by Parker

IS ATLANTA A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE? LIVING IN ATLANTA PROS AND CONS

 

So is Atlanta a good place to live? Well I think so! We’re going to talk about the pros and cons of living in Atlanta.

Number one- Atlantans are friendly! You may feel a little awkward the first time a complete stranger smiles at you and waves at you, but that’s how it is here. It’s a very friendly environment, and people are genuinely curious about who you are and where you’re from and your life story.

Your neighbors will invite you over for dinner. It may seem a little strange at first how friendly people are, but you’ll get used to it pretty quick.

Pro number two: Atlanta’s cost of living. Atlanta has a much lower cost of living than many other metropolitan areas around the United States. If you go to Nerd Wallet’s cost of living calculator, you can put in your current city and income and see how it compares with Atlanta. In this case I’m checking out Los Angeles, and you can see that Atlanta is 30 percent less expensive and housing in particular is 56 percent less expensive in Atlanta.

Nerd Wallet’s cost of living calculator is a great tool if you’re interested in comparing your current situation with what life would be like if you move to Atlanta.

Pro number three:  travel.  Atlanta is a great place to live if you love to travel! Most Atlantans probably take it for granted, but we’re spoiled by having one of the busiest airports in the United States and you can get to almost any place in the world non-stop from Atlanta’s international airport. Add to that you’re less than two hours from the lovely Blue Ridge mountains in North Georgia, or you can hop in the car and head down to the Atlantic Ocean, and you’ll be on the beach in less than five hours!

Pro number four:  job opportunities. If you’re looking for great job opportunities, Atlanta is the home to many fortune 500 companies, including Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Home Depot and UPS.  Atlanta has also become a center for high-tech investment from companies like Microsoft and Google. Georgia Tech has a small business incubator which has done a tremendous job bringing high-tech industries to Atlanta.

You may not realize this, but so many films and television shows are produced in Georgia that is now called the Hollywood of the South. Every week when I’m driving around town, I see film production sets film and tv production.

In Atlanta healthcare is also big business. In fact, four of our top ten employers in Atlanta are in the healthcare sector. Right now all of these hospitals are aggressively recruiting doctors and nurses and they’re paying big signing bonuses. So, if you’re looking for great job opportunities Atlanta is the place to be.

Pro number five:  the weather! The weather here is really enjoyable – for most of the year it gets a hot in July and August, and gets a little cold in January. But for most of the year, the weather’s pretty fantastic. It’s very easy to get outside and do outdoor activities pretty much year round.

Pro number six:  there’s lots of things to do in Atlanta.  As I said the great weather makes it very easy to get outside and enjoy yourself whether you like hiking, biking, tennis, golf.  You can do those activities pretty much year round. The Chattahoochee River is a great recreational resource. We love to go tubing there every summer, and one of our other favorite things to do is to visit what we call dog island, where all the dog owners bring their pups to splash around and play in the river.

If you’re a gardening aficionado, you’re going to love the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.  They have an indoor rain forest, an orchid house, they have a chef’s kitchen, an edible garden and a children’s garden. They have sculptures made out of plants –  it’s really a wonderful place. If you’re into gardening and you’re into plants you’ve got to go to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

If you’d like to stay busy, whether you like professional sports leagues, sports, the opera, art museums, art festivals, the symphony, swimming, fishing, music and small clubs or large arenas, Atlanta is filled with great cultural activities. Add to that thousands of restaurants serving every kind of cuisine imaginable and I promise you you will not be hungry or bored living in Atlanta.

And finally pro number seven:  the green space. One thing you’ll notice when you see images of Georgia is that there are trees everywhere. Atlanta is a big city in an enormous forest and the city hasn’t scared off the wildlife. My backyard is like a nature special on PBS there’s bunny rabbits and foxes possums and dozens of birds including hawks and falcons – which is why we have the Atlanta hawks and the Atlanta falcons. The trees give us some great colors in the fall.

So now let’s talk about our cons. Fortunately there aren’t many cons to living in Atlanta, but I’m going to go ahead and give them to you here.

Con number one the traffic. Atlanta is notorious for having some of the worst traffic in the United States. I always tell people if you’re moving to Atlanta you really need to get a home close to where you work. I will say one thing that has improved traffic in Atlanta is the new work from home paradigm it’s really taken a good chunk of cars off the road and I think it’s made a big improvement and hopefully it will continue. But again if you’re moving to Atlanta the number one thing you can do to improve your quality of life is to live reasonably close to where you work.

Con number two: lack of mass transit. This goes hand in hand with Atlanta’s traffic problems. Atlanta’s mass transit system is called MARTA and to be honest it kind of sucks. Unfortunately MARTA wasn’t very well designed to begin with-  it uses a very large rail which requires excessively large stations unlike the lighter platforms that you see in Chicago and New York City. It also doesn’t cover much area, in fact many of the stations on the north side you actually have to drive to get to the station, which kind of defeats the point of mass transit. Atlanta is very spread out geographically and MARTA just doesn’t cover much area. So if you’re planning on making a move to Atlanta and you’re thinking you want to use mass transit, you really need to do your homework and make sure it’s going to be a viable solution for you.

Con number three:  the rain. As nice as the weather is most of the year, sometimes it can start raining and you honestly wonder if it’s ever going to stop. Atlanta actually gets much more rain than even a notoriously rainy city like Seattle. Seattle for instance averages 38 inches of rain every year Atlanta actually averages 50 inches of rain. The difference is in Seattle, it’s rainy and drizzly all the time. In Atlanta the thunderstorms pop up and you get these incredible downpours. I can’t tell you how many times i’ve been on the highway and had to pull off because I just simply couldn’t see 10 feet in front of my car because of all the rain.

I hope this gives you a little bit more insight what it’s like to live in Atlanta. It’s a lovely town – friendly people, great cultural activities, so much to do, wonderful weather. It’s just a terrific all-around place to live.

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 by Parker

ATLANTA GEORGIA REAL ESTATE – SEPTEMBER 2021 ATLANTA REAL ESTATE NEWS

https://youtu.be/s2aI5YeFqS8

 

Hey, this is Parker, your favorite Atlanta REALTOR. It has been a very busy few weeks for me in Atlanta, and we are definitely overdue for a new video! So, I wanted to share some quick on the ground updates about what’s going on in the Atlanta market right now. Let’s get going!

The last few weeks, I’ve had a bunch of buyers in town, and I have been all over Atlanta looking at houses. Everywhere from Midtown all the way up to Milton, Roswell, Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, and Lawrenceville. I’ve been everywhere – I can tell you right now, there are so many houses on the market in Atlanta, that have been waiting for a buyer. These are houses that have been on the market three, four, five weeks, and they’re just waiting for a good buyer. These are houses that last spring would have sold in one weekend with multiple offers. Now they’re on the market for a month, generating one offer!

So things have softened up considerably here. I’m definitely not going to say that it’s a buyer’s market by any stretch of the imagination, but it feels very balanced right now, and things are operating at a much more normal pace. So, for example, I was out with clients last week –  we were looking in town, looking at city of Decatur, and we looked at five houses, and actually came away with three really good choices that were priced very reasonably – three excellent options out of five houses that we looked at. It’s very surprising, I mean it’s probably been 17 or 18 months since I’ve seen that kind of availability, and I’m seeing this trend everywhere. It’s not just in town, like I said, Sandy Springs, Roswell, Alpharetta, Lawrenceville – it’s everywhere!

So, if you got totally spooked by all the panic buying last spring, I can assure you that is over. It’s a much more normal market now. It’s brisk, it’s very busy, but it’s not out of control – like roller coaster careening down the tracks wheels about to fall off kind of insanity, which is what it was like in the spring.

So if you’re thinking of making the move to Atlanta, now is an excellent time to be looking. I always encourage people to look in the fall – it’s an excellent time to go out and pick up some bargains. If you’re in the market, as always my phone number is down below. Feel free to give me a call, and we’ll have some more video content out later this week – thanks!

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 by Parker

BUYING A HOUSE IN ATLANTA? ATLANTA HOUSING MARKET 2021 – ATLANTA REAL ESTATE NEWS SUMMER 2021

BUYING A HOUSE IN ATLANTA? ATLANTA HOUSING MARKET 2021 – ATLANTA REAL ESTATE NEWS SUMMER 2021

 

Hey, this is Parker, your favorite Atlanta REALTOR, and I’m back with a quick update on the Atlanta housing market for August 2021. Let’s get going! Things are really starting to settle down here – there’s more inventory coming on to the market, and I expect to see more as we get into the fall, and people settle into their normal routines. I’ve got a couple of listings coming up – things are looking pretty good!

Buyer demand has also dropped in the last two months. It’s fairly normal for demand to fall in Atlanta during the summer, but what I think more importantly has happened, is that all of that excess demand – sort of the panic buying caused by Covid – has just kind of fizzled out. Houses are staying on the market longer, with fewer multiple offer situations, and a lot of the houses my team members have sold recently have just gotten one single offer. One good offer is all you need!

I’m also detecting some buyer pushback after the big run up in prices. You know, buyers have access to all of the pricing information, and if they go onto a listing, and they see that – okay, the owner just bought this house in 2019, and now it’s on the market for $250,000 more than they paid for it less than two years ago, it kind of leaves a bad taste in their mouth, and frankly, if buyers look at a house, and it the pricing just looks opportunistic, kind of like make me move type pricing, they just won’t even bother to look at it.

I’m also detecting a very slight downward price correction. We’ll obviously have to wait a couple of months to see what the true numbers are, but it feels like that’s what’s happening. If you’re in the under $300,000 first time home buyer bracket, you’re really still facing some challenges in the Atlanta market, especially if you want to live in town or somewhere inside the perimeter. But, it’s not nearly as desperate as it was just four months ago. Once you get into the $500,000 plus bracket, things are a lot more normal. Houses are sitting on the market, fewer multiple offer situations. Sometimes as I said – just a single offer to sell the house. It’s a much more normal market pace, and frankly, it’s a lot more pleasurable to work like this!

So, what does this all mean if you’re a buyer? To sum it all up:  it means you have more choices and there’s less pressure to make a snap decision on a house. It’s not like you’re walking into a house thinking oh there’s 20 other people that are trying to get this house how am i going to get it? It’s a much calmer pace in the market and frankly it works better for all parties concerned, especially if you’re a buyer. So again, if you’re interested in moving to Atlanta, please look in the box down below get my phone number send me an email I’d love to talk to you thanks!

in News / Uncategorized
 by Parker

ATLANTA HOUSING MARKET 2021 – ATLANTA REAL ESTATE NEWS SUMMER 2021

Hey this is Parker Smith – your favorite Atlanta realtor!

Here’s a quick Atlanta real estate market update for July 2021. I had a feeling at the end of May, beginning of June that the market was starting to loosen up a little bit. Additional inventory was coming on to the market, and indeed when i reviewed the numbers for June inventory was up 14. That’s huge!

So what does that mean for buyers? It means that the inventory crisis, which has been going on for over a year, has started to abate. And, this is very good news for buyers! Let’s take a quick look at some maps here that are going to illustrate this for you. This first map shows a two mile radius in North Decatur, a very popular in-town neighborhood, and this is the total number of houses that have sold in the last six months:  323. These are closed listings done deals –  323 houses.

What’s interesting is that today in the middle of July, there are almost 80 houses on the market in that exact same area. Let me show you – you can see on this map there’s almost 80 listings on the market, and what this means is that today alone, there is 25 of the total inventory that was available in the first half of the year on the market right now looking for a buyer. That’s a significant improvement. Here’s one more map that shows pending sales. These are homes that have cleared their due diligence, and are set to close typically in the next few weeks. This is another 60 houses, so if you add that to the 80 active listings, we get about 44 percent of the previous six months total either active or ready to close.

This is an incredible turnaround for the Atlanta real estate market, and it’s made things much more balanced for buyers. Homes are staying on the market longer with fewer bidding wars. I don’t want to say that the inventory problems are over because they certainly aren’t, but the end of covid has definitely made people a lot more comfortable having their house on the market, having strangers walking through their house.

It looks like prices are starting to stabilize, businesses are relocating their employees again, so all of this is a very positive development if you’re a buyer, and frankly it’s a positive development if you’re a seller as well. So if you were considering a move to Atlanta, but were frightened off by all the negative talk about the Atlanta market, I think you can put your fears to rest. Things are definitely getting back to normal, and it’s very nice to see kind of after the last year of total madness. As always, if you’re thinking about making the move to Atlanta please give me a call my number’s in the box below love to talk to you thanks!

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 by Parker

ATLANTA HOUSING MARKET 2021 – ATLANTA REAL ESTATE NEWS SPRING 2021

Hey this is Parker, your favorite Atlanta realtor! Well, spring is in bloom and the Atlanta real estate market is in boom. Things are even wilder now than they were last year, and as we all know, 2020 was a pretty wild year.

Here’s a quick update in some trends I’ve noticed in the Atlanta real estate market. As I mentioned before, due to the high demand last year prices were up 10 to 14 percent across the board. Well, that has definitely continued this year, and it’s led to some very interesting trends.

 

 

 

First off is what I call anticipated price inflation. Generally when a home lists, the list price of that home is based upon recently sold comparable properties. I think that people are already anticipating another five to ten percent increase in prices this year, and they’re going ahead and factoring that into their offers.

Many houses are going under contract above the list price, so that makes it increasingly likely that the bank appraisal is going to come in below the offered price. Which means that you have to be willing to pay the difference in cash. So, if their appraisal comes in low, and they need to make a slightly smaller down payment in order to cover the difference, that seems to be fine with many buyers now.

This observation is actually based on some conversations I’ve had with some of my lenders. They have started seeing some of the appraisals coming in low, because so many people are bidding up the value of these homes. What will happen is as these houses close and people make up the difference with cash out of pocket what’s going to happen is those will become new comps and those will help support the price valuations. You know, two or three months down the road, the problem right now is that it’s happening so quickly that the comps just simply haven’t had time to catch up.

The second trend I’ve noticed is the number of listing agents who are just simply overwhelmed and cannot keep up. Most agents are great communicators, and that’s one of the areas you really need to shine in order to succeed in real estate. So, if you’re dealing with just one buyer on one home search or one home under contract that’s going to generate you know a very significant amount of text and emails and phone calls. These listing agents where they may have a few houses listed and they’re dealing with multiple offers flying in from all angles – I mean they’re literally dealing with you know hundreds of emails and texts and phone calls – it’s overwhelming, it really is. So I’ve noticed a significant decrease in people’s ability or willingness to respond to inquiries, and it’s been a big challenge for everyone. It’s one of those situations where you have to realize you know this is not the norm, and you have to try to really extend your patience and understanding.

One of the houses we recently wrote an offer on received 29 other offers, and ended up under contract for $24,000 over the asking price. I’ve spoken with many agents who’ve had 20 plus offers on all of their listings. One of the houses we wanted to see recently came on the market on a Thursday morning, which is when a lot of homes list, and by noon that day every available showing slot for that house for the next two days had been filled up!

The third trend I’ve noticed is agents going straight to highest and best. Most of them will say send us your highest and best offer by 8 pm on Sunday, and we’ll make our decision Monday morning. Now in normal times, most houses will typically generate just, you know, one or two offers. In certain situations where you have a very high demand property, a house might get you five, six, seven offers, and that’s when you say: hey send us your highest and best. What you’re doing is you’re letting all the people who’ve currently made an offer know that hey, we are in a multiple offer situation, and I need to see your highest and best offer by 8 pm on Sunday. This is a fairly effective strategy in multiple offer situations because it just lets everybody know, yeah there’s a lot of offers on the table, so just you know put out your best offer right away. We’re not going to go counter offer and go back and forth and negotiate all the details, just show us what you got right now, and we’ll consider it. It also saves a lot of back and forth on the part of the agents fielding phone calls saying: hey do you have any other offers? Yes we’ve got lots of other offers, so send us what you got.

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The fourth and final trend that I’m going to talk about today is that houses that formerly would have sat on the market going wanting for a buyer are now flying off the market. Two years ago houses had to be HGTV ready, I mean perfect in every aspect:  all the paint, the floor, kitchen cabinets, everything had to be perfect or people just kind of turned their noses up at them. I’m a big believer in the diamond in the rough properties – I love those little old lady houses that are well maintained, but you know need some paint, need some freshening up. I think there’s a tremendous amount of value there, and apparently everybody in the Atlanta market has now come around to my way of thinking, because these houses are not staying on the market anymore. Now people are beginning to see that location is more important than anything else. You can fix up an okay house in a good neighborhood, but you can’t take a bad neighborhood and turn it into a good neighborhood. You can’t lower your property taxes, you can’t double the size of your house – you just have to move somewhere else!

So here’s some data looking at March 2021 versus March of 2020:  there were 800 fewer listings this year than there were last year, and houses under contract were up 12% this year versus last year, which is another indication that those houses that used to sit on the market that just didn’t pass the sniff test 18 months ago, those houses are all selling very quickly. Now this isn’t to frighten you, I only want to inform people about what’s going on in the Atlanta market. Demand is very high, but you can still find a good house. If you’re planning on moving here, you’re definitely going to want to bring your patience, and you’re definitely going to need to prepare yourself to work hard and face some disappointments, but ultimately you’ll find the house you want. I had some clients and we’ve had some close calls recently, where you know, we were in a multiple offer situation, we didn’t get the house, but ultimately we found a house for them.

You know, a few weeks later, a month later, and what’s interesting is that all of those clients came back to me and they said, you know Parker we actually ended up with the best house we’re so glad we didn’t get that other house because we really feel like we got the best house for our family, and that’s really nice to hear, because sometimes as an agent you know you’re you’re doing your best, you’re working really hard and for whatever reason, you get beat out by a cash buyer. It’s kind of hard to compete with cash so it is really nice to hear back from these clients and say you know, what all that frustration it worked out in the end.

Another point to note is that the more money you have to spend, the less competition there is for a house. The median sales price in Atlanta is currently around three hundred thousand dollars, which means half of the houses are above $300k and half sell for below $300k. Obviously there are far more people that can afford a $250,000 house than can afford a $500,000 house, and when you get to six and seven hundred thousand dollars, the competition falls off dramatically. Far fewer people can afford the more expensive properties, so if you’ve got you know five or six hundred thousand dollars to spend, be comfortable in knowing that you’re probably going to find a great house fairly quickly.

So I hope you found that helpful! If you’re buying or selling anywhere in Atlanta or anywhere in the state of Georgia, my contact info is in the box below please feel free to give me a call, shoot me a text, send me an email – I’d love to work with you.

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