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!!!

Monday, July 28, 2008

SELLERS: Here are some things you can do to make your house stand out

By John Adams, AJC Contributor
Published on: 07/27/08

This summer is a tough time to sell your home. But it's important to recognize that some homes are, in fact, selling. The National Association of Realtors is estimating that more than 5 million homes will change hands this year, and yours can be one of them.

One of the ways to make your home more appealing is to dress it up a little bit. Last week we talked about the importance of your home's condition in the selling process. This week I want to give you some quick and easy ways to make your home stand out from the rest:
  • Buy a couple of pots of blooming yellow daisies and place a pot on each side of your front door.
  • Paint your handrails and entire front door area to give your entry a fresh, clean look.
  • Install a bright brass kick plate at the base of your front door, and attach large brass house numbers to the door or entry area. Also, clean and polish door hardware, or replace, if needed.
  • Trim back shrubbery to well below the base of your window frames. It looks better from the street and lets more light into the house.
  • Clean out gutters. Make sure gutters drain away from the house by installing splash blocks if needed
  • Edge your lawn deeply all the way around. That includes the driveway, street curb, sidewalk and walkway to your front door. It gives your yard a manicured look.
  • Seal or repair any cracks in your drive or walkways. If your drive is concrete, have it pressure-washed. If it is asphalt, apply a "black top" preservative coating.
  • Upgrade your mailbox and post. Replace what you've got with a 6-inch-by-6-inch cross-post and an oversize new shiny black mailbox. Add shiny brass numbers to the post.
  • Make sure the front yard is free of old newspapers and debris, and keep kids' Big Wheels and bicycles out of view of visitors.

Here are some quick improvements for inside your home:

  • Walk through every room in your house and see what furniture you can do away with to make that room feel less crowded.
  • Store furniture and belongings that you can live without in a storage facility. Empty your closets of everything except the bare essentials for you to live there. Closet floors and shelves should be visible and largely empty.
  • Avoid the trap of moving your excess and oversize furniture from your house into your garage. Your garage should be clear of storage items and should not have cars parked in it. An occupied garage looks and feels much smaller than it really is.
  • Consider painting the garage floor with floor enamel. Also, look at the new two-step garage flooring kits that create a durable and attractive epoxy finish with a minimum of cost and effort. They are available at home improvement stores.
  • If you have any sort of basement, it should be very well lit and smell fresh and dry. Again, remove unnecessary boxes and stored items so the area appears as large as possible. Install plastic sheeting over any exposed dirt to minimize moisture gain, and add a timed exhaust fan.
  • De-personalize your house by removing any decorations or items that might generate a negative response from a visitor. I once showed a house where the owner had taken part in the liberation of a town during WWII. Appropriately proud of his service, this owner had the captured Nazi flag displayed on his den wall. Unfortunately, my buyers were put off, and chose to look elsewhere.
  • Make sure every light bulb in your house is the maximum safe wattage for that fixture. It is important that your home appear bright and well illuminated.
  • In the bath, buy a new shower curtain. And if you have a small mirror over a medicine chest, replace it with a large wall mirror, maybe 36 by 48 inches. It will make the bath look and feel much larger.

These are some of the least expensive ideas that have worked for me over the years. You probably won't want to implement every one of these tips, but just a few can make a positive impact on your potential buyer's experience.

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Congress is Set to Limit Down-Payment Assistance

-- Washington Post Washington Post, By Dina El Boghdady
July 22, 2008

Mortgage programs that helped nearly 79,000 people buy homes using government-insured loans last year would be eliminated as part of a broader housing package that Congress expects to pass this week, key lawmakers said. Under these programs, nonprofit groups provide buyers with money for down payments. Home sellers then reimburse the organizations and pay an administrative fee. More than half a million people -- including many first-time home buyers, minorities and single mothers -- have bought homes this way in the past decade using loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

But the FHA said seller-funded down payments present the single biggest challenge to its solvency. Borrowers who take part in these arrangements go to foreclosure at nearly three times the rate of borrowers who put their own money down, according to the agency. The fate of these seller-funded down-payment-assistance programs has been in limbo for weeks. The Senate version of the housing bill would have banned them. The House version would not.

Negotiators crafting a compromise bill have agreed to the Senate's position, which also is supported by the Bush administration. "We're going to yield to the Senate on that," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and a supporter of the programs. "There are a lot of trade-offs in the bill."

The administration is not getting all it wants on the FHA front. While the compromise bill would get rid of seller assistance, Frank said, it also would wipe out a new FHA initiative under which the agency charges borrowers insurance premiums based on credit risk, instead of one flat rate.
It's unclear how quickly the new policy would kick in if it's enacted. Supporters of seller financing, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said they will push to revive it, perhaps under another administration. "The Bush administration does not have a lock on history," said Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.), a member of the black caucus. "They only have a lock on the moment."

The administration has tried for years to end the programs but failed to overcome legal challenges. "No insurance company can sustain that amount of additional costs year after year and still survive," Brian D. Montgomery, the FHA commissioner, said in a recent speech. But supporters of this kind of assistance said it meshes with the FHA's mission to serve low- to moderate-income people.

While the system may have its problems, they say, it should be fixed, not abandoned, so that people like Tanika Warrior are not shut out of the market. Warrior and her husband, Jimmy Hicks, suffered housing sticker shock when they moved to the Washington area from Arkansas a few years ago. The couple, recent college graduates, had depleted their savings on tuition and care for their newborn son. But they had steady jobs and did not want to keep sinking money into rent, Warrior said. They also did not want to put off buying a home because they were not convinced that their finances would be stronger in a few years. "We don't want to throw money in a hole," said Warrior, 24, a federal patent examiner. "My thing is, we pay our rent every month and we've never been late, not once in five years. If we can pay our rent every month, we can pay our mortgage every month."

The couple worked with Nehemiah, the nation's largest down-payment-assistance charity. Nehemiah provided the 3 percent down payment the FHA requires. The couple secured a 30-year, fixed-rate loan for a townhouse in Herndon through First Savings Mortgage. Their monthly mortgage payment is now about $400 more than what they paid in rent, with taxes and insurance included, Warrior said.

Scott Syphax, president and chief executive of Nehemiah, which is based in California, has been in Washington pushing to save the programs. After he got word yesterday of the agreement to ban seller-funded down payments, he said he was "angry and saddened" about the fallout for "families and communities who obviously did not get a seat the table as these harmful policies were conceived."

Syphax and the FHA disagree about the most basic statistics on these loans. Syphax maintains that the agency's assessment is skewed. He said it has undercounted the number of loans made while properly capturing the number of foreclosures it has had to pay for -- thus inflating the percentage of bad loans.

The FHA strongly denies that. It also maintains that programs backed by Nehemiah and other nonprofit groups aim to skirt its policies that prohibit a seller from directly financing a buyer's down payment. Seller assistance distorts "the fundamental economics of a mortgage agreement," Steven Preston, secretary of housing and urban development, said in a letter to Congress.

Sellers who reimburse the cost of a down payment and shell out related fees of $400 or more try to recoup that money by raising prices on the homes they're selling, government officials said. Those higher prices result in larger mortgage loans, making it more difficult for buyers to keep up with their payments, they said. The inflated prices also make it tough for buyers to refinance or sell if they lose their jobs, get ill or face some other financial setback -- hence the high foreclosure rates. "While the seller and lender are able to close a transaction, it is the home buyer and general taxpayer who ultimately bear the long-term risk," Preston said in his letter.
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Sunday, July 27, 2008

House in so-so condition unlikely to attract big-money offers


By John Adams,
Published on: 07/20/08

Last week we talked about the three reasons a house won't sell. They are condition, marketing and pricing. This week we look more closely at the importance of your home's condition.

Begin by looking at things from the buyer's perspective. Many buyers today believe that prices are falling and that interest rates are likely to decline. And because they are in no hurry, buyers won't even consider making an offer on your house unless it is in excellent condition.

The reality is this: If your home is on the market and needs maintenance or even updates to modern standards, it will likely draw only low-ball offers.

So if you hope to get near maximum market value for your home, it needs to be in excellent condition.

How do I define excellent condition? Yours needs to be a house ready to move into with no upgrades needed, no repairs to be done and no home improvement projects looming.

For example, all the systems of your house need to be brought up to modern standards. The wiring needs to be safe and adequate. The plumbing needs to work properly and with good pressure. The heating and air-conditioning system needs to be in good operating condition and at least have a few years of life remaining. Your roof needs to be relatively new and look good from the street.

The best way to make sure these systems are in sellable condition is to have a comprehensive home inspection performed by a professional home inspector. Remember that your purchaser, if you are lucky enough to attract one, is going to have their own inspector come through later, so you might as well face the music now.

And don't try to justify failure to offer good condition by saying, "Instead of replacing the plumbing now, I'll just lower the asking price by the amount it will cost." Because there are so many homes on the market that are already in great shape, your break-even offer of a slightly lowered price doesn't make sense.

Next, your home must feature a modern kitchen and bath. But there is a trap here that you need to avoid. First, you should know that improvements in these areas tend to be quite expensive. In an older home, a comprehensive kitchen makeover could involve not only new countertops and cabinets, but also flooring, electrical, plumbing, ceramic tiling, lighting and appliances.

My advice is to make sure before you start that you will be able to finish the job. A partially completed renovation looks worse than no renovation at all. Second, it is really easy to overspend in these areas. Why install a new kitchen faucet with only hot and cold water when you can buy one with six different spray heads and a built in cellphone with GPS? It's only money, and the salesman will assure you that buyers will love it.

The cure to this temptation is to know the competition. Know what price range your house will likely bring once it is in good condition, then see what other homes in that same price range have to offer.

Your job is not to offer perfection, but simply to beat the competition in your neighborhood and price bracket.

Finally, a word about getting your home ready to show. Today, the buzzword in the real estate industry is "staging," or the art of decorating and presenting a home to its best visual advantage. While rookie agents think that proper staging is a new science, the successful real estate veteran has been "staging" houses since we all lived in caves. Staging is nothing more than removing the clutter of everyday living and painting a vision of blissful homeownership — whatever that means.

Ask some agents to tour your home and make recommendations. Rank their suggestions based on your own experience looking at homes already on the market. Remember the ideas that offer big bang for the buck. For example, for a relatively small investment, you can often get a big return with newer and brighter light fixtures.

One final consideration is market timing. You may be better off waiting to sell until the market improves. If you are simply unable or unwilling to put your home into excellent condition prior to selling, you might be better off postponing your sale or leasing your home until the buyer's advantage diminishes over time.
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Saturday, July 26, 2008

Three reasons why your house is still on the market

By John Adams
Published on: 07/13/08
If you've been trying to sell your house, you already know this is one of the most challenging markets we have seen in years.

First, you are fighting a serious excess inventory of new homes. Builders simply overbuilt, and we are many months away from a complete absorption of those homes. In addition, many builders have expensive construction loans and are highly motivated to make a sale.

Next, there is a shortage of ready, willing and able buyers in today's marketplace. I guess a lot of people are simply nervous about the economic future, and when someone is nervous, they tend to postpone major purchases. The truth is that a lot of prospective buyers are waiting to see what will happen.

To make matters worse, a flood of houses for sale is being added to the market by banks and lenders who have foreclosed against borrowers who should never have purchased in the first place. Many of these loans were made to borrowers with questionable credit and unstable incomes. Add that to an adjustable rate loan with little or no down payment, and it spells foreclosure as often as not. These distressed home sales are poisoning the resale environment.

Finally, hovering over everything, there is an air of uncertainty about our future. This lack of consumer confidence is driven home every time we fill up our gas tanks. All these things (and more) have ganged up to make this a challenging summer for the sale of your house.

Even so, it is likely that about 5 million existing homes will be resold this calendar year. If 5 million other people can find a way to sell their houses, surely you can as well.

Here are three key areas to address to make sure you are giving your home every chance for an acceptable offer:

CONDITION: In the world of real estate, there are two markets — retail and wholesale. In order to achieve retail price, the house must be in excellent condition. Anything below "excellent" will drop your home into the wholesale pricing category, and your dollars drop significantly. So don't even try to sell today unless your home is in excellent condition.

Buyers today are not willing to take on a renovation project. There is so much inventory on the market that they simply don't have to. I consider this advice so important that I would make this statement: If you are unable to put your home into excellent condition prior to selling, you might be better off postponing your sale or leasing your home until the market improves.

MARKETING: I know what you are thinking. You are sort of hoping that, because the market is so tight and because of the Internet and everything, you can just put a sign in the yard and your house will sell without an agent, right? Well, it's also possible that the tooth fairy will deliver a full-priced offer under your pillow tonight while you sleep, but it's highly unlikely. The reality is that, today more than ever, you will need professional marketing assistance to get your home sold. And the Internet is not the one-stop solution to all real estate problems that some thought it might become.

The truth is, buyers are looking in a variety of places for your home, and yes, the Internet is one of those places. But the sign in the yard and the flier at the school may prove just as effective as anything else when it comes to getting buyer attention.

If information about the features and benefits of your particular house is not reaching the prospects you hope to attract, then whatever you are doing is ineffective, and you will very likely need professional help. Failing to obtain it is usually penny wise and pound foolish.

PRICING: The price you ask for your home is critically important. In today's real estate market, there are huge numbers of so-called sellers who are simply testing the waters. Today that attitude almost guarantees an expired listing. Instead, buyers today are engaged in an exercise of comparison shopping. No one cares what it may have been worth then. Let's determine what it's worth today. And the only way to do that is to look at comparable homes that have sold recently.

Condition, marketing and price. These three factors, more than anything else, will impact your ability to sell your home. And over the next three weeks, we will look at each in more detail.
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