Welcome!

I am an Atlanta native and made the decision in 2007 to leave my job as an architect/urban planner to get my real estate license. This was a difficult decision but has been great since my very first day in my new career and I am really enjoying it! It is so rewarding helping people find that perfect home, and it allows me to continue to satiate my love of good architecture and great neighborhoods!

I attended Georgia Tech (GO JACKETS!!!!) which is where I met my husband. For almost a decade we lived in one of Atlanta's fabulous in-town neighborhoods in a great 1920's Craftsman bungalow with our two dogs and two cats. Following the birth of our first child, we bought a foreclosure in the west Buckhead area and fully renovated it using an FHA 203k loan, which was a fun and sometimes daunting process. And just prior to the birth of our second child, we purchased and renovated a home in downtown Historic Roswell, completing our personal tour of some of Atlanta's best neighborhoods to live in!

I decided to create this blog in order to share useful information and resources about the real estate market and home buying process, as well as hopefully bring some humor and levity to what is often a complex and intimidating process. Enjoy!!!

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

I sold this townhome in 34 days!!!!!



From the day I listed it to the day we had it under binding contract, this townhome was on the market for less than 35 days!!!!!! This just goes to show that with an experienced and hardworking agent, today's "down market" is not a hinderance! How did I do it? Here are just a few of the services I provide that made the difference:
  • Carefully stage the property with an eye to detail in order to present the best first impression to the potential buyes
  • Agressively and creatively market the property through direct mailers, premium online advertising, professional & eye-catching promotional materials, and community-wide open houses & caravans
  • Provide a packet of information for potential buyers which includes items like the Seller's Disclosure, estimated utilities, complex & community amenities, HOA information, and plenty of pofessional-grade photographs of the property

I sold this poperty in almost a third of the time other properties in this complex have sold for in the past 6 months, and we got over 97% of our asking price!

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Friday, May 9, 2008

Media Is Wrong About Housing Slump

Realty Times feature article by Blanche Evans

Why buy a house now? You've been getting bad information. Here's why.

The financial press is worried that they might have gone too far - paralyzing the nation into recession by piling on housing. So they're finally beginning to question the indexes where they get their data, and whether the news is really as bad as it seems. Slowly but surely, headlines are changing from Don't Buy A Home Now to Is It Time To Buy?

We said it here first on Realty Times - that consumers aren't getting the full story. Indexes can be misleading because of the locations, prices, types of housing, and rates of increase they track.
In late April, Robert Shiller, founder of the Case-Shiller Index, announced that there was a good chance housing prices would fall further than the 30 percent drop during the Great Depression.
Shiller has plenty of reason to be negative - he makes money when people buy housing hedge funds, licensed with data obtained through his company Macromarkets LLC.
Now, finally, one brave journalist is writing that Case-Shiller is flawed.

In his story "Home-price data has its flaws," Chris Plummer of MarketWatch slammed both Shiller's Index and the Associated Press for being "grim reapers."

For the first time, S&P Index Committee Chairman David Blitzer "acknowledged his organization's overall and metro-market readings paint an incomplete picture."

No kidding. The index covers only 20 markets, heavily weighted to the most volatile metros in the nation. Plummer also lampooned the AP for writing that "despite that index's limited seven-year history, home prices plunged by a record percentage at their fastest rate ever." He also notes, "The glaring discrepancy in this case is that 17 of the 20 metro areas posted record annual declines, and yet 78 percent of the 330 metropolitan regions that the NAR tracks reported price increases ... ."

Bravo, Plummer. But the rest of the financial press still has a long way to go.

When Shiller says home prices are going to fall 30 percent, not one reporter who covered the story asked this simple follow-up question: "Bob, during the worst part of the Great Depression, one in four people were out of work. Our unemployment rate is a little over 5 percent. So what's going to drive home prices that low?"

Instead, no one did even the minimum Wikipedia search to find out what conditions were really like 75 years ago.

What that means is not only are the indexes misleading - the reporting is worse.

Right now we have mortgage interest rates three points below historical norms. We have housing inventories five months greater than balanced markets. Combine that with unemployment that is a half percent lower than the recession of 2003, and you have excellent homebuying conditions.

Stop listening to the media. Go buy a home.
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Atlanta Info from ADA

The below information was provided by the Atlanta Development Authority:

After decades of dwindling numbers, Atlanta has shown an increase in population in recent years. The most current IRS migration data (2005) show that, from 2000 to 2005, Atlanta's 20-county metro area had a net gain of about 270,000 residents. During that period, more than 33,000 people moved from out of state into Fulton County, which comprises the bulk of the City of Atlanta. Of the more than 205,000 metro-area residents who moved into Fulton County between 2000 and 2005, 84 percent came from Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett Counties.


The City of Atlanta has been the beneficiary of many current trends in the way people move. One migration pattern is known as the "half-back effect" - this occurs when Northeastern retirees give Florida a try, find it doesn't suit them and move part of the way back north to Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas. Foreign immigration is another driver in Atlanta's population growth. While immigrants have historically settled in coastal regions, today more and more of them are choosing inland metropolitan areas where jobs are abundant. This has the added benefit of creating a more diverse city. Young, highly educated people are also moving south to Atlanta for jobs, but that's not all - they're drawn by the low cost of living, the diversity and the city's vibrant cultural life.

Culture is an important factor in the last of these trends, known as urban revival. Spurning long commutes and seeking proximity to the cultural core of the city, people are leaving the suburbs and moving to the city center. These tend to be higher income empty-nester households; generally without children, these residents don't depend on the public school systems to dictate where they will live.All of these newcomers change the demographic make-up of our city, bringing social, racial and economic diversity. Atlanta's average household income is on the rise, and the over-60 population is projected to double by the year 2030. Population data suggests that, in the city, there will be a greater need for housing for singles and couples without children in the future.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) in 2006, there are slightly more males than females. The age midpoint for the city is 35 years of age. Other City of Atlanta population characteristics from the 2006 ACS include the following:
  • Atlanta is a brainy city - 40 percent of those 25 years and older have a bachelors degree or higher. The national average is 27 percent.
  • Atlanta is a great place for singles - only 28 percent of males are married and 25 percent of females are married.
  • Atlanta is becoming more international - 11 percent speak a language other than English at home. Also, 8 percent of Atlantans are foreign-born and 4.4 percent were born in Latin America.
  • Commuting within the city isn't as bad as it is in the greater metro region - among those city-dwellers who commute to work, it takes 25.9 minutes on average to get to the office.
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Thursday, May 1, 2008

My old firm is in the news!!!

Urban Collage: Small firm, giant imprint
Company founded by Tech alums has shaped metro Atlanta's growth
By PAUL DONSKY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/01/08

You've likely never heard of Urban Collage, but you're probably familiar with many of the projects the urban planning firm has worked on. The Beltline. The redevelopment of Atlanta's public housing projects. Midtown Atlanta's push to create a more walkable, inviting street life.

In suburban Atlanta, the company is helping Suwanee create a new town center and the Perimeter Center business district transform into a more dense, pedestrian-friendly area.

Dozens of other projects and efforts bear Urban Collage's imprint, from Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin's dream of returning streetcars to Peachtree Street to efforts to overhaul the Ga. 400 corridor in Fulton.

That client list demonstrates how influential the tiny, 12-person company has been in helping shape metro Atlanta's explosive growth over the last decade.

"Atlanta has been such a great laboratory for us," said Stan Harvey, who founded the company 11 years ago with Bob Begle, a fellow Georgia Tech graduate school alum. "Planning, by nature, you have to wait a long time to see results. But in Atlanta, you see results of the planning very, very quickly."


Read the rest of this great article here! I am really proud to be able to say I am part of the Urban Collage family, and that I personally worked on every single project mentioned in the article. They get mad at me when I call Urban Collage the premiere urban design firm in the southeast, but they are too modest, because it is true. In fact, I would argue that they are one of maybe 3 of the premiere urban design firms in the country. Urban Collage is an amazing firm with amazing people, they are like family to me, and this press is certainly long deserved. Way to go, guys!
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