From their site: “The Harbour Bar & Fish House is a casual seafood restaurant designed to give our customers a local place where they can come together to enjoy themselves with family, friends, and co-workers. Harbour Bar & Fish House feels like a Coastal Restaurant that you may have experienced while on vacation in Hilton Head, Charleston, Cape Cod or Newport RI. We want you to feel as if you are on a vacation in your own backyard.

The interior decor is comfortable and relaxing, accented with natural woods and nautical tones of gray and blue. The exterior has outdoor deck/patio seating, two bocce courts and an outdoor bar.

There is a large area in the backyard that can be used for private events when the weather permits.” Some of my fellow Keller Williams Realty metro Atlanta agents hung out yesterday in the outdoor area near the bocce ball arena, and we had a blast.

Check it out!

I was at an Atlanta Falcons tailgate party about three years ago, down in “The Gulch.” “The Gulch” is going to be the subject of another blog post soon, but in the meantime – if you don’t know about “The Gulch” and want to know exactly what it is – click here.

I looked up, and saw that on the very top of an old, decrepit building that sits at the edge of the US federal government buildings was a massive graffiti name tag  – actually two tags – quite an accomplishment, and because of the limited and probably dangerous access, quite an effort just to get the names up there.

Those nicknames, HENSE and BORN have been tags that I have seen for years around town. I have immense respect for the staying power of GREAT graffiti artists.

I have immense disrespect for those who vandalize, and I tried to run off untalented taggers when I was living in Inman Park – so to me, the HENSE and BORN tags on top of the dilapidated building are artistic, cool and worthy of respect – they are an improvement to the building.

So, when the Rocky Ford Road and Arizona Avenue underpasses were recently improved with beautiful new artwork that covers the depth and breadth of the walls, I was quite happy – these displays are not likely to be painted over with stupid, unskilled tags, cursewords and generally weak, eyesore sprays from amateurs.

I found this photo of the lovely artwork at the Arizona Avenue MARTA bridge on HENSE’s website – great artists can turn an eyesore into a street level, free gallery. I write this post to say thanks to HENSE for doing cool work and to anyone else involved in enabling these improvements. Read more about HENSE and this particular piece, here.

He calls it Float – “The public works are roughly 18×100 feet and painted with exterior latex enamel and aerosol on concrete. The pieces were funded with a grant awarded by the City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs. These murals are now an asset of the City of Atlanta and will be included in the permanent collection of public art.”

Lets see more of this! The Beltline is leading the way…stay tuned, and maybe, just maybe, the punkass, untalented taggers will remain on the sidelines and away from our beautiful Intown neighborhoods…

Why? Well, because most of these properties are not worth buying…

But, this one is…

for the right price.

This one belongs to one of my clients, who needs to short sell this house in Oakland City – I listed it for $9000 in September – it remains unsold.

We are relisting the property soon, and I am thinking that $4000 is the right price. His mortgage lender may differ with me, but I let them set the $9000 price back in September. No offers followed!

Some of you may be thinking – huh? what? Is he really talking about this like it matters? Well, my client matters – he needs this short sale!

So, check out these FMLS statistics – 8854 houses sold for under $50,000 in Georgia last year, 1422 in Atlanta, 147 in 30314, 265 in 30310, and 205 in 30315.

363 houses sold for under $10,000 in Georgia last year, 266 in Atlanta, 39 in 30314, 73 in 30310 and 47 in 30315.                   

Only 4 houses sold for under $10,000 in Decatur’s 30032 – the most downtrodden Decatur (unincorporated Dekalb) zip code. 285 houses sold for under $50,000 in that zip.

Now, looking back just one year, there were 6279 residential properties sold in 2010 in Georgia for less than $50,000. That means that there were 2575 more sales last year for under $50,000 than there were during the year before.

There is a seller’s market in this price range, for the most part, so why did the $9000 house not sell quickly?

Because it is overpriced by 50%. Because, for $9000, on the edge of Oakland Park, this house is overpriced. Simple, right?

To relate this phenomenon back to any other price segment of the market, I simply suggest that the street matters most, and that chasing the market is never good, especially when  about 7-8 other houses per month are selling in the same zip code in the same price range.

Check this out and see how well this carries. On any given listing at higher price points I can probably find the same basic statistic – 7 or 8 other houses will sell nearby that month, while the overpriced listing languishes.

This will be my last article about houses in this price range for a while, but I’ll continue to make these same points about value. Because, most real estate listings are still initially overpriced and either chasing the market, or failing to sell. Lets use the bottom of the bottom of the real estate market to remind us that pricing matters most!

We are already seeing that in places like Decatur, and other high performing real estate submarkets in Buckhead, and in some of the suburbs.

Anecdotal evidence shows me that activity in the lower price ranges, particularly under $100,000, is strengthening while activity in the higher priced submarkets continues to show signs of stability.

The recovery is underway but it will be some time before we see prices firming across all segments of metropolitan Atlanta.

We will continue to see depressions in places like Lakewood, Vine City and even in some of the Atlanta neighborhoods  that are going through school struggles.

Here’s my video with the claim – stay tuned in 2012!

And 2012 is going to bring a big surprise to some real estate players, but to real estate business folks like me, we won’t be surprised.

My company President, Mark Willis, claims that Keller Williams Realty is poised to be the #1 real estate company in the world next year.

On 12/31/2010, I did not even speculate that one of the world’s largest Re/max franchisees, Re/max Greater Atlanta, would evaporate and scatter its agents far and wide by Spring 2011. A sad, broken business model. Ran out of money.

I also did not consider that one of Atlanta’s most formidable boutique brokerages, Sanctuary, was struggling too.

I got my real estate salesperson’s license in Georgia in 1999.

Back in 1999, when I became a Charter member of Keller Williams Realty First Atlanta, I became a “blueprint buyer,” for Keller Williams Realty in Georgia. “Keller who?” was a constant  statement. We were unproven, yet quite bodacious with the red signage, the talent pool and the belief that we had a better model – a better model that focused on the agent, and not the brokerage, as the key driver to a team’s success.

Today, worldwide growth places Keller Williams Realty International on it’s way to being the #1 real estate brokerage in the world. We’ve been rising place by place in the top 5 for about 5 years in a row.

Locally, the net results of 2011 in the Atlanta real estate market have transformed lives, businesses, careers and mindsets.

For those of us who have been a part of Keller Williams Realty for a while, we just keep shifting, and growing.

And, when I say that A is for Atlanta, D is for Decatur, I am offering an Eastside shout out to one of KW’s newest agents, and certainly Atlanta’s best real estate blogger, Jon Effron.

He just wrote a swell article that shouts out my walkable hometown of Decatur as the best submarket in metro Atlanta…nice call.

Jon’s A is for Atlanta blog is entertaining, informative and loaded with value.

Jon is also one of the best real estate agents in Intown Atlanta, and at the end of 2011, he and some of his fellow Sanctuary agents joined Keller Williams Realty’s Heart of Atlanta group.

We are glad to have them, and I am glad to know that I can use their cute little office space in Inman Park when I need it…

I believe that 2012 will bring some counterbalance to the past 5 years of real estate market upheaval. Intown, we have seen far less distress than the suburbs, and as an Intown specialist, I am very encouraged by the outlook for 2012.

Some of the most talented agents in metro Atlanta have joined me at Keller Williams Realty over the past 12 years. Many are hustling everyday and they are building careers worth having, businesses worth owning, and lives worth living.

As Zig Ziglar says, see you at the top!

She wrote me today and told me that when she googled “Atlanta real estate” the Intown Insider showed up on the first page. Cool!

This may not always be the case, but today, it is. Check it out here at this link to the google page for the search terms “Atlanta real estate,” and you’ll see about 262,000,000 results.

My article entitled The recent quarter in metro Atlanta real estate, dated July 2011, appears among the first 13 results today.

Again, cool.

Trulia, my favorite real estate monster site, published this piece today about “How to safeguard your online reputation.”

Trulia’s best advice to me today is: “Proactively use this to your advantage and create online content that demonstrates your knowledge and expertise.”

So, what being on the first page of google means to me today is that I just had a significant life lesson reinforced.

That lesson is that proactivity rules. Proactivity is the #1 habit of highly effective people.

Lets see if I can keep this up!

To tell you the truth, I have not ever spent a single dime on SEO for this website and I get a call every week from some numbskull in another part of the USA that wants to put me on the first page of google for “Atlanta real estate” with their magical web enhancements for $500-2000 per month.

I think I’ll just keep blogging…Thank you world wide web.

The long tail is right here, and if you have a property to list for sale or lease in Intown Atlanta or Decatur, then call me and lets talk about online marketing results that will get your house sold for top dollar in the fastest amount of time possible…my 3 year average is 28 days. My listings sell at an average of 96.3% of list price.

And today, I’m #1 on google.

In the past two posts, I wrote about distressed properties. Today, I am writing about two of the best performing neighborhoods of Intown Atlanta and Decatur.

Last night, my daughter was the best performer in Kirkwood.

So, when thinking about real estate values, one of the safer notions to consider about today’s real estate market is that even the best performing neighborhoods of Atlanta are “down about 10% or so…”

I looked up 2 neighborhoods that offer tremendous value, two neighborhoods that have pretty consistent demand, just to see if my notion is valid.

1. Morningside  – there were 209 sales in 2007, at an average sold price of $578,072, and the number of days on market average was 74 … there have been 143 sales so far in 2011, at an average sold price of $524,815, and the number of days on market average was 81

2. City of Decatur – there were 273 sales in 2007, at an average sold price of $391,342, and the number of days on market average was 64 … there have been 179 sales so far in 2011, at an average sold price of $362,660, and the number of days on market average was 68

So, the notion is correct in both of these high quality, wonderful neighborhoods, right?

The best performers are always upbeat, lively and from time to time, they show off. Keep on truckin’ , Morningside and Decatur!

For the past few months, Atlanta property, dollar for dollar, is better to buy than to rent – on average – across many counties.

The BUY NOW versus RENT NOW numbers get even more dramatic for buying now when certain submarkets are studied. Here’s two examples:

1. just about any close in condominium, loft or townhome

2. just about any house in a great Intown school district

My friend Scott Mauldin sent me a 16 page document yesterday entitled “Housing: A Time To Buy” written by some of his folks at JP Morgan Asset Management – the overwhelming evidence supports buying in the best Intown Atlanta submarkets – is it time for you to make the move up?

You can find the article within two clicks, here.

We have about $5000 worth of HVAC repairs and replacements cited on this 16 year old house.

One of the repairs requirements involves pest control.  There are these ants that are attacking the wires on one of the exterior condenser units – I’ve never encountered this before, but check out the photo:

I’ve never seen this problem before, but when I googled “ants, electrical wires” – I found over 1 million results and a link to this article about ants in Houston that contains this quote:

“May through September is their peak period — a time when billions of the critters with a reluctance to sting and a habit of chewing up electrical wiring may infest a single acre.”

We just saw a few, but we did see the “pitting” that they cause on the wiring…

We have a hot water dispenser to replace too.

Stay tuned – I just added 7 pages. The contract is now 113 pages long!

Sellers can still get the highest possible list-to-sell ratio and sell their homes as quickly as possible if they are willing to put their trust in two time trusted principles of real estate: condition and price.

Since 72% of all sales transactions are “equity” transactions – not distressed, not some odd luxury transaction and not an estate sale, the chances are favorable for sellers who “get it.”

Here are the the top ten features that attract buyers according to the Keller Williams Realty International survey conducted for our 2011 Market Navigator booklet.

1. Location – favored by 69% of buyers

2. Neighborhood – favored by 55% of buyers

2. Floor plan – favored by 37% of buyers

3. Updates to the house – favored by 36% of buyers

4. Curb appeal – favored by 30% of buyers

5. Square footage – favored by 28% of buyers

6. Back yard – favored by 25% of buyers

7. A great kitchen – favored by 23% of buyers

8. Lot size – favored by 22% of buyers

9. Age of the home – favored by 18% of buyers

10. the final 4 – Garage, Style, Flooring and Commuting range – all favored by about 15% of buyers

If you are selling real estate in metro Atlanta – if you are distressed by a real estate problem in metro Atlanta – please call me. I am a capable navigator in this market, and I would appreciate the opportunity to help you accentuate the positive with your property…