The Midtown Alliance, the organization guiding Midtown’s renaissance since the 1970’s, is spearheading a number of new projects, outlined in the link below: 

http://www.midtownalliance.org/Streetscape%20Update.pdf  

One example is the $4.1 million Juniper Street Streetscape project, slated to begin construction in early 2012.  Local planning, architecture, and landscape architecture firm Tunnell-Spangler-Walsh  was retained to design the scheme.  According to details on the firm’s website  “the plan…includes transit improvements, traffic calming, and traffic flow changes that will transform the street from one that repels and divides to one that attracts and connects.”

 (http://www.tunspan.com/cutsheets/urban_streetscapes/Juniper_Street.pdf )

Physical enhancements in connectivity improve resident quality of life, assist in local business attraction and retention, facilitate job creation, and ultimately, drive housing demand.

As a real estate professional, this is great information to share with prospective homebuyers, as investments in the future help us all to focus on the long-term vision, as opposed to short-term economic challenges. 

On another note, yesterday’s Atlanta Real Estate Summit, sponsored by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, The Atlanta Board of Realtors, and RealValuator,  covered lots of territory and at times encouraged and expressed divergent opinions about the state of the national and local housing market.   One thing no one disputed, however, was the continued decrease of in-town new construction housing inventory.  Real estate is not only local, but hyper-local.    

As real estate professionals, it’s our job to stay informed about the conditions in each of the sub-markets in which we operate.  In doing so, we facilitate an informed and confident decision making process for our customers and clients.

Happy Holidays

From the Coldwell Banker
NRT Development Advisors
family to yours

As the holiday season begins, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their continued partnership. 

In 2011 NRT Development Advisors achieved sales milestones, received high acclaims for unique marketing tactics and increased its team of sales professionals, and we have  – our clients and partners – to thank for our continued success.

May everyone’s holiday season and the New Year be filled with much joy and happiness.  We look forward to working with you in the coming year and continuing a successful business relationship.

Lofts + Artists Tour: 170 Boulevard Avenue, SE. Enter from the gate at Boulevard. Limited parking available on the premises. Follow luminaries to The Tour tables for tickets and registration, located in the entrances of both E and H Buildings. $5 guest entry fee (cash only). Profits benefit Wilderness Works/City Camps and The Grant Park Co-operative Pre-School.

Special Bonus: In addition, we will also offer special guided tours of the Historic Fulton Bag & Cotton Mill complex lead by Bamby Ray, Historic Preservation Consultant along with a representative of the Atlanta Preservation Center. The guided tours will be offered on Saturday, December 3. This special bonus lasts approximately sixty minutes. The guided tours will be conducted at 12:30 and 2:00 and are free, but reservations are required. Please email interest along with preferred time and number of guests to stackshistorytour@gmail.com. Your reservation and time will be confirmed back to you by our historic tour coordinator, Virginia Harris. Reservations are limited to 25 per group and will be handled on a first-come, first-served basis.

It’s hard to believe, but there are only 55 days left in 2011!  With November sales off to a great start, NRT Development Advisor’s sales agents are using these 55 days to maximize their sales success story for 2011 and ride into 2012 on a wave of positive momentum.

We think we are in for a different fall and winter than what the real estate market typically experiences, due to reduced levels of customer traffic and, therefore, decreased sales activity.   Lawrence Yun,  NAR chief economist, said the market has been stable although at low levels, and there is plenty of room for improvement. “Affordability conditions have improved to historic highs and more creditworthy borrowers are trying to purchase homes. The volume of successful buyers is higher than a year ago and is remaining fairly stable – this speaks to an unfulfilled demand.” We are feeling this positive trend!

NRT Development Advisors’ agents are busy setting personal sales goal for the remaining 55 days of 2011, and we’re ready to enlist all necessary resources to help get them there. They are diligently:

 •    Revisiting their existing customer databases and setting daily outreach goals to encourage past prospects to rediscover the communities that the agents represent. 

•    Calling the top 20 coop agents who have sold at their communities and providing them with an update on sales, commission schedules and any new incentives, as well as inquiring about the buyers with whom they are currently working. 

•    Making sure that each prospect has a distinct action and follow up plan.

•    Networking with fellow NRT Development Advisors and Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage colleagues and requesting that they refer prospects to your community, when appropriate.

•     Reanalyzing if their community’s pricing product, and positioning are competitive within the market. 

There are plenty of buyers out there looking to find a NEW home for the holidays.  Our agents are staying proactive and ahead of the market, ensuring that the last 55 days of the year are the most productive yet.

Just Click Here to Preview!

During our event on October 5, 2011, we will give an overview of the BeltLine project and the downpayment assistance program, answer all any questions surrounding the use of the program, and lead a tour of eligible, currently available homes in White Provision. Light refreshments will be provided.

 The event will take place from 6-8 p.m. and is free and open to the general public, including potential home buyers, home owners, real estate agents, and the media. The goal of this event is to help homebuyers achieve their goals of homeownership through the gift of Atlanta BeltLine downpayment assistance. The presentation will take place in the penthouse of White Provision, located  1100 Howell Mill Roadfollowed by a tour of homes in the building.

RSVPs are requested to Leslie at 404.705.1584 or Leslie.Williamson@nrtda.com.  For more information on the downpayment assistance program and for a full list of eligible condo developments, please visit http://homes.beltline.org.

Over the past year, NRTDA has worked with several national banks to oversee all aspects of listing, selling and closing residential lots in 15 states across the U.S. Lots range in size from one-tenth of an acre to more than 35 acres in neighborhoods including Blue Valley, Echelon, Middleton Plantation and Traditions, and are priced from $1,500 to $700,000.

Brad Horner, president of NRTDA, says that his company hand selected 100 local real estate sales associates who are experts in REO lots and have a minimum of three years experience to help market and sell the disposition lots. “The main challenge of selling disposition lots is the fact that the majority of these properties have been sitting on the market because of incorrect pricing,” says Horner.

“All of our agents are responsible for compiling a strong market profile and suggesting a new list price for the bank in order for their assigned lot to sell within 30-90 days.”

Horner says due to current financing restrictions, 98% of the buyers are paying cash. The majority of the buyers are either single-family homebuilders buying several lots in specific neighborhoods, or end users who purchase a lot to eventually build a home. “The prices on these lots are so affordable that we’ve seen dual offer situations,” says Horner. “Buyers are coming off the sidelines to get what they consider a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to purchase in areas that they thought they’d never be able to afford.

Google experienced a 5% drop in market share since last year, so it has recently made changes to how websites are ranked on its site. Through the latest Google Panda update, more weight is now given to sites that have relevant, quality content. Some of the relevant content that Google is looking for comes from blogs, social media and video.

What is Google Panda? It is a filter that is designed to identify what Google believes to be ‘low quality pages’. If there are too many low quality pages, the Panda filter effectively flags the site. Panda gives a site-wide penalty, not a page penalty. So if a certain percentage of your pages fall below Panda’s quality algorithm, then the whole site suffers. The biggest mistakes are:

1. Lack of original content page to page
2. Pages with empty content
3. Overlapping and redundant articles
4. Too many ads

So what can you do to increase your internet exposure? Fresh material for your website, (property) videos, (resident) testimonials, usage and linkage to social media sites will all aid to increase your organic search positioning with Google. Fresh content should be added on a regular basis.

 Here are a few examples of how NRTDA is using relevant, quality content for our developments:

 Tribute Lofts Blog

Gallery Residences Resident Video

1010 Midtown Links to Facebook 

Want to know more? Read here and here.

For July, the sale of single-family homes experienced a 17% year-over-year increase and a 19% increase for condos and townhouses. Here at NRTDA, we experienced our own successful July with strong sales of distressed single-family homes in the suburbs, townhouses in Buckhead and condos in Midtown Atlanta.

With July’s success behind us, the real estate market has wondered what would happen next because of the credit downgrade. This week, mortgage rates have dropped to or near all-time lows as investors moved money into safer bonds and mortgage backed securities that fund most home loans.

Yes, there are buyers who have now called off their search completely since they would need to sell stocks for a down payment. However, we are also hearing stories of buyers who have decided to stay the course because rates are so low. Real estate as a long-term investment remains attractive to many, even right now.

So how will you capture these buyers? Because supply still outpaces demand, make sure you pay attention to the fundamentals of the 4 P’s: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.  

Questions to consider:

• How does my product look to potential buyers?
• How competitively am I priced?
• How is my location? Do I need to make an adjustment for the location?
• How am I getting the most reach for my marketing dollars?

Based on your goals to sell, you may need to make adjustments to your sales and marketing strategy to reach those buyers that are still in the market. But don’t delay or you will lose out to your competition.