Bob Southard,e-Pro Powder Springs and Marietta Real Estate

So how's the market? People used to always ask that question. Now it seems most people are to afraid to even ask. They don't want to hear the answer.
Two recent articles in the Marietta Daily Journal tell the story.

In December of 2007 there were 53 building permits issued in all of Cobb County. In December of 2008 there were 8. There were 707 permits issued for all of 2008.

In 2006 there were 3716 and in 2007 there were 1935 permits issued, so there has been a steady decline that has reached the bottom of the barrel.

The foreclosure rate for Cobb County is setting new records as well. In January 2009, for the Tuesday Feb 3 foreclosure date, there were 837 foreclosure listings advertised. I think that it is quite likely that we will hit 1000 some month soon.

On the flip side, this is a great opportunity for serious buyers. There are some very good deals to be had. Be careful because some of those seemingly good deals aren't so good after all. Be sure to use a buyers agent who is familiar with the current market. Selling can be a real challenge but with a good selling agent your home can sell. It almost certaily will sell for less than it might have a year or two ago, but if you an find a good deal on your next home it might just be worth it to consider making a move.

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Bob Southard, e-Pro, Realtor ®, Solid Source Realty, Inc. Buy a home, Sell a home, in Powder Springs, Marietta, Kennesaw, Acworth, Dallas, Hiram,and Cobb, Paulding, Douglas, North Fulton, South Cherokee, County, Ga. Call me for all of your real estate needs.

Visit my website

Call me for all of your Real Estate needs

770-656-9134

Copyright © 2008 By Bob Southard, All Rights Reserved

I have been telling my clients for a long time that there are 3 basic things that every listing should have.

• It needs to have multiple photos
• Its needs to have a virtual tour
• It needs to be in BOTH of the metro Atlanta MLS services (with correct information on the listings)

So when I saw Lane Bailey's post - Survey of New Listings I had to check the details for my own area.

Lane surveyed new listings for Lilburn Ga that were just listed in the last 30 days. Lane found that of homes listed in the last 30 days, only 14.7% HAD a virtual tour and 26.8% only had 0-1 picture. He also broke it down further as to how many pictures each listing did have, but I am just going to stick to how many have a tour and how many have 0-1 picture.

When I list a home I have the photos and tours ready to go on listing at the same time that it is entered in the MLS systems. However some agents have the photographer add the photos and tours to the listing. Personally, I don't think that the delay is acceptable, but I will give these agents the small benefit of starting my search 5 days back and going back 30 days from there.

So here are the stats for Powder Springs home listings from Nov 29 to Dec 29. This is for all homes with Powder Springs addresses in Cobb or Paulding County.

So here is the breakdown for Powder Springs, Ga.

From Nov 29 to Dec. 29 there were 118 new listings in Powder Springs.

• Only 17 of them have virtual tours! 14.4% or in other words 75.6% DO NOT HAVE TOURS!
• 20 had 0 - 1 photo. 16%

I am presuming that by allowing the agents the 5 extra days that more of them got photos attached than Lane saw in his survey. Let me reiterate that I do not think agents should take 5 days to attach photos or tours, I was just being generous. When I did the search for Dec. 3 to Jan 3 it went up to 24% with only 0-1 photo.

Note to sellers and agents: Many buyers are signed up for "new listing alerts" by email. They get an email with your home listing within 24 hours of it going in the mls. If you want it sold ADD PICTURES!

So how many meet my 3rd criteria of being in BOTH mls services? Well I wasn't going to do a search for every address but I was willing to do a sample. I took 13 homes from the FMLS list and searched for them in GaMLS. Here is what I found.

10 were also listed in GaMLS 3 were not. 77% is actually a little better than I expected but still not acceptable in my opinion.

The 3 criteria that I mentioned at the beginning are just what I consider basic. This is not great marketing or even good marketing ... it's just the basics.

Shameless Plug: All of my listings go in both mls services and will have multiple photos and tours attached within 1 hour of mls listing entry and that is just the beginning...

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Bob Southard, e-Pro, Realtor ®, Solid Source Realty, Inc. Buy a home, Sell a home, in Powder Springs, Marietta, Kennesaw, Acworth, Dallas, Hiram,and Cobb, Paulding, Douglas, North Fulton, South Cherokee, County, Ga. Call me for all of your real estate needs.

Visit my website

Call me for all of your Real Estate needs

770-656-9134

Copyright © 2008 By Bob Southard, All Rights Reserved

The Country Walk welcome committee has been working on ordering some coffee mugs as welcome gifts for our new residents. OK, really Lauren MacDonald has been doing the work :-) .

Anyway, when she submitted the artwork from our current logo it was just too old. Nobody has the original artwork and the only logo available was lifted off the neighborhood website. That one looks like it was scanned and pasted many times. It was fuzzy and the resolution was quite low. The manufacturer for the mugs said it just wasn't clear enough to use.




So I put out out an email to our neighbors and one came through in a big way! Steve Shallenberger from Designs On the Side completely cleaned up and revamped the old logo. He actually made two of them for us. he did one in one color to submit with our coffee mug order and then did a nice color logo for the neighborhood to use on the website, newsletter, stationary, etc. By the way he did all of this over the New years holiday!

Here are the results:


If you need some great graphic design help contact Steve!

Check out Steve's website at www.designsontheside.com!

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Country Walk is a fantastic, active, swim/tennis neighborhood located in the heart of Powder Springs, Ga.

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Bob Southard, e-Pro, Realtor ®, Solid Source Realty, Inc. Buy a home, Sell a home, in Powder Springs, Marietta, Kennesaw, Acworth, Dallas, Hiram,and Cobb, Paulding, Douglas, North Fulton, South Cherokee, County, Ga. Call me for all of your real estate needs.

Visit my website

Call me for all of your Real Estate needs

770-656-9134

Copyright © 2008 By Bob Southard, All Rights Reserved

Santa brought me a GPS unit for Christmas! It's hard to believe that I haven't had one until now but I am for the most part finding it quite useful. There are some moments though when I will argue with it! Here is a summary of my first argument with my GPS.

Point "A" is the intersection of Old Lost Mountain Rd and Richard Sailors Parkway. Point "B" is the intersection of Brownsville Rd and C.H. James Parkway. The GPS unit told me to take Old Lost Mountain Road into downtown Powder Springs then turn left and then make a quick right on to Brownsville Rd. Looking at the map this is clearly the shortest in terms of distance.

Here's the problems with that route:

1. The traffic light crossing Richard Sailors on Old Lost Mountain. It is much quicker to make the right on red.
2. Once you cross Sailors Parkway you need to make that left turn in downtown. Usually this isn't too bad but sometimes there is traffic to wait on. If you would have gone the other way there is still a left turn on to C.H. James but there is a left turn arrow and it comes first in the cycle - before the straight ahead green light.
3. The right turn on to Brownsville rd crosses over the train tracks. It's a fairly busy track so there is a reasonable likelihood that you'll get caught by a train.
4. In general this route is 2 lane roads with 35mph speed limits subject to slow drivers and left turning vehicles that will slow down the trip. Richard Sailors Parkway to C.H. James Parkway is all 4 lane.

While the other (non GPS) route is longer it is still much "faster".

Jim Crawford had a similar point the other day with his post "The purpose of listing a home for sale" . I had the idea for this post on the Christmas night with my first trip using the GPS but I want to give Jim some credit. His conclusion is the same as mine. Jim - I guess great minds do think alike :-). Whether you are buying or selling a home, your purpose is to get from Point "A" (your current home) to Point "B" (your next home).

The Internet and computerized GPS units and all of the other technical resources available are great tools. But navigating from point "A" to point "B" still requires human intervention to dissect the information and help you arrive at a conclusion that is best suited to you and your needs.

All real estate is local! No matter where you are living or looking you need a local expert to help you dissect all of the information available and plan the best route for you!

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Bob Southard, e-Pro, Realtor ®, Solid Source Realty, Inc. Buy a home, Sell a home, in Powder Springs, Marietta, Kennesaw, Acworth, Dallas, Hiram,and Cobb, Paulding, Douglas, North Fulton, South Cherokee, County, Ga. Call me for all of your real estate needs.

Visit my website

Call me for all of your Real Estate needs

770-656-9134

Copyright © 2008 By Bob Southard, All Rights Reserved

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