Elizabeth Ramsey Cooper-Golden

Athens Alabama is a quaint small town of approximately 20,000 people in the center of North Alabama approximately 10 miles from both Decatur or Madison. Athens is also one of the oldest cities in the State of Alabama and as such, many homes in the central part of town are part of an historic district. Many of these homes date back to the antebellum period of the early to mid 1800's.

Depending on exactly where your place of employment may be, Athens offers a 20 to 30 minute commute to either Decatur or Research Park in Huntsville. Many who enjoy the feel of a small town community find this commute a small price to pay.

The community is also very proud of their School System which includes Athens High School within the city limits. Athens is also the home of Athens State University which is a very unique ‘reverse' two year college offering Junior and Senior year academics leading to a Bachelor Degree for Community College and other University transfers.

If you are home shopping in the Athens Alabama area it would be good to have a general feel for the market in your particular price range, prior to visiting neighborhoods and viewing specific Homes. Some of the Neighborhoods you are likely to run across while in Athens at various price points include:

• $100k-$200k City Limits, OakHill Estates, Williamsburg Square
• $200k-$300k East Hampton, Plantation East, Silver Oaks, Summit Lakes
• $300k-$400k City Limits, Indian Trace, Canebrake
• $400k-$600k Canebrake, Holland East, Huston Place

Utilize these links to view current listings in these neighborhoods - or visit Huntsville Alabama Homes for a more extensive property search experience.If and when you find a few homes you really like and have put together a short list, be sure to have your REALTOR® perform a Comparative Market Analysis(CMA) on your properties of interest before finalizing any offer. By taking this more detailed look into specific neighborhood mini markets you may find that the neighborhood's pricing model may vary either up or down from the average real estate prices across Athens.

Feel free to contact me should you have any questions!

Happy House Hunting - Elizabeth

In a previous blog post we discussed the first steps involved in finding your Huntsville Alabama Dream Home and provided links to research and discuss the area, neighborhoods, schools, and other community information.

Once you have focused your search to your favorite areas or school districts, you are ready to begin looking at online listings of available homes. By now, you probably have a few favorite neighborhoods. However it is not uncommon that your search may likely be conducted over a period of months or longer, especially if you are in the process of relocating. Driving through neighborhoods is always best. In doing so, you can get a real feel of the area.

A few other tools available at North Alabama Homes can be of great help during this 2nd phase of your home search. By registering a valid email address you will be able to save your favorite homes, so that you can easily monitor any changes such as price reductions.

You can also save all the details of your specific searches and not only recall them with a single click but optionally subscribe to a daily email that will deliver links to brand new listings coming on the market. These will match your saved search criteria. As your online search proceeds, utilizing these tools can greatly reduce your online search time by focusing your attention on changes to your saved favorites and viewing only new listings as other favorite candidates.

What this 2nd phase of the process accomplishes is building an initial list of homes that you may want further information on. This can help you prioritize them for a drive by look or a showing tour, which is the topic of our next post.

A very important detail to remember is, call your Buyers Agent if you find something that interests you. It is very important to remember that the name on the For Sale sign in the front yard, represents the seller. It is that agents job to get the most money for the SELLER. They will NOT be representing you. Having a Buyers Agent works for YOU in the long run, keeping YOUR best interests in mind at all times!

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to call or email anytime! Happy House Hunting.

Elizabeth

Given the recent financial system upheaval, I was anxious to look at September's sales, inventory, and pricing to see if the Huntsville Real Estate Market will show any stress and strain given recent developments. However since these events are so recent, any local effects likely won't become statistically measurable for a few months.

To summarize what September's statistics indicate, let's take a look at unit sales, raw inventory, and current home prices separately and then summarize any conclusions we are able to make:

Unit Home Sales - the Huntsville metro area's September 2008 unit sales were down ~12% when compared to September of a year ago. This year-over-year comparison is not as extensive as we have seen in recent months because data was being compared to a 12 month period where sales in the Huntsville market were at all time highs. Nonetheless, weakening sales numbers are a continuing trend which we have reported on since this time last year. The following unit sales chart illustrates this trend within September's context.

Raw Inventory - This metric is a simple unit measurement of the active listings on the MLS for the Huntsville metro area being discussed. Raw inventory for September 2008 is down ~7% when compared with September 2007. Looking at the following chart you will see that when sales were trending upward in 2006 and 2007 so was raw inventory, and when sales started declining in the later part of 2007, raw inventory began to moderate as well, although at more moderate pace than sales.

Home Prices - Home prices in Huntsville have remained strong when compared to some of the harder hit areas of the nation. In fact, September's 2008 prices are up ~2% compared with September 2007 and pricing continues to be the strong point of our local market as typified in the following price per square foot chart. However for the past2 months prices have been slightly below the moving average and are beginning to tip the moving average lower.

We are headed into a slower seasonal trend for Real Estate Sales in general and given recent events in the financial system, the last quarter of the year (Oct, Nov, Dec) will be of intense interest. Thus, we wish to set a baseline expectation by considering a forward looking absorption rate inventory.

Absorption rate is a metric that best indicates price pressure and is expressed in months of supply. For example; given a stable (won't grow or decline) raw inventory, a 7% sales decline trend with current year-over-year comparisons, and starting with an average monthly unit sales for this period last year yields a forward looking absorption rate inventory as follows:

2467 (current raw inventory) / (340 - (340 * 0.07) ) (projected monthly unit sales) = 7.8 months of supply

This absorption inventory estimate is clearly in buyer market territory, but doesn't represent overly aggressive price pressure in our opinion. Nevertheless, we will be watching the market closely over the next few months as recent financial system events mandate.

As always, these statistics represent the Huntsville metro area in general and different price ranges and locations around the city are experiencing different market conditions, so always involve a professional REALTOR® whenever deciding upon an offer or listing price and they will (should) perform for you a Comparative Market Analysis using your explicit location and price range of interest.

Whether you are buying your first home or your next home in Huntsville Alabama, finding the right home for you and your family will likely be a large investment of personal time, as well as money. This is especially the case if you are relocating to the area and are unfamiliar with local geography, neighborhoods, and school options.

According to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) ~ 80% of people entering the Real Estate Market begin their property search by utilizing online Internet services. Thus unlike many Huntsville Real Estate websites that require users to register personal information prior to obtaining search privileges; we have designed our websites to provide a wealth of information including search privileges without registration and without charge or obligation.

One of the first things to accomplish in any home search endeavor is to research specific areas, neighborhoods, schools, commute times, etc. Feel free to browse our many articles on specific areas of town and Huntsville Neighborhoods. School information and rankings can also be found online at websites such as Great Schools. Moreover, it is also very advantageous to browse and participate in online forums where others in similar circumstances with similar questions share information on the area like Huntsville City Data. Also if you are in the early process of relocating be sure to view our Complete Online Huntsville Relocation Guide it contains a wealth of local information.

Once you have narrowed your search area to a particular county, city, zip code, or even a group of select neighborhoods, be sure to utilize our advanced Huntsville Alabama Home search engine. At the time of this writing it would not be a boast to say that we have the most feature rich property search engine in the North Alabama Area. In addition to the basic search criteria of MLS Area, City, Zip Code, you can also search by specific neighborhoods, schools, and amenities, as well as filter results by price range and square footage allowing you to filter possible ‘best buys' to the top of your list and all of this without registration or obligation.

You may or may not be aware that Alabama is a "Buyer Beware" state. All the more reason to hire a Buyers Agent to represent YOUR best interests. When you call the listing agent, they represent the seller. A Buyers Agent represents YOU! If the home is listed in the NALMLS, more than likely the seller will be paying the Buyers Agent, so why NOT hire your own agent? I'll touch more on this in a later post.

In our next few blog posts we will follow-up with a series of informational posts including additional information on advanced features of our MLS property search engine and how these features can and will ease your entire house hunt experience, as well as getting non public real estate information, deciding on an offer price, and negotiating a contract on your new home.

Happy House Hunting,

Elizabeth

As many of you know, my husband Tim, is my webmaster. I am SO darned lucky to have such a wonderful husband and talented, gifted engineer in my life. Because of his endless hard work, I am now the proud owner of THE FIRST public website to utilize the North Alabama Multiple Listing Service (NALMLS) Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS) feed, here in Huntsville! Thanks honey, for working so hard for me. I am so proud of you! Tim wrote this letter to thank all of our supportive subscribers.

First of all we would like to thank all of our visitors; our clients, www.BlogaboutHuntsville.com subscribers, as well as our regular and occasional visitors! We have been so pleased with the response we have received from our new websitewww.NorthernAlabamaHomes.com over the last 3 months. Our traffic is growing rapidly and the positive email comments that we have received from clients and visitors alike have exceeded all of our initial expectations.

Our decision to be the first public website to utilize the North Alabama Multiple Listing Service (NALMLS) Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS) feed, while I admit at first was very painful, is beginning to reap the promised benefits of the new technology and is improving the quality of our online information and user experience. If you are a regular visitor you have likely seen the improvement in the data presentation of our detailed listing pages.

One of the benefits RETS brings is the ability to do near real-time database updates. These updates only query changes since the previous update and take limited computer resources. With RETS, there is no need to download the entire MLS database in the wee hours of the morning. We initially tested updates once a day, but recently we have been successfully synchronizing with the MLS database multiple times a day. These updates are run in the background and do not affect site performance and take as little as a few seconds to a minute or two depending on how many new, sold, and updated listing have entered the MLS.

We are seeing as many as ~200-400 listings that change status; new, deleted, or modified during a typical business day. Our original New Listing Email Service was designed to send a single email for each new listing. This really became untenable as some registered users with broad search criteria were receiving several emails per day. Consequently we disabled the service while going through a redesign and implementation.

We have now completed this development effort and the New Listing Email Service is back online. Registered users can name and save their favorite detailed searches and ‘optionally' request a single HTML email when any new listings matching their criteria become active. This service now provides at most a single daily email, with click-able links to the new listings, no matter how broad your search criteria. Of course narrower search criteria will result in fewer email notifications.

The New Listing Email Service, like our monthly newsletter service is completely optional. You may register, save your favorite searches and individual properties for easy recall and still opt out of any email notification whatsoever. You can even selectively enable email notification on just one or a few specific searches. Registration requires only a user-name, password, and valid email address; you will never receive unsolicited email for any of our websites.

Thanks Again and Enjoy the Site,

Tim
Webmaster