Luxurious Entry Level Homes?

I was out today with a client looking at entry level homes. One of the homes we looked at turned out to be a seemingly under-priced townhome. This wasn't of interest to my client, but it did have some interest for me. But, it got me thinking... (regular readers will recognize the danger here)

This was a most entry of entry level properties. Listed at only $113k in an area where the other similar properties seemed to be listed around $140k-$150k. But, it had needs. It needed carpet or other flooring, paint EVERYWHERE, and all of the appliances.

The problem would be that most of my contractor connections are used to doing higher end properties. The kitchen counters needed to be replaced, and using my people would make solid surface (like Corian) about the same price as a laminate (like Formica). Stainless Steel Appliances aren't much different in price than enameled. Wood floors would cost a little more than carpet for the main floor, but not that much.

So, since we've wandered all over the place, perhaps I should move towards the point. Since I spend WAY too much time in houses I can't afford, and my tastes have moved in that direction, am I too far out of touch? Or, simply, would entry level buyers want the similar fixtures and surfaces?

Let's try to keep pricing out of the equation. Assuming that two homes are prices similarly, and one is carpeted, would one with wood floors sell more quickly?

If one home has Stainless appliances that are a bit more expensive, would that home sell faster than one with black appliances?

Would buyers buy a home with oiled bronze or other higher end looking fixtures before a home with builder grade fixtures?

I'd really like to know. Do these higher-end touches appeal to buyers at all levels? I'd love your comments.

7000 SF Log Home on Lake Lanier

I've been wanting to post about this property for a LONG time. It isn't my listing, but I know the sellers, and it is a fabulous home for the right people.

If you are looking for a unique home on Lake Lanier, this might be it. It is a Hearthstone Log Home, with over 7000 square feet on three levels. It also has several acres and several hundred feet of corps line frontage. It is almost like having your own deep woods lodge on the lake. The dock is nestled into a private cove, and a gentle walk down from the house.

There are 5 bedroom and 5 baths. Not only is the master suite on the main, but there is a guest suite there as well. There is also a nice sitting area between the upstairs bedrooms. The sitting area overlooks the two story great room. Without a doubt, this is a stunning home and property.

It is only a few minutes from Gainesville, and convenient to the northern suburbs. It is quite close to Brown's Bridge.

The home is currently listed for $1,995,000.

If you are interested, please give me a call. As I mentioned, this isn't my listing, but I have been to the house a number of times. I know the sellers, and they had this home custom built and have maintained it to a level that will even amaze your home inspector.

Cool Toys and Ideas for the Garage

Since I am an admitted garage guy, I obviously like the toys that go into a cool garage.

OK, the ultimate garage toy is a really cool ride. Street rods, sports cars, racers, Jeeps, 4x4s, even boats and other things are the ultimate garage accessories. But, what goes into make a cool garage aside from the rides?

If you are a builder, the lots of electrical outlets are the first order of business. Fabricators will often have several things going at the same time, and have various tools in various work stations around the garage. This would also include 220V outlets for welders and air compressors and plasma cutters. The next thing is closed storage. While shelves are a must, having closed shelving is MUCH better. Not only does everything look neater (because you can't see it) but it stays cleaner. All of the dust from grinding and working stay out of the shelving. Finally, EVERYTHING needs to be off the floor, or on rollers. This makes clean-up a much faster and more efficient process. Break out the air hose and blow it out.

For those that do heavy duty building, floor coatings like epoxy aren't that good. Welder slag and plasma slag will burn the coating and take it back to ugly. Tiles are not good for the same reasons, especially the plastic snap in tiles.

Light work/display/detailing garages go better with industrial coatings like epoxy. The snap tiles, like Racedeck are also great in these garages. It is still good to keep everything off of the floor for clean-up. The only real drawback of plastic tiles is that they don't do well with heavy loads like big tool boxes and jackstands. One cool thing I have seen done for jackstands is to weld a flat piece of metal to the bottom, and then coat it with Rhinolining. This cushions it for plastic tiles, and will keep the stands from scratching epoxies.

For a true display bay, go wild. Theme it. I ran across a house with a faux marble floor in the garage. Since the house looked like an Italian Villa, it fit perfectly. The Alfa-Romeos and Ferraris were quite at home with this setting. Similarly, I ran across a detached garage that looked like a 1950s service station. It had glass roll-up doors and fit the street rods perfectly. Lots of neon and chrome were there as well.

Tool storage is another area that we always need to go after. I have LOTS of tools. Aside from the big things (welder, band saw, plasma cutter, drill press, etc.) there are loads of sockets and hand tools, as well as small power tools. Keeping them organized and handy is always a challenge. These are great little racks for sockets other stuff and they can allow a lot of stuff to be in a small area, but still fully organized. Of course, there are lots of great boxes and other tool storage things that are good to have around. Aside from traditional boxes, going to full on tool cabinetry is a great way to make the garage look worthy of a high dollar race team. If given an unlimited budget, these are a great choice. Coming back down to earth, using several rolling boxes is a great alternative. This also makes it easier to move them around when needs change.

Whatever you do, make it work for you. You'll find that your garage can look better, hold more stuff, and increase the value of your home.

Are there just too many real estate agents?

OK, stick with me here for a few minutes. I think this is becoming a more valid question. Looking at the most recent numbers I could find in a quick internet search, I found that there were over 1.3 million REALTORs (as of November 2006), and that doesn't count the ones that aren't NAR members.

And, those agents averaged 12 sides per year. Link to source here. Their average income was about $49,000. I chose this source for this, since it didn't normalize for a mythical 40 hour week. In reading a little background, I ran across a NAR paper that showed membership to be around 1 million members in 2004. If that is the case, there was almost a 30% increase in our ranks in under 2 years.

In other reading, I'v heard that 80% of agents fail and drop out in their first year, and that 80% of the remaining agents drop out in the next 4 years. That means that 96% of new agents are out of the business in 5 years. This tells me a few things. The first thing it tells me is that agents are not prepared to be in the market when they become licensed. They are obviously not trained on how to run a business. And, I would guess that a lot of them aren't that well trained to do their jobs, either... there simply isn't enough time.

I think that this is one of the main reasons we have such a low opinion with the general public. Look from their perspective. They had a very good chance of dealing with an agent that didn't have enough training to handle their needs, or be able to efficiently run their own business. Face it, how many times have all of us dealt with an agent that just wasn't making it? Further, how many times have each of us had to step in and make sure that the other agents job got done so that we could get paid? But, the point remains that there are too many agents that don't have experience, support, or training. Some are just plain dumb... not nice to say, but we've all dealt with at least one.

I think that there are a couple of things that need to be done to address this. The one that I don't like is that the various states could make licensing more difficult. I don't like that because I am a libertarian and dislike the government taking too much of a role in my business. What I DO like is the NAR making membership more stringent. I've said it before. Perhaps there should be an apprentice period with required training in order to be a member. I like that better, because the NAR is a private organization, and it would allow REALTORs to really be set apart from non-member agents.

Doing something along this line would make being a REALTOR more valuable, as well as deliver a better quality experience to our clients by making those that do become REALTORs better trained before dealing with their own clients.

Being a REALTOR shouldn't be something that can be done on a whim with no real experience.

Cobb County places restrictions on number of adults in single family homes

I just saw a clip on Fox News (please don't whine about the source) that Cobb County has passed a new regulation limiting the number of adults living in a home. The basic restriction is that there needs to be 390 square feet for each adult. They also limited the number of unrelated adults in a particular household to two.

The Cobb County Commission says this is the keep property values higher by reducing stacking and de facto rooming houses in the county. Some activists are complaining that this is aimed at latinos and illegal aliens.

We'll see how long it takes for a court case to be filed. I'm curious which way this will sort out, and the effect for other communities that may consider similar regulation. The libertarian in me thinks that if people want to be stacked like cord-wood in their own homes, they should be able to. The homeowner in me would be pretty ticked if there were 8 adults living next door and parking all over the neighborhood because they didn't have enough space.

DeKalb County Limited Building Moratorium

I just received this from Jenna Graber, the DeKalb Association of REALTORS PR person. It was forwarded from the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association. Quoted as follows:

On Tuesday, July 24, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners adopted a 30-day moratorium on the issuance of certificates of appropriateness, land disturbance and building permits respectively for non-conforming multiple lots of record held in common ownership. The moratorium only impacts these properties and does not prevent a landowner from rezoning land. The county will seek to amend this process so newly created lots are not smaller than those currently allowed in the existing zoning ordinance. This measure was taken to address inf ill development in older communities where larger non-conforming lots were being subdivided to create multiple homes. According to Commissioner Jeff Radar, the County does not plan on extending the moratorium beyond 30-days. For a copy of the ordinance, please contact Leroy Sutton at 678-775-1473 or via email at lsutton@atlantahomebuilders.com or Chris Burke at cburke@atlantahomebuilders.com.

Chris Burke,
VP, Government Affairs

For those of you that weren't aware, there has been a lot of chatter and activity in DeKalb County about "infill." Infill is the increasing the number of homes in an area, either by building on previously unused areas in established subdivisions, or by breaking up a larger lot into smaller lots and increasing density. Of course, there are two sides to the coin. Those in favor of infill (especially builders and some residents with larger lots) cite that there is a shortage of housing closer in to town. They also point out the increased value of surrounding properties as newer (and often, bigger) homes come into the area. On the other side of the issue, many homeowners argue that services and infrastructure are already stretched in many areas. Increased load on water, sewer and roads devalue their property.

I can understand and appreciate both sides of the issue, and think it DOES merit closer inspection on an area by area basis. Some of the corridors that have had increased infill are well able to handle at least the traffic loads (I'm not going into the sewer to see how that is coming along). Other areas can't deal with the traffic they have, and increasing it would be VERY damaging. Further, some can't support more or bigger roads.

DisneyWorld Bargain Strategy

OK, I've already told everyone that Moab, UT is my happy place. But, there is another place that I really enjoy with my family. DisneyWorld.

I will be the first person to admit that Walt Disney World (WDW) is not a cheap place to take the family for vacation, but that doesn't mean that one can't maximize their value from the experience. Although I'm certainly FAR from being a local, and there are plenty of people that have been there more than we have, I thouth I would pass along a few tips that we've picked up from our WDW travels. Although I don't want to turn this post into a link extravaganza, there will be a few more links coming.

Some of you might be familiar with the DVC or Disney Vacation Club. It is Disney's version of a timeshare. Even though we have thought about buying into it, we haven't, but that doesn't mean that we can't take advantage of it to get a better deal. The way we take advantage of it is to rent points from a DVC member. There is a resource called DISboards that is a great place to find point rental opportunities. DVC members buy points that they can use each year for Disney trips. If they have more points than they can use in a particular time frame, they can rent out those point to third parties. While the points can be used at almost every Disney resort, there are specific properties that are DVC Properties. A DVC member, or point renter will get a lot more bang for the buck at these resorts. Generally, the DVC resorts are on par with Disney's Luxury Resorts. In fact, several are on the same properties. Those are: Animal Kingdom Villas, Beach Club Villas, Boardwalk Villas, Wilderness Lodge Villas. There are also Old Key West and Saratoga Springs, which are primarily DVC properties. You might also notice that these are listed by Disney Travel as "Home away from Home" resorts. All of the DVC properties have a kitchen or kitchenette. Some of the larger ones also have their own laundry facilities, too. There are Studio, One Bedroom, Two Bedroom and Three Bedroom villas available.

But, where is the deal?

On our last trip, we stayed at the Boardwalk Villas. We were in a studio. We went during the Adventure Season, so the room was 9 points per night Sun-Thurs, and 20 points for Fri-Sat. We arrived on Sunday, and left on Saturday, so we used 65 points. We were able to find points for $8 each, so the room for the week was $520 for 6 nights. That averages out to under $87/night. At that time, they were offering Value Resorts (the All-Star Resorts) for $89/night, and the Moderate Resorts were $119/night. Luxury Resorts were starting at $179/night. Had we booked our room through Disney, it would have been $349/night. I think we did OK. Here is a point chart. Last night I ran across points for August for $6ea. That means that one could stay in the same room for $66/night Sun-Thurs, and $156/night Fri or Sat. The only difference that you will notice is that the rooms do not get daily maid service. If you are there less than 4 days, you won't have any maid service. If you are there longer, you will get a maid visit after each four days.

The next strategy is with tickets. If you plan on going again, you might look at No Expiration Tickets. They are a little more, but they are good forever. Additional days don't cost that much, so the more you buy, the cheaper it is per day. I also recommend the Park Hopper Tickets. we like to visit different parks at different times of the day... like the Japanese Pavilion in Epcot for a Sushi Dinner.

Speaking of food... there is a fairly new dining plan available. It only became available for DVC stays since our last visit. Basically, it allows each person to get One Sit Down Meal, One Counter Meal and One Snack per night of stay. They don't have to be used each day. It costs under $40/night/person to add on. While it seems kind of pricey, it isn't that bad compared to paying Disney prices for food, and the Sit Down meal can often be a Character Dining experience. Make reservations and maximize your dining dollars. And remember, the Disney Calories are FREE. I keep telling myself that... and I tend to walk about 15 miles per day while we are there.

Another GREAT source for info is AllEars. Wander around the web, and see what sort of deals you can find. The AllEars Newsletter often has ticket discounts that aren't otherwise available.

Enjoy.