Alpharetta Real Estate Homes for Sale

The world of Real Estate Search is changing.  Two years ago, I was one of the very first Realtors in Georgia to offer my website users a map-based search engine. 

People flocked to it.  It was cutting edge at the time - and still remains the best way to search for homes online - but it is time to introduce more and better search features.

Therefore, today, I’ve started offering my website users the option of using a new search tool from an Atlanta-based company named Soft Realty. 

Click on the picture above to try a sample search or CLICK HERE to go directly to a search for Alpharetta Real Estate between $300k and $800k.

I need your feedback regarding how you like it - particularly compared to what I already have, which is pretty good,  I think.

The new solution has some advantages for me, namely that it is free, as its revenue model is ad-based.  (The solution is still in beta and no ads are showing yet, but would you mind if they were?  It would be like Zillow or Realtor dot com, that both have ads.)

For you the advantages are more features.  The current beta solution doesn’t have all the features yet, but from what I’ve seen so far, the promise of better usability and fuller features for you, the real estate searching public, is just around the corner.

As a real estate agent, I must use a third-party vendor to provide the home search feature for web clients.  There are only a handful of such providers to choose from and most of them offer solutions that are woefully inadequate.  These vendors are catering to the lowest common denominator, and I don’t want to be the LCD. 

I don’t want you, my client, to have to settle for average when we have so many ideas to make home searching better and easier.  Getting someone to implement them is the hard part; if we were allowed to do it ourselves, believe me we would.

For instance, my existing solution does not allow you to view all homes in a specified school’s attendance zone, if you can believe that.  With Soft Realty, I can do this as basic functionality. 

Basic Searchs for Alpharetta Homes by School Attendance Zone

For example, CLICK HERE to see all homes for sale in the Crabapple Crossing Elementary attendance zone (there are 94 as of today); or CLICK HERE to see all homes for sale in the Alpharetta High School attendance zone (there are 245 as of today).

My hope is that the Soft Realty solution will allow us to implement more of the features we know that you want and differentiate our search solution from the lowest common denominator agents.

For now, there is no registration required to use the solution.  I won’t know who or if you are trying it, so I’ll rely on you to contact me if (1) you like the solution and/or have some feedback; and (2), if you want to see any of the houses in person.

After all, that is the primary purpose of online search:  To find houses to actually go view.  So, when you are ready, please reach out to me - you might consider leaving a comment to this post - and let’s not be the lowest common denominator together.

Happy searching.

http://www.alpharettarealestatehomes.com/003916

After having blogged all by my lonesome for going on two years now, I thought you might be tiring of just my perspective.  It is time to broaden the message at this humble real estate blog and to that end, I’ve invited Ted Fithian from Home Town Mortgage, a local lender in Alpharetta, to contribute. 

Welcome, Ted Fithian, of Home Town Mortgage in Alpharetta

Ted’s first offering is timely now that Spring officially starts in ten days; and as Ted alludes, Spring started in the mortgage and real estate industries a little earlier this year.  Take it away, Ted, and welcome to the blogsphere.

Spring Cleaning

One of the things I enjoy most about spring time is my annual ritual of opening up the windows on a Sunday afternoon and cleaning out the junk that has accumulated in the house over the winter. There is something very therapeutic about knowing that the garbage that has been in your way all winter is gone, and now you have more room for newer, fresher and better stuff. Let’s face it; many of us enjoy a good spring cleaning because it just makes us feel better!

Now, I have yet to start on my house, but I am already feeling pretty good about the spring cleaning that has occurred in the real estate and mortgage business.

Contrary to what you might believe or have heard, things in the mortgage business are not all that bad. In fact, I think the outlook is fairly rosy and I am exited to still be in the business. Why you might ask? Well the answer is simple: The garbage has been thrown out and there is more room for the good stuff.

Over the last six months, both the mortgage, and residential real estate industries have been experiencing its own spring cleaning of sorts. We are hopefully nearing the end of a market which has cleared out about 50% of the bottom feeders that jumped in this business during the refi boom in 2002-2003 in hopes of making a quick buck or two.

We are seeing the end of those lenders who, in hopes of grabbing some market share, have quit offering mortgage loans to anyone who could fog a mirror. Can you imagine that at this time last year there were lenders out there offering stated income loans with no money down if you had a 600 or better credit score?

Borrower:  "Ok Mr. Mortgage lender, you say I need to make how much to qualify for this loan?"

Lender:  "$225,000."

Borrower:  "Oh, I made at least that much last year and I plan on making more next year, so I qualify, yeah!!!!"

Thankfully those days are gone, and I say good riddance.

So why all the joy?  As we roll into 2008 there will be about half as many realtors and mortgage lenders as there were at this time last year. What that means to the consumer is:  Those of us still in the business are more professional, harder working, and probably smarter than those that have not been able to sustain.

For those of us in the business it means less competition, a more traditional market, and hopefully a more professional environment in which to work. Everyone wins. In fact, after I finish cleaning the house, I think I will go start on my garage. That makes me feel better too!

Ted Fithian, Home Town Mortgage 

Thanks, Ted, for joining me and I look forward to your contributions around mortgage issues that affect buyers in Alpharetta and the rest of North Fulton.  To your point about the "weeding out" of the mortgage and real estate businesses, according to the National Association of Realtors, between 2006 and 2007, almost 20,000 realtors hung up their licenses.  These people are now doing multi-level marketing…just joking ;->

Projections for 2008 are that there will only be about 1,000,000 realtors nationwide, down from about 1,350,000 in 2006.  That is a 25% drop, definitely some good spring cleaning!

Of the national real estate franchises, according to REAL Trends, every one is down between December 2006 and December 2007 except Keller Williams.

Company	Dec 2006	Dec 2007	Change
Keller Williams	77,210	29,643	2,433
Prudential	70,450	69,990	-550
Re/Max	119,459	115,858	-3,601
Century 21	146,070	139,895	-6,175
Coldwell Banker	123,730	116,812	-6,918

Given what is going on in the market, like Ted, I feel pretty good.  Our business grew last year and we project it to grow again this year even in this "down" market.  I love to clean house, just ask my wife!

http://www.alpharettarealestatehomes.com/003909

Growing up, I listened to a lot of Elton John and one of the songs that sticks in my head is “The King Must Die."  No where is this more true than in real estate:  reign on the industry is still held by the Multiple Listing Service.  How much longer is that going to last?  Is it blasphamy to say that the MLS will (must) die? If anyone from the MLS reads this blog, will they deactivate my account? Jim Cronin writes:  [Because of blogging] hundreds of thousands of voices can question the leadership, decisions, policies, management and opinions of those above and beside them. These voices can and will be heard whether anonymously, individually or collectively.  Accountability is now the highest priority for those that took their power for granted.  The NAR can be questioned, MLS’s can be questioned, large brokerages can be questioned, top producers can be questioned, the questioners, questioned. Read Jim’s entire post that discusses how the power that was once found in controling information is now slipping away to the masses (who now have individual voices online facilitated by blogs).  In real estate, that power originally was in the form of those phonebook sized MLS books that the realtor dropped by for you to dogear over a weekend.  Now that power is locked up with the useid and password of your realtor’s MLS account.  In Atlanta, we have two competing Multiple Listing Services:  the First MLS and the Georgia MLS.  The First MLS charges agents on both sides of the transaction a fee of .12% (that’s point one two percent) of the sales price.  If you do the math, that is $480 on a $400,00 sale, times two.  Georgia MLS doesn’t charge a transaction fee.  Rather it charges a monthly subcription fee of $17 or so per agent. The FMLS does not have a public web site where non-licensed people can search for homes.  The only way to “see” FMLS data is via an agent’s website where they allow you to “search the entire MLS” through an arrangement call broker reciprosity. Georgia MLS does have a public web site, http://www.atlantamls.com/, which is ok, but it doesn’t show the street addresses, so it has limited usefulness. But here is the big question:  Why do we have “private” websites and systems for house listings when technically it is very easy to create a database and serve webpages to home buyers. Here is the second big question:  Why do realtors continue to tolerate the high fees with FMLS, the dominant mls in metro atlanta? The answer to both questions, of course, is M-O-N-E-Y.  There is a tangled web of payments of fees back to the brokers from FLMS.  Agents still want to hang onto web access to house listing as a hook to get leads to their websites (me included!).  Conflict of interest; heads in the sand, inertia, luddites?  Name your poison.   But I’m not sure it is a huge stretch to imagine a world where home listings are wrestled from the hands of the brokers and entrusted to the “public domain."  The question then becomes how do you monitize it - and even more important to all those licensed real estate professionals is how they monitize their licenses.

http://www.alpharettarealestatehomes.com/00384B