Atlanta Real Estate | Atlanta Housing News for Real Estate

Integrity Bank located in Alpharetta Georgia has just failed.  In a breaking story from Bloomberg reports that Integrity Bank was closed today by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation FDIC and the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance.  Integrity Bank Becomes 10th U.S. Failure This Year.  It is reported that Regions Financial Corp. will be assuming the assets.  Integrity Bankshares which controls all the assets of Integrity Bank and its 5 branches will open on September 2, 2008 as Regions Banks.  Integrity Bank has been on the Federal banks watchlist, and have been unable to raise new capital that the FDIC required.

The twist to this failure is that the FDIC reported that all depositors even those with accounts in excess of $100000 will automatically become depositors of Regions Bank for the full amount of their deposits. This is the second bank to fail in Alpharetta in less than one year.  The other banks was NetBank which failed last September.

• NetBank - located in Alpharetta failed last Sept 2007

Sometimes when my brain freezes up from too many slurpees as I try to stay cool in the deep south..I am at a loss to figure out percentages while working on my webs, Blogs or local statistics.   Either my calculator has disappeared from the top of my desk, I forgot the formula or I am just too lazy to go and find it!  I found this great easy site to figure out quick percentages, loss, increase or gain. I thought I would share it because it is that good if I am doing some market Blogging stats and need some quick numbers for the charts I put together.  You can CALCULATE PERCENT or PERCENTAGE INCREASE easily here!  YOu do not need to be a mathamatician to figure out the correct percentages for your cleints or viewers!  Bookmark and save for future use! 

Online Per-Centage Calculator

I just had a new article published for RealtyTimes.Com today and thought I would share it with you!  When we list homes we must not lose sight of the fact that are in the drivers seat.  It is the agent not the homeowner that is really doing the interviewing.  Saleability of the property is key!  For many of us we are lucky that most agents do not get this concept.  These agent will list anything, at any price in any condition!  The reason is simple, they are either too new to real estate, have no experience, and pride themselves with winning the overpriced listing that no experienced agent in their right mind will touch.  Since you are marrying the seller of the property for better or for worse during the listing period, it is the listing agent that will constantly be accountable for their actions.  If you took and over priced listing and you are getting no traffic, no offers, and cob webs on your signage - be prepared to get yelled at, blamed and bad mouthed all over town because you cannot sell a home.  So if you are going to list a homes, choose a winner in regards to price appearance and make sure you have realistic sellers.  These ideas are based upon actual successes in our Atlanta real estate career.  Best wishes!

•  Selective Listings - Stick with the Winners! by Jim Crawford

Years ago the Atlanta real estate agents more often than not was the first point of contact with a home buyer. More often than not, potential buyers would walk into the Atlanta real estate office, and tell you they were thinking of buying a home, and wanted to know how to begin the process.  We'd sit down, and listen to their needs, and then take out a worksheet and ask them some preliminary financial questions, to get a vague idea of what they could afford to buy.  At that time, we'd pick out a few homes in their price range and see if that me their needs, and then give them the names of several mortgage persons to further qualify them.  Today, it is very different.  The Internet has changed all the rules, and home buying has become very dysfunctional.  It is no longer written in stone that the Atlanta real estate agents is the first point of contact with a potential buyer any longer.  Many buyers find their homes through their mortgage lender. 

Home buyers find lenders on-line under various web searches.  Sometimes the hook is "FREE, NO MONEY DOWN!"  "Credit repair" and yes, even "Win a free Vacation!"  I've heard them all!  Some of these buyers are scammed by fly by night fraudsters that get the buyers involved in the wrong deals.  Inflated home values, and bait and switch loans at the closing table!  Scams, real estate fraud, mortgage fraud, straw buyers and illegal kickbacks and yes even predatory loans.  I can say this because over the years we've generated so many countless Internet leads.  It is interesting what you find out when you engage in conversation with buyers.  Many will tell us that they cannot work with us because they will be assigned an agent from their lender.  To me that is red flag #1.  Another is that if you went a little deeper in conversation, several buyers wanted to work with us, but also asked if we would do the same thing their lender and agents were doing.  When you ask the caller what is that?  The reply is kicking back 25K at closing!  As soon as you say that is illegal, the phone call would end.  I cannot help buy wonder how much of the real estate grief today was caused by true loan fraud!  It is just too convenient for an agent or a lender to provide the client with all services,  including inspections.  It is sort of like being painted into a corner with a flamethrower.  It's probably not a good position to be in.

• Home buyers should be able to work with any agent they choose
• Home buyers should be able to shop for the best mortgages
• Homebuyers should be able to choose the lender they want to work with
• Home buyers should be able to choose to pick their own home inspectors
• Home buyers hould never feel pressured to use any one particular, agent, lender, home inspector....

More and more Atlanta real estate agents have taken up full time employment these days in a 9-5 job to pay the bills.  I cannot blame anyone for doing so, but many of these now part time Atlanta real estate agents are now totally inaccessible to their clients during their working hours.  You cannot have your cake and eat it too!  That means buyers are going around calling up full time agents hoping we will open doors and show them homes.  That is abuse of the worse kind.  A gallon of gas is still over $3.50 a gallon, and the time spent with less than forthcoming buyers cannot be regained. 

Brokers reciprocity has opened a floodgate of calls from neglected buyers that want to see something immediately, but do not want our real estate services.  They already have an Atlanta real estate agent, but flood the lines and emails looking for free information and details about listed properties that our not our own.  It is a unethical for their agents not to be doing the work that they will get paid for by putting the onus on others to do it for them.  A recent story from a friend of mine shared and even crazier twist.  A buyer called asking to see several properties, and mentioned their agent worked full time and was not able to do so.  They mentioned they were in town on their buy trip and were staying at a hotel in town...and could the agent pick them up and show them the homes?  They actually mentioned, they wanted someone only to open doors!  When you mention they will need to provide a pre-approval letter, a copy of their drivers license, and sign a buyers agency agreement identifying the homes that you will show them...the would be buyers get really abusive and hang up.  You have to stop and ask yourself, what are they thinking?

There isn't much that can prepare you to deal with the current real estate market we are in.  The double digit mortgages of the 1980's, WRAP mortgages and the early 1990's when in many markets appreciation took a holiday!  The current real estate market is a credit crunch that is testing everyone patience!  We have would be home sellers that purchased homes with no money down and borrowed against future value only to find out there was no appreciation.  There are home sellers that purchased with money down, but tapped into the equity to maintain their lifestyle - cruises, trips cars and purchasing second properties easily comes into mind.  The hard thing to explain to many homeowners is that just because they owe a lot of money, it cannot come out of their home.  The solution to a home seller's problem is not a for-sale sign.  Many agents will accommodate the seller by placing a for sale sign on a property with a price of $450K in a $350K neighborhood because the agent cannot bring themselves to tell the truth.  How does that help the homeowner if the home never sells?  The reality is that home prices are set by the laws of supply and demand.  Real estate agents cannot just pick the price out of the air.  Property values must be justified via appraisals. If you borrowed against your equity - I hope you put some aside for a rainy day!

• Not every home increases in value. 
• Some homes can decrease in value.
• Some sellers have to bring cash to closing to pay what they owe.
• What improvements have you made to the home in your ownership?

PS.  Paint, roof repairs, replacing leaking hot water heaters do not count!  That is maintenance!

Good news or bad News?  I guess I am almost numb to believing any more housing news or stats anymore.  Positive stats are retracted and adjusted in a month or so and end up being revised with numbers on the other end of the scale.  One side of the stats tell us sales are up, but prices are dropping.  Where is the good news?   The word "Spin" comes to mind, but a math tally does not carry the same weight with me any longer. The newspapers, media and NAR seem to be more interested in playing the numbers for their own advantage.   Today's NAR numbers seem no different.  I find it hard to believe that in the few markets I have first hand knowledge I am seeing double digit drops in home sales, and certainly not even marginal increases that are not coupled to some incredible shifts in price drops.  I recently wrote a few Atlanta real estate blogs based on our most recent sales statistics that were just released Friday August 22 Atlanta Home Sales Decline July 2008 that did not show any increase of sales in our FMLS Atlanta home sales drop!  In fact over last year they dropped quite a bit 39% from the market peaks, and now prices are dropping also! 

So how is your market fairing?  Are sales rising, prices holding or increasing?  I've already shared my stats!

• Atlanta Home Sales Decline July 2008

Atlanta Absorption Rates Atlanta Homes - Atlanta Real Estate Inventory Single Family Detached Homes July 2008.  I've been looking at the new Atlanta real estate data that was just released today for Atlanta homes (Detached - Single Family Homes) and noticed a very interesting trend.  Since Atlanta single family homes inventory levels are at all time highs, and Atlanta homes sales are dropping, it is interesting to see the trends that are emerging.  It seems that once homes go over 250K in price that the time on the market grows substantially.  The average time to sell a home in relationship to the available inventory is a basic one of supply versus demand.  Once we go over 250K the months of inventory rises dramatically and starts at 18.7 months of inventory for homes between 250K and 299K.  Atlanta homes over 750K it grows even more substantially to over 45.1 months of inventory available before all listed Atlanta homes in various price ranges can be absorbed.   If sales of Atlanta homes stall further, and inventory grows...these absorption times will increase even more so.

Selling  Time For Atlanta Homes Increases. Atlanta Marketing Time Increases - Days On Market to Sell Atlanta Homes Increases 36%!  I guess I am not telling you something you do not already know about selling Atlanta homes.  It is taking longer to do so.  In fact the marketing time to sell an Atlanta homehas increase 35% since July 2005. In July of 2008 the average time for a single family home on the market before it receives a contract is 126.8 days on the average as compared with 93.8 days on market for Atlanta homes in July of 2005.  In my own opinion, these numbers can be much more deceptive since many of the statistics for days previously on the market can disappear after a specified period of time.  That means that in our Atlanta MLS(FMLS) certain numbers for solds, expired listings, withdrawn listings are purged from our data system at certain specified times.  Some previous listings can also be removed from the system if a hardship is is requested from the Atlanta MLSsystem.  I would personally say that in comparison to the early 1990's Atlanta homes are now on the market for much longer periods of times.

Atlanta Homes Decline in Price July 2008. Atlanta Homes Price Declines 9% - Single Family Detached Atlanta Homes Decline in Value. Everyone said it would not happen in Atlanta that home prices would actually drop.  Maybe it isn't such a good idea to write things in stone.  Yes it is true that Atlanta home prices never experienced the run up in Atlanta homes values as we have seen across the nation, but we also had a lot of speculation in new homes construction flipping and most importantly no money down financing.  That 100% financing was our undoing here in Atlanta.  The chart below is pretty much a self explanatory chart that shows a July comparison of Atlanta home prices from July 2005 to July 2008.