim/tennis neighborhoods.
They are selling tickets in Annapolis for $50. I figure that is too cheap. Let’s say $100 gets you a crack at a $700,000 house in Milton / Alpharetta. That is only 7,000 tickets we need to sell. They are trying to sell 31,000 tickets in Maryland. I like our odds of winning better.
We could run the raffle totally above board just like the Georgia Lottery, American Idol or the Olympics…ok, maybe like the Georgia Lottery at least.
The trick is marketing and public relations of the event. That is where the folks in Annapolis have done a great job of using viral marketing and blogs like this.
What do you think? Would you pay $100 bucks for a chance to win the red brick, 5,500 sq. ft., 5 bedroom house in Milton shown above at 1:7000 odds? Would you rather spend $50 for 1:31,000 odds for the house in Annapolis? Or would you like what is in the box that Johnny is bringing down the isle now?
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 11 Comments »
$126,000 Foreclosure in Milton Requires Fast Action
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Buyers, Foreclosures, Milton Real Estate
MILTON - By the time I finish writing this post, this deal may be gone; it is that hot.
On Monday, a foreclosure in Providence Plantation in Milton came on the market at the unbelievable price of $126,000. What’s funny about that is that people think it is a typo. When I called the listing brokers, there was a recorded message that said: "Yes, the price is correct." Obviously they have been getting a lot of calls on it.
The grapevine reports that people have been lining up to get inside to see it and yesterday there were reportedly twelve people there at one time. Rumor has it that there may already be three offers, but non accepted yet.
I went out first thing this morning to take a look for myself. While I was there, another party showed up to look, too.
The house has four bedrooms, three baths, a two-car garage, a full basement and pool, albeit full of algae. The carpet has been taken up, but besides some cosmetic work on the inside, it was in pretty good shape. There were not holes in any walls, no water stains on ceilings and the cabinetry was in decent enough shape.
The exterior is front-side brick and the rest siding, which needs some work along with some rotten windows and trim. The roof is probably near the end of its life, too.
There is a full basement that was finished. One of the bedrooms and bathrooms is in the basement along with a living space. The master bedroom was on the main and two secondary bedrooms and one bath upstairs.
The lot, which is over an acre, is probably the biggest drawback of this property, as the house sits below street level and the lot slopes towards the back. However, it wasn’t too steep to prevent a previous owner from installing a swimming pool.
Providence Plantation is a mid-range neighborhood in the Crabapple Crossing Elementary School district with roughly 36 homes built about fifteen years ago. Past sales have been in the $400’s and the only other home currently on the market in Providence Plantation is listed (optimistically) at $499,900.
This foreclosure home sold for $300,000 in July, 2003.
The strategy of listing it at $126,000 has certainly grabbed the attention of investors for sure. The house will in all probability sell for more than list price, perhaps substantially more and I suspect the seller will sit on offers for at least a little while to generate competition among buyers. Wouldn’t you?
At what price is this property a steal for you, if you figure that it has approximately $50k of repairs needed? Don’t hold me to that repair figure, though; I’ll take you and show you so you can do your own repair estimate.
The biggest thing, however; when something like this comes along is the ability to recognize it and pull the trigger. The vultures are circling.
It has taken me about 45 minutes with interruptions to write this post…let me go and check to see if the property is still showing active in the MLS. Yep, still there, but it won’t be for long.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 7 Comments »
Red School Grabs the Blue | Milton High School Honored as National Blue Ribbon School for 2008
categories: Milton Real Estate, Schools
MILTON - While the Milton Eagles football team was running left, right and up the middle on the Wheeler Wildcats last Friday night, the PA Announcer came on and made a barely audible announcement that Milton High School had been awarded a 2008 National Blue Ribbon for excellence last week.
Being named a national Blue Ribbon school is an accomplishment even more impressive that the Eagle running game that night. Milton wins again, and this time in the classroom.
The blue ribbon is awarded each year to schools that are either in the top 10% on state assessments or have shown dramatic improvement while having an enrollment comprised of 40% of students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Milton was awarded based on its performance on state assessments, but, I can hear you say, there are plenty of other schools in North Fulton, both secondary and primary schools, that ware in the top ten in state achievement. Why weren’t they awarded, too?
To be selected, a school has to do a self-evaluation and submit an application to the U.S. Department of Education. The applications are evaluated and select schools are singled out for on-site visits by education experts who make award recommends to the Secretary of Education. A school has to have been in existence for five years and have not received the award within the previous five years.
I have to assume that every school in the North Fulton area, including private schools, submits an application each year. And while the award is somewhat of a subjective evaluation, it is certainly well earned. Since 1982, when the program began, less than 4% of schools nationwide have been recipients. So, CONGRATULATIONS MILTON. It is fantastic to be living in a community with a high school that has a blue ribbon as well as a running game.
The principal of Milton, Ron Tesch, made what I’m sure he thought was a somewhat lighthearted comment: “To steal from the real estate motto, ‘location, location, location’ – at Milton, it’s ‘academics, academics, academics.’" Well, not so fast Mr. Tesch. While I agree that the faculty and staff certainly play an important role in attaining high achievement levels and creating a culture of excellence, the number one predictor of school performance is, indeed, location.
Said another way: Areas with higher per household income, higher parental educational levels and more intact nuclear families have consistently been shown to have higher performing schools. So please don’t hear me slighting the achievements of Milton High School, but let it be said that the area’s reflection on Milton is as great or greater than Milton’s reflection on the area. The blue ribbon is something that we can and should all be proud of because it acknowledges the standards of the entire school district.
Milton was the only High School in Georgia to receive a National Blue Ribbon for 2008. Other North Fulton schools have received the award in previous years. Those high-caliber schools include:
Blue Ribbon Schools in North Fulton
| School | City | Status | Year | Search |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milton High School | Milton | Public | 2008 | Search for Homes in Milton High School District |
| River Trail Middle School | Johns Creek | Public | 2007 | Search for Homes in River Trail School District |
| High Meadows School | Roswell | Private | 2004 | Contact me for help searching for homes in private school districts. |
| Mountain Park Elementary | Roswell | Public | 2003 | Search for Homes in Mountain Park School District |
| Chattahoochee High School | Alpharetta | Public | 1999 | Search for Homes in Chattahoochee High School District |
| Dolvin Elementary | Johns Creek | Public | 1989 | Search for Homes in Dolvin School District |
| Crabapple Middle School | Roswell | Public | 1987 | Search for Homes in Crabapple Middle School District |
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 1 Comment »
House Limbo: How Low Can You Go | Milton Pre-Foreclosure Reduced Again
categories: Buyers, Foreclosures, Milton Real Estate
MILTON - Will someone please buy this house. It is too good of a deal to be still hanging around. The bank reduced the price yesterday to $450,000. The only thing wrong with the house is a little neglect and needs interior painting.
The house next door is on the market for $650,000 and there are solid sales in this neighborhood (White Columns Colonade) around $550.
I’ll grant you it is a crazy market, but this house should have been sold a couple of times over by now at this price. This is a deal looking you square in the eye. Remember what happened at the foreclosure auction on Mayfield Road last Saturday : the house sold for higher than the last list price. This deal needs to be taken off the table before it isn’t a deal any more. At an auction - or on the courthouse steps, there is competition. Right now, you can deal with the bank one on one.
By the way, the next lowest priced home in White Columns is in White Columns Oaks on Scarlet Oak Trail. It is also a foreclosure that has been under contract that fell through.
It has a finished basement that includes a second kitchen. In total, there are SIX full bathrooms in the house, which includes two in the basement and each secondary bedroom has its own full bath. It is listed at $515,000. You might be able to get that house for $500k or less.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently 3 Comments »
Milton House Did Not Foreclose | Their Delay is Your Opportunity
categories: Alpharetta Real Estate, Buyers, Foreclosures, Luxury Homes, Milton Real Estate
MILTON - I just learned that this house did NOT foreclose this month. The bank gave them one more month to sell it short. I still believe that this house has one of the best upsides of any opportunity in the area. Read what I wrote about it the other day.
I hear that they are getting a good number of showings but do NOT have an offer yet. It is listed at $475,000. You know what they say: The best policy is to be the least expensive house in a nice neighborhood. This is your chance.
Posted by Kevin Warmath | Currently No Comments »
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