Back in 2009, a fellow from California named Dennis called me and asked me to help him sell a house, a “retail flip” in the Parkview community. Parkview is just across Memorial Drive from my neighborhood, Kirkwood.

We told everyone who had an interest in the eventual $217,000 sale of a gorgeous 4/2/1 in August 2009 that a nifty new shopping center is coming soon to Parkview. Now, it’s real – Parkview Station is coming in the Fall of 2010.

I’ve been hearing about the redevelopment of Parkview Plaza, a rather dilapidated and lowly looking 1960’s built shopping center, ever since I moved Intown in 1998. The rhetoric started to pick up in 2007, and lo and behold the roof is getting a skin over, the front facade is getting a facelift and the whole place will be filled with tenants by Autumn 2010…we hope.

Here’s  a video with a quick look at the project, shot on Monday February 8th.

So, if you’ve read my blog posts before, you know that I take occasional subjective leaps. Here’s another one:

Parkview is also the name of a storied drug and alcohol treatment center that once existed in Nashville, Tennessee.

Country music legend and pioneering television star, Porter Wagoner sang a song that Johnny Cash wrote for him, “Committed to Parkview” on his final LP and here is a video that he cut with Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives that offers a haunting interpretation of the lyrics that Mr. Cash wrote – the legend is that both Johnny and Porter were once patients at Parkview and ultimately, they both kicked some demons there…

The players on this shopping center redevelopment are all veterans of nearby redevelopment projects, so with a neighborly heart I want to see them succeed with a bustling shopping center filled with nice stores, bars, restaurants and healthy local businesses.

I took my old friends at The Fresh Market and their broker on an Intown tour back in 2007, and they concluded that the opportunities on Memorial would not work for them. I think that The Fresh Market would be a perfect fit in  our Kroger / Publix / Wayfield / Aldi / Piggly Wiggly world of eastern Dekalb County, but really, I’m selfish and what do I really know about shopping center demography?

I know that the redevelopment team are committed to Parkview Station, but lets hope that they don’t get “committed” to “Parkview” in the risky process of making money in commercial redevelopment nowadays…

On Friday, January 22 I filmed this quick look at the Home of the World Famous Ghetto Burger.

I saw that the property is listed for sale in my multiple listing service, so I decided that it was time for a couple of quick videos – this snack bar is a very successful “sole proprietorship.”

I like to call it a “soul proprietorship” because Miss Ann is the heart, and soul of her little place at 1615 Memorial Drive Kirkwood, ATL, Zone 6, GA 30317.

I’ve eaten here twice and waited for over an hour in a standing room only crowd, and left the premises, unfed, three times…

The burger is everything that “they” say that it is. They starts with the Wall Street Journal, and many other media mouthpieces and food-aholic burger-eaters.

But I’m not writing about burgers, I’m writing about Intown Atlanta real estate. Read the rest of this entry »

I just shot a video last week in the Summerhill and Grant Park neighborhoods. My client Dennis wanted me to check out a $45,000 house for him over on Connally.

I drove back through Grant Park to get home to Kirkwood, turned left off of Georgia on to Grant and lo and behold Winston Killingsworth’s house, the former home of a Union Officer, built in 1868, is for sale – for $1.6 Million. Winston is a Realtor with Re/max with an established Grant Park based practice.

The counterbalance between $45,000 and $1.6 Million in one zip code fascinates me.

I toured Winston’s house quite a few years ago on a Grant Park home tour and it is exquisite – a gorgeous Victorian with every square inch in impeccable shape.

The AJC completed an article on the restoration of Winston’s house – you can read it here.

I toured the $45,000 house here’s a video of the premises…

Here’s a photo of the $1.6 Million listing.

Here’s a quick driving tour that features the few minutes between these two significant portents of the 30312 submarket…

You can read more of my opinions about Grant Park at Trulia Voices, and if you want to do some more reading, then check out  some of the Grant Park specific Questions and Answers!

This post from January 2008 features my market analysis and a handy boundaries map for Grant Park.

If you want to grab lunch at Six Feet Under and take a tour of the 30312 with me, just email or call me and we’ll arrange.

If you are interested in selling your property in 30312, then I can help you – it’s 2010, and between $45,000 and $1.6 Million folks are getting their real estate on.

See you in the 30312!

If found this photo on Collin Kelley’s website:

Collin wrote back in July 2008: “This poster — along with others touting American cities and states as being gay friendly travel destinations — are all over the Underground in London coinciding with their Pride celebration. The adverts were created by Amro Worldwide, a gay travel and tourist company. A similar poster that claims “South Carolina Is So Gay” has brought out the Bible-thumpers and politicians who say it’s sending the wrong message. The state’s tourism board signed on to the campaign, but now the state doesn’t want to pay. Gay for pay….hmmm. I’ve been to SC many times and never found it particularly gay myself.

Atlanta, on the other hand, is one big queen.”

I spent some time on his blog and he is hilarious – he dishes on American Idol, daily!

Well, The Advocate just broadcast to the world that Atlanta is indeed one big queen.

“Yep. According to The Advocate magazine, Atlanta rates as the nation’s gayest city, followed by Burlington, Vermont., Iowa City, Bloomington and Madison, Wisconsin. Don’t bother looking for San Francisco, New York or Los Angeles — those supposed gay meccas don’t even place in the rankings compiled by the nation’s oldest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender publication.”

Here’s the article in the AJC.

I am so glad that I left the hatin’ state of South Carolina in 1987. I got to Intown Atlanta as quickly as I could.

I love that my daughter Kaylie has about 5 gay uncles …one of them inspired her to wear this wig and they all encourage her to be extra fabulous…

“This graph compares the NAHB HMI (left scale) with single family housing starts (right scale). This includes the December release for the HMI and the November data for single family starts.

This shows that the HMI and single family starts mostly move in the same direction – although there is plenty of noise month-to-month.

I know I’m a broken record, but residential investment is one of the best leading indicators for the economy, and the best indicators for RI are the NAHB HMI, housing starts, and new home sales.

And these indicators are moving sideways (at best).”

More from the savvy economic bloggers at Calculated Risk – here.

This leading economic indicator, over in Dekalb County just off of Brockett Road, shows that the Greater Atlanta Homebuilders Association is trying to get out of their headquarters building…

Moving sideways, and in the case of our local home builders’ association, slightly downward … thanks to Greg Ruis for seizing the excellent photo opportunity.

Rudy from Trulia hosted Gary Vaynerchuck on a podcast / webinar today with a bunch of the Trulia Pro’s and Trulia VIP’s. I gained a lot from it.

Read along and I think that you’ll find that some of the new ideas here are way too cool to “not” implement.

Gary is the man behind the book Crushit! and he’s  the co-owner with his brother AJ in VaynerMedia. Gary rose to worldwide fame with WineLibrary.com. What a story there…

Rudy is the socially adept workaholic Mr. Trulia! If you know me, then you know how much I love Trulia. Trulia loves me back in a big way.

I took great notes today and many are direct quotes from the podcast – here goes…

…The internet is just 15 years old. It hasn’t even had sex yet.

Everyone is overthinking it. You don’t have to know it all, or apply analytics to it all, you just need to apply your common sense to any platform that you choose to work with.

Don’t be scared of it.

Today, Americans don’t make enough time to do the pushups, but they make plenty of time for the root beer.

People fail because they are not hustling enough and not good enough at what they are supposed to be hustling at.

It comes down to skills. If you have skills will you make money? Yes.

Will you be the naturally gifted “pimp of the world?” No.

Get all the way in. Hustling real estate agents love it and have the skill sets required. Anybody can be the best player on their 6th grade basketball team, but not everybody makes it to the pros.

Storytelling is the most underrated skill in all of business.

The biggest thing missing in real estate marketing is video of the parks, places and neighborhoods that are in an agent’s sales territory…

Wait a minute. Please pause for a brief commercial from our sponsor – we have over 75 videos loaded up at this YouTube Channel called  Rootdownandgetit. Check it out in your spare time. It ain’t perfect and I don’t analyze the Nielsen ratings. However, the most popular video, by a long shot, is this one:

Back to Gary and Rudy – Why don’t you interview the neighbors near your listings and post the videos?

By the way, Abdullah told me when I saw him at his restaurant in October that “the boy took 48 stitches.”

Back to Gary and Rudy – All of this kind of stuff will become the standard in 3-4 years – so love it, be passionate and stay up until 2am and get things done way more than your competition.

I just like people – I give people a chance every chance that I get.

This just isn’t “The Secret.” This is not just mindset – it’s about execution being everything.

Both brokerages and agents should be crushing it. It’s a war. Brokers either offer maximum value, or they fail.

Revenue share.

What does the consumer care about? They care about honesty and they care about relationship.

Consumers will check you out – they just look up stuff now.

Personal letters and post cards mean that you care. Tell stories like “one year ago today” in an anniversary letter and people will love you for it.

Take money out of your pocket.

Subsidize with your hard earned cash in order to do the better thing for somebody else.

It’s just so much harder to care, you care by being  outrageously transparent.

I love the intrigue of shock value – show up randomly and mow the lawn on move in day.

Customer service shock value is intriguing. Word of mouth is gold. Create stories.

What technologies would you use if you were a real estate agent, Gary?

A Flipcam and a great handheld communications device. A picture is worth a 1000 words and a video is worth a million. A cell phone that can do 99% of what you need, is what you need.

Gary, if you could be a member of just one social network what would it be? Twitter, FB or LinkedIn. FB, and it’s not even close.

Why? Fan pages. More users. Everyone has wrapped this into their head – Twitter not so much. Linked In, not inclusive enough.

Make Twitter more automatic.

Gowalla and Foursquare are remarkable.

As for handheld telecommunications device, at the end of the day, mobile is easy. We are lazy, we need easy. Be mobile.

Why are the newer devices, mobile platforms and networks so cool for real estate agency? How about a “Custom agent badge” – pick up at all 6 local houses for sale – badge is geo-located. So, you know, you throw a dinner party every 3 months for those who collected them all.

Gary vomits in his mouth when he hears the name AT&T.

Be listening 24/7/365. Talking and reacting 24/7/365. Never a time to be silent, unless someone respectfully asks you to do so.

The most difficult thing to measure is love. You have to feel what’s in your heart and act on that.

Besides feeling it, what else? Give the client what they want with analytics but don’t spend too much time on it. Automate it.

So, what’s the ROI on social media? Well, what’s your ROI on billboards, TV and direct mail? How much does any of the ROI matter?

For Vaynermedia clients I work on DNA and mentality and corporate culture as much as I do analytics.

Hard to sell up. Come in at the top of an organization.

You gotta love – we live in an amazing, connected world and the nice guys are gonna win.

Transparency matters…”

I’ll wrap this up with what I did this morning while previewing property:

I turned down a $20,000 bonus at Studioplex today. I said that she should lower her prices and pass it along to my clients.

She said write me an offer.

Then she said, about my no bonus policy, “that’s why you stay busy.”

Thanks Gary and Rudy – you are two very busy people and I appreciate your time and your insight today.