Alpharetta Real Estate Homes for Sale

Over the last few years I’ve received a number of phone calls from residents of Milton and Alpharetta neighborhoods asking my opinion, as a realtor, about how they can increase their home values.  Usually these calls are from older neighborhoods where the price of their homes was relatively lower than some of the newer neighborhoods.  However, the owners in the older ‘hoods think that their homes are not THAT much less desirable than the new homes.

The problem stems from the fact that raw land appreciated so quickly in north Fulton County, and particularly in Milton, where it is said to have quadrupled in a few short years prior to our current "market correction."

This created a price gap between the "original neighborhoods" and the new neighborhoods.  The original residents want to bridge that gap, but how?

Some of the neighborhoods like Brierfield near Crabapple have redone the entrance to the neighborhood with stacked stone signage and have replaced all the mailboxes and sign posts to given an updated look. 

That’s great, although, I don’t think that you can say the houses in Brierfield are worth $2000 more today than they were last year because of this.  Here’s my suggestion:  Promote the benefits of living in your neighborhood.

By that I mean:  market yourselves.  A neighborhood should have a unique selling proposition, just as a house should.  For instance, the neighborhood has one of the few swim teams around, or the best ALTA tennis program, or multiple lake lots with community access to the lake for fishing, or well-organized kids events like Halloween and Easter egg hunts, or horse trails, or proximity to a park or even a Starbucks or lawn maintenance included in the HOA dues.

For the longest time, I’ve been trying to get my neighborhood to build an artificial putting green (don’t forget the sand bunker) next to our pool.  How about that for a unique selling proposition?  How do you think the conversation would go when a prospective buyer drove into the neighborhood?  Man speaking to wife:  Look honey, they have a putting green.  I love this neighborhood already.

The HOA should have an External Communication function/person whose job it is to spread the unique selling proposition.  If your neighborhood does not have an external website, build one.  Get a neighborhood kid to spend a little time optimizing it for the search engines…he or she will know what to do.

Publish your community calendar, tennis matches, swim lessons, etc.  Take lots of pictures of different times of year and post those.  Calculate the number and age of the children and publish that because every mother I’ve ever worked with wants to know if there are kids her kids’ age to play with and the only place this information exists is with the existing homeowners.

Ultimate goal:  make your neighborhood desirable.  Market it.  Make someone in Iowa reading about your blooming azaleas in April drool to live in your neighborhood. Let them know what kind of people live in your neighborhood and that you all aren’t a bunch of raving lunatics!

A good time and place to start could even be right here and now.  Leave a comment to this post and tell us what neighborhood you live in and why it is a great place.  Go ahead…sell me on it.  Leave the url for you neighborhood website if you have one.

In the end, the value of your home is based on the comparable sales in your neighborhood.  If you can make your neighborhood the envy of the area and get people wanting it instead of just "taking a look," you’ll be more likely to get some solid sales at closer to list price and develop some price momentum.

Of course, you all need to be keeping you homes maintained and updated, particularly the kitchens, but marketing the neighborhood as only residents can do won’t cost you a dime, just a little time.  Go ahead, start today!