I’m catching up on e-mail after a nice long week vacation and an article regarding low interest rates stops me in my tracks.  According to Inman News, mortgage rates have hit historical lows since 1971.

Rates for 15-year fixed-rate mortgages are 4.04 percent for those of you thinking of refinancing! For all of the sales agents out there, this information is key to helping you show the affordability of home ownership. With developers offering significant price reductions and with the right financing – now is the time to buy.

Even though the Federal Housing Tax Credit program is a distant memory, there are still many opportunities for buyers to take advantage of in this marketplace.  There are several new construction town home and condominium projects with a handful of homes remaining in their inventory, and developers are offering amazing deals in order to closeout these projects.

For instance, Grinnell, located in Inman Park, has a 2-bedroom/2-bath home discounted by $69,000.  Just up the road, LaVista Walk has just 2 remaining townhomes with amazing price discounts.  Kirkwood Station, located in the historic Kirkwood area, has only a few townhomes remaining that start from $249,900.  For a buyer who wants to be in the heart of Decatur, The Artisan has 4 remaining 3-bedroom condos with close out pricing up to $160,000 off original pricing.  And the deals are not limited to inside the perimeter area. Highgate at Sandy Springs have 3-bedroom homes available starting from $119,900!

Now is the time to take advantage of developers who are in the position to close out their remaining inventory and offer amazing values, as these prices may not last. This week’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, “Home prices, sales continue to rise,” reported that both the median sale price and the number of homes sold increased in Atlanta in May from the month before and the year before.

As we approach the mid-point of 2010, I recently took the opportunity to sit down with Susie Proffitt of The Florida Home Show and Atlanta’s Best New Homes to talk about how our company, our clients and consumers responded to the real estate market during the last 18 months.  

Though economic factors continued to impact the industry and create apprehensions and obstacles for potential home buyers, many of our diverse developer, bank and institutional clients were still able to buck trends and increase qualified traffic and, more importantly, sales.  In the below video, Susie and I discuss how NRT Development Advisors helped them to do so by creating and executing innovative, results-driven marketing and sales strategies, including repositioning, partnerships, events, social media outreach and more.

I invite you to take a few minutes to watch the below video (by clicking on the image), which offers insight regarding how to approach the current market and includes video of the beautiful homes we have the privilege of representing.

Now that the April 30^th tax credit deadline has passed, many of us real estate professionals are anxious to see what the immediate future holds.  Will buyers continue to be excited about the incentives offered by homeownership or will they wait to see what the government will do next? 

Fortunately, the tax credit didn’t seem to sway many buyers one way or the other, especially not like it did the first time in November of 2009.  The main buying decision this season was price.  And developers and builders have realized this.  Now, more than ever, pricing is competitive and buyers are eager to take advantage of these steals.  It’s cliché, but with interest rates threatening to rise, buyers who want to take advantage of this “buyer’s market” are eager to do so right now! 

 Many buyers believe the market is stabilizing and their confidence in their buying decision is growing.  According to a Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services survey found in an article on Yahoo News , consumers are “optimistic about real estate values, with 46% expecting prices in their area to increase over the next year”.  This same survey showed that among the list of buyers concerns, the tax credits ranked the lowest, with rising mortgage interest rates, unemployment, and stricter lending guidelines being the highest. 

There is no doubt the tax credit helped to stimulate the real estate market, but we are hopeful that consumer confidence in real estate continues to rise and that this consumer confidence in the economy as a whole will prove a stable real estate market is near.  Once that stable market has proven to be here with employment on the rise, affordable housing prices, and rising interest rates, we hope to see a boom in the sales for the summer 2010.  I don’t have a crystal ball, but it seems we’re moving in the right direction!

One-third of U.S. consumers polled this week by Gallop indicated that they believe home prices would rise in the next 12 months.  And the recent Standard & Poor’s/Case Shiller home price index backs up this sentiment, as it reported the eighth consecutive monthly increase in home prices.  Yet analysts predict that home prices might fall again during the second half of 2010.

So how do you determine a home’s value during such an inconsistent market?  That’s a big question that NRT Development Advisors regularly receives when counseling clients about home pricing strategies.  Our answer: Comps.

Comps allow sellers and buyers to compare “apples to apples” and determine the price of what such a home   could realistically sell for in the current market.

Below are the top five factors you should consider when selecting comps:

• Size – This includes the number of bedrooms and baths, additional rooms such as a study or playroom, number of garages and lot size.
• Square footage – Cost per square foot is an important measure in determining a home’s value. For example, if your home’s value per square foot is $250 and the average per square foot of nearby similar recently sold homes is $275, it shows that your home is valued less per square foot than nearby similar homes.
• Features –Look for the presence or absence of similar characteristics, such as chimneys, decks, walk-in closets and oversized bathtubs. And don’t forget about energy-efficient upgrades, including appliances and insulation.
• Exterior features – This includes brick, siding, gables and more.  Brick homes are typically worth more than homes constructed with other materials.
• Foundation – Is the home built on a basement or slab?  Homes on a basement are typically valued higher because there is more room for expansion.

By analyzing the current listing prices of competition and final prices of recent comparative closings, sellers can appropriately price their homes to make them an attractive option, and buyers can know that they’re getting a fair deal on a purchase.

In today’s economy, everyone seems to be focused on price. You can’t open the newspaper, your mail or your e-mail without being bombarded with the deal of the day, the month and, in some cases, the deal of a lifetime.

And no other industry has been more impacted by the focus on price than real estate. Which I find funny, actually, because since the beginning of time, the 3 most important evaluation criteria for a real estate property have always been location, location, location.

While location continues to be a critically important aspect of the successful marketing of a property, an overwhelming percent of today’s buyers are shopping price first and neighborhood second. People on the hunt for deals are crisscrossing cities to find the “right priced home.”

But a competitively priced property alone will not make the sale. While this may sound contradicting it is actually at the heart of selling any product.

The reason revolves around the need for products to have an equitable price-value relationship. Whether it is real or perceived, the relationship must be equitable or the sale will not close.

It is only when value is perceived to equal to or greater than price that the consumer begins to buy. The absolute price doesn’t really matter in this equation. This is not about affordability. It is more about reasonable, sound and understandable value.

For instance, NRT Development Advisors helped The Stacks promote a sale on one of the community’s studio homes.  The attractive price point helped to bring qualified buyers to The Stacks, and the studio quickly sold.  But it wasn’t price alone that sealed the deal, as other nearby communities were selling larger homes at lower prices.  The Stacks team helped the buyer to see the studio’s full value that was included in the price, which included lower HOA dues, a stabled and established Homeowners Association, a strong sense of community among the current homeowners at The Stacks, walkability to restaurants, true loft living with original brick walls and more.

First and foremost, the purchaser must understand what’s inside the deal. It is only then that value can be assessed. It is for this reason that it is critical for any sale to fully explain what is included in deal including the location advantages.

Happy new year!

We are proud to share this exciting company news with you.  Based on our 2009 success, we are well positioned in 2010 to be the region’s new homes real estate sales and marketing leader.  The following is just a highlight of our accomplishments:

• During 2009, NRT Development Advisors lead the market in the implementation of creative repositioning strategies for developer clients with new construction communities, resulting in immediate increases in qualified traffic and closings.
• We successfully created an innovative sales and marketing platform for bank-owned new construction homes, achieving more than $125 million in sales.
• The company has expanded its territory to cover Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington, D.C. due to client demand.  
• We surpassed our 2008 sales in 2009.
• The company attained the status of #1 New Home Real Estate Company in Atlanta for all property types, as well as for Multi-family Sales according to Trend Graphics (which is based on FMLS data).  

Our ability to offer the highest level of resources and talent from a specialized team of new home professionals – as well as the industry insight and connections due to our partnerships within Coldwell Banker, NRT and Realogy Corporation – helped to expand our list of developer and bank clients, services and territory.  
 

It’s rewarding to work for a company that is an exception to the rule in such a challenging economy, as our 2009 success has lead to 2010 growth.  In the past year, NRT Development Advisors worked with real estate developers, investors and financial institutions to develop creative sales and marketing strategies that resulted in large volumes of homes being sold, while still preserving the integrity of developments and neighborhoods, and clients have tapped us to duplicate these success stories in other markets this year.

Below are some quotes that are perfect for the New Year and are written by famous people, past and present.  Enjoy using these to inspire you to not cast your goals and resolutions by the wayside.

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to. ~Bill Vaughn

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. ~Benjamin Franklin

The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months! ~Edward Payson Powell

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. ~Oprah Winfrey

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day. ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Happy New Year to everyone!

Value is a word we hear frequently today. In today’s economy it is being used by marketers to draw us to their product.

 Value is a word that we learn early in our lives. As toddlers we are fascinated by the clinking sound of coins as they hit the belly of our new piggy banks and quickly learn to distinguish the differences in coins. At a young age we learn to distinguish the value of numbers; we quickly learn to value our food, our parents, our pacifiers, our toys.

Then, as the circle of our lives expands we learn to value more.

 Yet, this word continues to perplex and challenge us throughout our lives. As people we value our health, our family, our religious beliefs, our marriage, our friends, our country, our freedom, our cities and communities, our neighbors, our home teams, our homes, our safety, our abilities, our jobs, our time off, our vacations, our investments, our pride, our privacy, in short…our lives!

 At some point most of us come to realize that sometimes we must choose among the things we value most and making choices can be difficult.

 The reality of having to make choices, when looking for a home hit me like a ton of bricks when I moved back to Atlanta in 1991. I wanted to live in a certain neighborhood but I wanted a home that was in another.

When I reconciled the neighborhood issue then other value questions arose. I wanted the kitchen of one house, the garage of another, the backyard of a third, for the price of the fourth!

 When looking for a home it is important that you clearly understand what you value the most. Make a list of your priorities and communicate this to your agent.

You should distinguish “wants” from “needs” when looking at houses and rank them in importance and then look for a home with the most important features that are “needed”.

 It’s fine to want it all, but be clear with yourself regarding what you value most and what as a buyer you actual need.

There are a variety of homes on the market and you should not feel the need to settle.

Take advantage of the great value of buying a home today.