About Pickens County, GA

North Georgia Real Estate continues to be some what flat in sales and prices. I guess this is a good thing as prices are not going down. However recent events in the troubled Carpet industry have put pressure on prices and home sales are slow. North Georgia is home to the nations carpet industry in Dalton.

In addition Jasper which produces much of the Marble for our country is slow also as an industry. So we have 2 industries here that rely on housing in large part for their business.

On a positive note folks who can sell in other areas are moving to North Georgia due to price points and great quality of life.. There are new medical facilities opening here and folks are getting tax breaks who are retired.

Bottom line is North Georgia provides great value for your dollar. Visit is you might be surprised.

The Fall is no time to roll up the Streets in Big Canoe. Real Estate here is still going strong. We have agreat Octoberfest coming up. We also have a Casino Night which will benefit the Big Canoe Fire Deptartment. Along with Hundreds of clubs even though the summer tourists may be going home, Big Canoe is still going strong. For more information about this great North Georgias community visit us on line on www.allmountainrealty.com

A low appraisal hurts your seller we all know that. But what about the reverse situation? Mr and Mrs Smith are selling their home. They need a quick sale. Their home is appraised at 300k but they are selling for 200k.

The Jones are approved for 200k . They see the Smith home and fall in love with it. The Jones family has been looking for a while so they know the Smith home is worth every bit of 300k.

The Jones's are good people and do not want to insult the Smiths so they make a full price offer. But then the problems start. The Jones's get the preliminary numbers and cannot afford the taxes and the insurance. The reason is the home is also in the tax records at 300k and replacement value for insurance purposes is up there too.

While this problem may not happen so much with the Smiths' and Jones it does happen with the Jones and a Foreclosure. Let me tell you once the buyers have been in a 300k home priced down it is really hard to go back to looking at 200k homes. The answer is when you are working with, especially, first time buyers, make sure you consider the whole PITI financial picture

As hoped for and expected, July 2009 saw a notable improvement in house sales in Jasper GA, as compared to both prior year numbers, and prior month home sale numbers, for the Pickens County area. And not by a small amount either.

Reported pending sales for July jumped 43%, to 30 homes placed under contract, from 21 in June '09 . . . and doubling from only 15in July 2008. Equally significant is the fact that average sale price for those transactions that have already closed falls close to $226,000, versus an average sale price in June of closer to $184,000, and $187,000 for July 2008. This suggests activity from some buyers looking in higher price ranges, which is good news for sellers. July's sales in fact top even sales volume for July 2007, which came in at 27 homes sold, but still trail the average sale price of $234,348. Sale price to list price ratio improved slightly as well, up to 91.5%. Still not a great ratio, but a good sign of improvement.

Bank-owned foreclosure homesaccounted for 11 of the pending sales (37%), while almost half of all houses under contract of sale were located in either Big Canoe or Bent Tree, GA. These numbers highlight the difficulty for a non-institutional home seller in Pickens County that doesn't live in Bent Tree or Big Canoe -- particularly at the above $200,000 price point.

Anecdotally, some of the increased activity can be attributed to heightened interest from first time home buyers looking to take advantage of the federal and state tax credits, but exactly how much is attributable to this, is difficult to say. Low home prices and interest rates are just as likely to have played a role.

Inventory is again up above 550 homes for sale, with the uptick in sales doing little to keep up with listings coming on market. Foreclosure homes continue to account for around 7% of homes on the market, despite the high percentage of these REO properties that are sold each month relative to other sales.

So long as foreclosures keep inventory up and prices down, it is going to be a challenge to support any argument that a solid bottom has been reached, or a turning point found, but, even just maintaining where we are now -- with no further deterioration in volume or value -- can be viewed as something of a positive. So we'll just have to wait and see where August's numbers come in and what they might tell us...

For more info about your local market, neighborhood or a specific home, feel free to email or call with your request.

[Data used herein obtained via First Multiple Listing Service and is believed accurate, but is not warranted.]