Alpharetta Real Estate Homes for Sale

Not just "on sale", but "really on sale."  Williamscraft, the builder of Crabapple Crossroads has reduced prices by $40,000 t0 $150,000 across all their communities.  In Crabapple Crossroads, the reductions are from $40,000 to $95,000 for a 4 bedroom and 3 bath house with no basement.  The advertised price is $459,900.

Crabapple Crossroads is the Lew Oliver designed neighborhood with the seven three storey "brownstones" at the entrance and the design made to feel like a village.  The homes mostly have front porches and are closely set to the street with sidewalks.  The idea is to get people out of their homes and develop more of a community feel.  It is possible to walk to diner and to some of the best public schools in North Fulton: Crabapple Crossing, Northwestern Middle and Milton High School.

However, even given this innovative community design, the Crabapple location and the good schools, Crabapple Crossroads has struggled.  To date, only seven homes have sold and there are currently thirty-three homes for sale. 

Clearly the issue has been price.  They say, "Price cures all ills," so Williamscraft has reduced prices.  Paying over $500,000 for a 4 bedroom home on a small lot with no basement was a hard sell when you could go up the road into Milton and find any number of larger homes on acre lots with basements for $500,000 - or less.  Admittedly they are older homes, but everything is a tradeoff.

With the price reductions, now you can buy a brand new 4 bedroom house in the mid $400’s at Crabapple Crossroads, which is more inline with the current resale market. 

One funny thing about these huge price reductions, though.  I was talking with a builder of million dollar homes recently.  We were discussing some of the huge price reductions on luxury homes in Milton and Alpharetta - and the one in Echelon, in particular.  This builder asked me, "Just home much profit do the buyers think builders have in these luxury homes?"  He was alluding to having to make a living himself. 

I was EXTREMELY curious to know exactly how much profit is built into a $2,000,000 home in someplace like Echelon or The Manor, but I wasn’t gauche enough to ask him for his profit and loss statements.  I will say, though, that when a builder like Williamscraft reduces prices 20% more or less across the board it gives the buying public the feeling that there was a lot of profit built in initially…assuming that Williamscraft is not taking a loss on these homes.

This market behavior, in turn, leads other buyers to get jaded and feel like they should be demanding more concessions from sellers…and the cycle perpetuates itself.  This is why, from an overall market perspective, it is so important to get the price right from the beginning.  Once you start reducing the price, you never get close to what you would have gotten because buyers smell that blood in the water.

http://www.alpharettarealestatehomes.com/003908

MILTON - This sign cracks me up.  Just who do they think they are fooling?

The sign reads:  Only Two Left.  But it is pretty easy to see that there were only THREE to begin with!  Every time I see this sign my brain flip flops it and I read:  Only One Sold!  I think this sign does more harm than good.  What do you think?

The sales strategy of creating urgency, sometimes artificial urgency, is not new.  "While supplies last…"  "Offer good until midnight tonight…"  "If you call within the next five minutes, you’ll also receive…"  We’ve all heard them.

Anyone who drives up and down Birmingham Highway regularly knows that there have been "only two left" for about six months!  Where is the urgency in that?

The funny thing is that the two remaining houses are actually pretty darn nice.  They are just over priced is all.  That is why there are "only two left."  Duh.

Originally, one of the remaining houses was listed at $899,900 in March last year.  Then it was reduced to $849,000, still didn’t sell and the builder fired the realtor…go figure.  Builder hires a new realtor and lists the house at $914,000.  I don’t get it either.  Since then, the house has been reduced to $890,000 and now to $855,000. 

I’m not sure if the dog is wagging the tail here or vice versa, but unrealistic beliefs about the price make you do silly things with marketing, or at least transparent things that everyone knows don’t work.  It is not better than holding an open house for a property that is overpriced thinking that increased traffic is going to get it sold.  You can market an over priced property all day long and it is not going to sell until you get the price right - and you are going to look silly in the process.  Worse yet, you are probably not even going to get an offer.

If anyone wants to buy a quite nice brick home on Birmingham Highway for around $750,000, call me.  That is where this house should be priced.

http://www.alpharettarealestatehomes.com/003903

JOHNS CREEK - You won’t see this reported in the mainstream media:  Over the weekend, buyers were literally throwing deposit checks at the onsite sales agent at Jaden Woods. 

The agent put TEN lots under contract and had to ask buyers to leave and come back for scheduled appointments.

It seems that not all builders are hurting for home sales. 

Jaden Woods is a new home community by Ashton Woods of 66 homesites.  The price for a four bedroom, three and a half bath home starts at a little over $400,000.  Over the weekend, Ashton Woods opened phase two at Jaden Woods.

The community is located off McGinnis Ferry Road east of Hwy 141.  Being in the Northview High School district and close to the new Emory Hospital are two of the main selling points of the location.

http://www.alpharettarealestatehomes.com/0038FD

It used to be that Realtors had the bulk of information necessary to be effective when buying or selling real estate.  This information included tax data, recent sales data, even lists of homes available for sale.  Remember the old MLS books Realtors might let you borrow over the weekend to see what was on the market?

Realtors used to keep as much of that information close to the vest because they believed that information was power, or at least a competitive advantage in earning a living, if not an outright anti-competitive tactic to preserve an industry.  The Internet pried all that information loose even as certain MLS’s tried in vein to keep it out of the public eye.

Today, information about real estate is everywhere and easy to get online.  In fact, there is too much real estate information for any carbon-based being to consume.  I can’t consume it all and I doubt you can either.  Granted, I’m a slow reader, but if real estate is my full time job and I can’t wade my way through, how is it even slightly possible for a non-real estate professional to consume it when you have a full time job doing something else?

That leads me to my premise, which is that today, a good realtor’s value is not in providing you with information, but rather in interpreting that data in a meaningful way.  I get calls at least weekly from readers of this blog saying basically, "There is some much information about schools, traffic, new communities, recreation, housing prices, etc., that I don’t even know where to start.  Can you please help me sort it all out."

Absolutely.  THAT is my job:  to sort it all out, make sense of all the data and help guide you in an important buying or selling decision.

Let’s get right to the data.

Would you believe that in this "horrible" real estate market that the average sales price for a home in Alpharetta / Roswell / Milton / Johns Creek is UP 4% over last year at this time?  Amazing isn’t it.

That’s right. The average sales price through October, 2006, in Alpharetta and surrounding cities in North Fulton was $409,000.  This year through October it is over $427,000.

But what about all the sellers in the market who say that there house is not selling?  They do have a beef:  There have been fewer homes to sell in the Alpharetta area year to date than last year.  So far this year, 2,953 homes have sold versus 3,336 last year.  That is an 11% drop.

Fewer sales X a higher average sales price = about the same amount of market volume, right?.  That’s almost right.  To date, $1.37 billion of residential real estate has transacted so far versus $1.62 billion last year.  That is a drop of 8%.

The Alpharetta / Roswell real estate market is over a billion dollars.  Where exactly is the 8% drop showing up?

If we dig a little deeper, the bottom end of the market is the part getting hit the hardest.  Homes sold below $200k are off over 30%; fortunately, that is not that large of a part of the market.  The number of sales between $200 and $500 is off by approximately 10%.  The $300-$500k price range is the heart of the market and why it matches the overall numbers closely.

Above $500k, the market looks a bit different.  Between $500k and $1MM, the number of homes sold is off about 6%.  And get this:  more Million Dollar Homes have sold in 2007 than 2006.  In fact, the absorption rate (the common measure of supply and demand) for million dollar homes has decreased from 45+ in July to   This 13% increase in the high end market has also likely masked some of the market pain at lower price points by making the averages sale price higher than it otherwise would have been.

The interesting thing about the new high end home sales, particularly on the west side of GA-400, is that while, yes, there have been more sales this year than last at the top of the market,  there is also much more inventory in the high end as 2007 ends.  Last year there were 70 $750-$999 homes on the market west of GA-400; this year there are 99, which is 3 months more inventory than last year.  There are 129 homes over one million dollars versus 99 last year.  That is a formula for hungry builders and great deals for buyers at this price point.

So what are the lessons?

Houses are still selling; fewer of them yes, but still at fair prices.  Buyers still complain about the market, but I’d challenge them to really evaluate the condition and value of their home.  Two of my favorites sayings are that "pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered."  Are you a pig or a hog in this market?

One of my other favorite saying is:  "The market is always right."  If you have your house on the market and it is not selling, that only means that there is a better value in the market someplace else regardless what your belief system tells you.

If you are a buyer, consider this:  Atlanta, and Alpharetta in particular for reasons mentioned all over this blog, has huge upside potential for appreciation.  Albert Niemi, former dean at the Terry School of Business at UGA, recently spoke at a Bank of North Georgia function and said:

1. North  Georgia (Greater Atlanta) is going to be one of the great growth engines in the U.S. economy.
2. Atlanta is one of the cheapest places to do business in the country (and also has a relatively low cost of living and good climate - I added that part ;->).
3. Atlanta is one of the four fastest growing cities in the U.S. (with Dallas, Phoenix and Las Vegas).

A blogging real estate colleague of mine in neighboring Cherokee County wrote last year that metro Atlanta is growing at about 100,000 new residents per year.

Atlanta’s and Alpharetta’s real estate market won’t be this "depressed" for long.  You can buy million dollar houses for a fraction of appraised value and you can buy a $600,000 house in Alpharetta for what you’d pay hundreds of thousands more in other cities. 

Regardless of whether you are a buyer or seller, though, remember:  The market doesn’t lie.

http://www.alpharettarealestatehomes.com/0038F0

When was the last time that you walked to get ice cream after dinner at home?  When was the last time that you walked home from the bar after happy hour on Friday evening? If you answered “Absolutely Never”, I’d believe you.  Around Alpharetta and the other cities in North Fulton – and around most of suburbia for that matter – we drive everywhere, usually because we have to.  We live in neighborhoods with one road in and one road out and the only way to the grocery story is via Chevrolet. We are starting to get some options, though.  “Mixed use” developments are all the rage and starting to make their way onto the North Fulton real estate scene.  Let’s not kid ourselves:  As quaint as the idea sounds we aren’t going to get rid of our cars anytime soon and all of a sudden start walking and biking everywhere as if this were Manhattan or someplace in Europe.  However, the occasional walk to a restaurant or shop would certainly be a move in the right direction and one of the aspects of life that is lost when you move from “in town” to the suburbs, or as we say in Atlanta, “outside the Perimeter.” One of the best new examples of mixed use is Johns Creek Walk  at State Bridge and Highway 141 being developed by Atlantic Realty Partners.  While of Phase 1 is still underway, the finished product will consist of a mixture of single family “Manor Homes”, townhomes, apartments and retail/restaurant space.  There are also resident amenities that include a nice pool, a 24 hour lounge/cyber cafe, meeting space and an exercise room.

Single Family Homes and Townhomes

In Phase 1, there are seventeen single family lots and currently only one Manor Home available, while two others are under construction at the mid $600k price point.  There are six unsold vacant lots still available. Thirteen of the 44 townhomes are sold.  These are Artisan and Craftsman style townhomes with sloping roof lines, stone and brick exteriors and shake accents.

Apartments

There are also 210 units of apartments, which is the first apartment development in the Johns Creek area in 10–12 years.  Local residents resist apartment buildings because of “the clientele” they attract, but the fact is that a mature real estate market needs to offer housing solutions for all segments of the economy and with the completion of the new Emory Hospital in Johns Creek and all the peripheral medical offices that are developing, there is a greater need for apartments.

Retail Space

My favorite part of Johns Creek Walk is the combination of the retail space to the residential space, which puts the “mix” in mixed use.  There are clothing, children’s and computer stores; framing and art shops, a small grocery, a real estate office and a couple restaurants and bars.  The sports bar has a TV in each booth so you can watch exactly which game you are interested in.  Plus, Johns Creek Walk is catty corner to Super H Mart  where you could easy walk to the grocery to to get your dried octopus and some kim chee. Best of all, there is a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream store which I can only hope stays open late for those end of day chocolate issues.  Image how easy it would be for a man if he lived in Johns Creek Walk with his pregnant wife.  He could walk around the corner to fulfill her ice cream craving and would be only one mile from the hospital when the moment of truth arrived. From a retailer’s perspective, the greatest thing about the retail space is that there are apartments in the back of the retail shops.  This can either be used as a “back office” or for a true apartment for someone who wanted to actually combine their work and residential space or for someone who lived further away but found it convenient to literally sleep over at the store during the week, for instance.

Crabapple

Elsewhere in North Fulton, Crabapple has a chance to become more mixed use.  I’m hopeful, but cautiously optimistic.  As part of the new Crabapple Crossing development, there is some retail planned, but nothing other than an Italian restaurant, a dry cleaners (like we need another one of those!) and a women’s fitness studio has opened.  I’m waiting for the ice cream store…or better yet, a gelato store.  Then, I’ll actually park my car and walk around, but until then I’m still just driving through.

Vickery

Just north of Alpharetta, in Cumming, is another good, new example of mixed use, the Vickery community that includes awesome parks, amenities, retail and even a YMCA.  It also has gelato! In Alpharetta, Prospect Park, which is under construction at Old Milton and GA-400 will be mixed use and the Roswell East development at Holcomb Bridge and GA-400, which is currently “in hibernation” was also proposed to be mixed use with a lot of actual office space included in the design. Mixed use is clearly a development model that is here to stay and making headway in North  Fulton.  Developers see it as a way to build higher density, which is necessary given the higher land costs and lack of any remaining large parcels of land.  Politicians like it because more new development means more tax base and mixed use potentially means less car trips.  Anything to alleviate traffic is good for politicians and the public alike.  I’d be curious to know what you think of mixed use.  Would you prefer to live in a “traditional neighborhood” or do you like the idea of being to run out for Ben and Jerry’s without the car keys?

http://www.alpharettarealestatehomes.com/0038DA