Buddy Snipes

I love mashups. I don't know how much good it does but I do like to embed them in my sites. I just came across SpotCrime and they have done a really cool job of geolocating crimes on Google maps. This app could easily be a winner but I think it's still pretty new. I tried going back 1 year to see what an area looked like and when I refreshed the map it displayed the one month data that was already there and nothing new. Either their db isn't old enough or there search is buggy. Still, I think this one is a keeper.

It does require registration for which you get automatic alerts for any crime events within 2 miles of your home.

Rarely do I hear people talk about "affordability" as a key component of the real estate market. By affordability, I mean the number of people who can actually afford to buy a home. We focus on inventory, days on market, averages and the like. But the number of people in the pool who can actually buy a home is the bottom line.

When jobs go away, the number of people in that pool gets smaller and smaller.

Michael Kanell with the AJC writes that "It may be 2012 or 2013 before we get back to where we were," Ouch. And if you are an agent in the metro area, do not read the very last sentence of this article. I'm not one to be pessimistic, but until people can get back to work things can't change.

Here is the complete article from the Wall Street Journal. A couple of things jumped out at me as I read the article. The first is never buy a home without getting title insurance. You just never know what may be hidden that could cause your purchase to be worthless. I know that people sometimes think that it's just an overpriced "extra" but it really is important. Second is just how complicated our current financial crisis makes things. It's amazing that the actual structure could be owned by one bank but the porch on the house by another bank. How do we ever get back to common sense in a world that has become that convoluted?

This is from one of the neighborhood watch coordinators:

There are three important events in the community this week that you should not miss.

WEDNESDAY 11/18/09: 7:00 p.m. Briarwood Recreation Center (identical meeting at 5 p.m at Buckhead Library 229 B’head Ave) Proposed Biomass Energy Plant (burning wood products to produce energy) Southeast Renewable Energy is planning to apply for a rezoning from M (industrial) to M2 (heavy industrial) and for a special land use permit in order to operate a biomass facility at 1800 Briarwood Road, roughly b/n REI and Northeast Plaza. They are holding two community public informational meetings on WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18. Raine Cotton, the rezoning applicant from SRE, says that this facility will process yard mulch into steam, which will then be sold to Georgia Power for their Green E program. It will process approximately 100,000 tons of mulch per year (brought by large trucks) from business such as tree services into steam by gassification (burning). The facility will release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from a 10' cooling tower, but Cotton claims that the releases will be carbon neutral, because if the mulch was left alone to break down more slowly, the same amount of CO2 would be released anyway. However, this concentrated CO2 will be released into the air within a mile from our neighborhood. Another by-product will be organic ash, which will be re-sold to organic farmers. The county requires all rezoning applicants to hold a pre-filing meeting such as this. This application will then go through the Community Council in December, and the Planning Commission, and Board of Commissioners in January. This is our neighborhood's opportunity to hear about this proposed facility firsthand and to ask questions.

Please plan on attending this very important community informational meeting, if you can. SATURDAY, 11/21: 2:00 p.m. Mt. Zion AME Church, 2977 LaVista Road What: A presentation of the unique multigenerational history of the families that have called the Mt. Zion AME/Oak Grove community home for more than six generations. When: Saturday, November 21, 2009, 2:00-5:00 PM 2:00 Exhibit opens with refreshments; 3:00 “I Remember Hour” Where: Mt. Zion AME Church, 2977 LaVista Rd, Decatur 30033 Why: Arbor Montessori students, in partnership with DeKalb History center and Mt. Zion AME, traced the history of their community through interviews and research and created an informative and illustrative exhibit. Following its debut at Mt. Zion, it will travel to various DeKalb County sites. Who: The exhibit features the history of the Nelms and Stokes, African-American families who have owned and farmed land in the Oak Grove area for more than one hundred years and still occupy an extensive area surrounding Arbor, Mt. Zion and north Decatur. Highlights: - DHC’s “I Remember Hour” records the history of DeKalb County through the words and memories of those who have lived it; members of the Mt. Zion community will share their oral history of the region at 3:00 PM. - Deeds and family cemetery trace Stokes and Nelms family roots back to 1877 - Fourteen children, all cousins, integrated Oak Grove Elementary in 1969. - An original smokehouse still stands on Nelms property and a student-made scale model will be on display. - The oral history project was part of Arbor Montessori middle school students’ investigative unit on the history of Atlanta; they also studied the history, economy, and agriculture of Atlanta in the 20th Century.

Bloomberg. Foreclosure filings march on. Georgia in top 10. And here is the quote that scares the bejeebies out of all of us: “The foreclosure problem is still with us and will keep prices down,” Stephen Miller, chairman of the economics department at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, said in an interview. “The real issue is we don’t know what inventory banks are holding that they have yet to put on the market.”

Maybe I'm some kinda racist, facist, insensitive, ignorant pig but I don't see a way out other than going back to making loans to people who can afford to repay them.