About Lowndes County, GA

Market Report for Lowndes County/Valdosta Georgia and surrounding areas - Single Family Homes

Counties Include: Lowndes, Berrien, Brooks, Cook, and Lanier

Current active listings for Lowndes County Georgia (Valdosta and Hahira):

Lowndes High School Drama Club's performance of..... 5,6,7,8...Dance Out Loud!

I had the spectacular honor of watching these teens perform last night in their yearly performance of 5,6,7,8, a musical review.

Completely student directed and choreographed.

What an awesome performance these gave us.

Here pictured doing their performance of "Stomp"

We were entertained with renditions from the broadway musical Rent with Season's of Love.

To Disney's Little Mermaid

My daughter Caitlynhas been a member of these wonderfully talented teens for the past 3 years. Each year they get together to do several performances. The two of which this year were Suesical the Musical. They work incredibly hard putting these performances together and taking Suesical to competition in Macon Georgia placing second! And Godspell, which they will be performing in March this year.

That's my daughter Caitlyn (hand on hip, not smiling. I need a new camera. Just caught her at the wrong time) Doing their performance of We Beseech Thee

We even had some praise and worship music from the Praise Team!

I just wanted to give these kids another big round of applause.

So, if you are thinking of moving to Valdosta and have a student who is interested in the arts I highly recommend Lowndes High School as having an excellent drama department.

Had a question this morning regarding buying vs. renting and thought I would give a few logical reasons for buying a home as opposed to renting one.

1) A home tends to increase in price over times so this is one of the best investments a person can make without too much risk. A home can increase in value 3-6% every year. Even if it didn't appreciate, you could still sell it and recoup some of your expenses, where as if you were renting when you move, your money is gone and you will be lucky to get your deposit back in the end.

2) You'll pay less tax. This is one of the biggest reasons you buy a home. You can deduct the interest you pay on your mortgage from your taxable income, which means you will pay less taxes.

3) Pride of ownership. This has been the American dream since before the dawn of time.

4) Interest rates are still historically low. This makes it less expensive to buy a home. The lower the interest rate the lower your payments and loan will be.

5) Capital Gain Exclusion: You can exclude up to $250,000 for an individual or $500,000 for a married couple of profit from capital gains, so long as you have lived in your home for two of the past five years.

6) You'll be able to use the equity in your home for low-cost loans for other purposes. You can access the equity you have accumulated in your home in the form of a home equity loan. You can use this to make improvements, payoff bills etc. Because they are secured, home equity loans usually have a lower interest rate than other types of consumer loans. The interest is usually tax deductible at the end of the year as well.

7) You'll be able to redecorate or renovate whenever you like, without worrying about the color of paint you use or wheather or not you can knock out a wall between to rooms to make one big room. Some improvements will actually increase the value of your property, which is excellent when you go to sell your home.

Example of how much your rent could be buying you;

Monthly rent 3 years 10 years 15 years 30 years

400.00 14,400 48,000 72000 144,000

700.00 25,200 84,000 126,000 252,000

1000.00 36,000 120,000 180,000 360,000

Hope this helps all those who are sitting on the edge trying to decide whether or not to buy. It makes no sense not to buy in this market. It is a buyers market right now and the best time ever to buy a home of your own.

May 19, 2008

Spring is in the air in Lowndes county and we find ourselves in the midst of the free for all fever pitch of activity that is the end of school year. Baseball season ending, dance recitals, graduation, and Memorial day vacation are all coming to a head.

Of course I'm just reaching for an excuse to not have written since late April, lame as that is.

I do,however, have some market information that I hope is helpful. My sources are the Valdosta Board of Realtors MLS and the Spring '08 residential market report which was expertly prepared by Ms.Susan Morey of First State Bank.

Last month our MLS recorded an even 100 sales. The bulk of these sales, a whopping 71% occured between the $120,000 price mark and sharply dropped off just north of the $185,000 threshold. Sales above the $220K price point were slim with the slowest increment being the $240-$250K at nearly a year (358 Days).

Here's a trend that's worth noting: Just under a fourth of he sales took place outside of Valdosta-Lowndes County in Brooks, Cook, Lanier, but the bulk of the sales being in Nashville-Berrian County.

The First State report is incredibly well prepared and offers some excellent unbiased Information, most notably:

• The first quarter's number of building permits pulled is just 173. Annualized this equates to under 700 permits for the year 2008. To put this munber in perspective, understand that over the past four years the number of permits pulled annually has been between 900 and 1100.
• The sales volume of October '06 - March '07 compared to October '07 - March '08 indicates a 39% decrease in sales.

I have a full copy of the First State report and will be happy to e-mail it to whoever wants it because our firends there prepared it for the sole purpose of educating anyone who is keeping an eye on the market. Just e-mail me at tillmanrealty@bellsotuh.net

April 23, 2008

In fifteen years of working our market, I can't recall a time when it was more "challenging" than now to move a home from being on the market to having it closed. "Challenging", of course, is the word that many of us in the business are using to package the current situation instead of having the balls to use the word "tough".

Our residential inventory has grown from around 600 pieces just a few years ago to over 1200 today. Many price points over the $250K mark (In today's culture that's almost a starter home) are taking nine months to sell as opposed to an average of under 100 days back in the good ol' days of '02-'06. Credit underwritting criteria has tightened signifcantly as many lenders are not even wanting to talk to borrowers sporting cedit scores of below 650 in the midst of the nationwide mortgage mess.

All of these components point to one basic idea for today's seller: If you expect to have a prayer of selling anytime soon, you've got to make the decision to treat this like a business transaction devoid of the emotion and get competitive in the marketing. Here's a couple of things to remember.

1) Look at your property objectively (as a buyer would) and clean/fix it up like a retailer would - Today's buyer has many choices in every $10,000 price increment of our market. Some rotten wood that you have gotten used to seeing and the smudges on windows left there by your kids may just kill a sale. "Aw c'mon man! You can't tell me that something that stupid could nix a deal", you may be saying. Well, uh yeah that's exactly what I'm saying. Because what might seem like an innocuous, easy-to-fix defect can cause a buyer to (however subconciously) wonder what else might be wrong that's not so obvious. Here's a suggestion; have your house preinspected by a certified (NACHI or ASHI) home inspector. Then repair what the inspector suggests. Finally, make the results of the report known to your prospects. Leave the report on the kitchen counter, as well as paid invoices of all the work you've had done (by reputable companies of course). Today, Realtors even have the capability of scanning those documments and making them available to cooperating agents in our MLS.

I can see that this will take more that this one sitting to write this article. Besides I've got to catch up on the last episode of LOST before the new one comes out tommorrow...