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Hank Bailey

Athens GA Networking

11-23-08
Hank Bailey

Athens Georgia Networking Group; Linkedin

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If you are looking for a place to network with other professionals in the Athens Georgia area, look not further. You are cordially invited to join the Athens Area Networking InGroup on LinkedIn.com. Joining will allow you to find and contact other Athens Networking Group members on LinkedIn. This is an online presence for The Athens Area Business Network, which connects both local and regional in-person and online events and resources. Our LinkedIn group is open to networkers predominantly in Athens, Atlanta, and the Southeast. Come join us! The goal of this group is to help members:

Reach other members of the Athens Area Networking InGroup

Accelerate careers/business through referrals from Athens Area Networking InGroup members

Know more than a name – view rich professional profiles from fellow Athens Area Networking InGroup members . On the online site there are places to share, post discussion or “brain storming questions,” post and review news, and receive updates on member topics.

Here’s the link to join:
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/149446/527C63466651

Hope to see you in the group! We also have a monthly get together at Panera Bread posted on the Discussion Board at Linkedin. We are also bringing the online presence down to “reality” by providing a venue for members to meet face to face to build relationships faster and provide a place where members can discuss what they do for a living, what their business is and what types of prospective clients they are looking for so that other members can be aware of how to help each other on a referral basis. Oh, and there is no membership fees or dues. This is a group of like-minded professionals who meet together simply to help each other’s businesses grow!

Home prices by Area; Trulia Heat Maps are another great tool to use to start your search

10-31-08
Hank Bailey

If you are new to an area, there is another tool you can use to gauge home values to possibly help narrow your search. You may want to also feed the "inner Capitalist" or Investor in you and attempt to maximize your return. Trulia Heat Maps allow you to compare prices and popularity by neighborhood (in larger metro areas), city, county, and state. This can allow you to gauge market trends based on listing and sales prices. As you may know, the three "L's" of real estate are "location, location, location," this also may help you determine the most popular area for home buyers in a given market.
Check out http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Georgia/ to start your search.

Prelisting Inspections; Gaining that Edge

10-30-08
Hank Bailey

This is a sore subject to many a home seller today. When their Realtor brings up the additional "cost" of getting a home inspection done prior to listing thoughts run through many a seller's mind of the cost to do the inspection not to mention the concerns over what hidden defects (or not so hidden to the property owner) might come out that will result in the loss of more hard earned equity from the Home Inspectors report.

In the buyer's market we find ourselves in however with 10 months of inventory for sale and so many new homes on the market, I always recommend to my seller clients to get a home inspection done prior to listing it for sale to get an edge on their competition.

What no seller wants is to have a buyer through their home inspection, after a long sought after contract is finally at hand, find defects no matter how big or small especially if the disclosure statement provided by the seller showed a clean home with no issues. This causes questions in the buyer's mind of "well what else are they not disclosing and what is the cost to repair?"

Recently I found a situation where a home closing almost went south due to a roof leak which could have been fixed for $300 but went in disrepair for no one knows how long until after the home inspector for the buyer pointed it out. Whether the transaction closes is anyone's guess, but in the buyer's mind they instantly had justifiable concerns over mold, rot, and anything associated with these issues. Are there any other issues with the home related to the leak? No one knows, but that is my point. The unknown issue is the one that will kill a home sale. The seller not fixing the issue and not having a home inspection to reveal the $300 patch job the roof needed ahead of time has created an issue. (Paint buckets in the attic kind of caused questions as well.)

Most people are not contractors and don't have enough experience to know what repairs or fixes cost. Therefore in most potential buyer's minds, a repair that in reality only costs a few hundred dollars might cost "thousands." These problems that arise could also potentially push the home's sale price down during negotiation. A seller may discover from a prelisting home inspection that support beams that that support a ceiling or the roof were improperly installed. The seller may choose to repair the support beams, rather than having the problem become a price negotiating tool. For example, paying $5,000 for the repair makes more sense than losing $10,000in the sale. The seller and their real estate professional also have the option of getting a quote for the cost of the work, putting it in the file with the more accurately completed disclosure statement to show what the real cost is to repair, and then price the house accordingly.

In the end, you don't want to leave yourself exposed as a seller and you need that extra edge. One home inspection company I spoke to locally, Homepro Home Inspections of Athens, has a page on their website devoted to "Pre-Inspected Homes for Sale." This difference maker that results in the taking away of doubt in a buyer's mind, may just get that offer over your competition!

Real Estate Auctions; Trend or Fad?

10-27-08
Hank Bailey

As the real estate landscape evolves, more and more home buyers and sellers are using auctions as an alternative to traditional home buying.

Real estate auctions continue to be one of the fastest growing sectors of the auction market. According to the National Auctioneers Association, residential auctions generated $17 billion last year alone.

For sellers, auctions can translate into immediate cash and no long-term carrying costs. Buyers can save time and money. A listing can typically sell within 9-12 minutes.

Locally, it seems that while there are auction companies out there, the trend seems to be on the downward slope. Costs involved with auctions, unlike a listing, revolve around advertising. The seller in addition to listing the property for a traditional commission must also pay upfront advertising costs that the auctioneer needs to advertise the auction. These costs can run as little as $5,000 and as much as $15,000 or more. Auctioneers I have spoken to recently have told me that they would not take my money right now as in their opinion the auction market is a slippery slope at best. The last auctioneer conveyed that in his last held auction there were no buyers who showed up. That's right. After the seller spent almost $10,000 on advertising through the auctioneer's firm, the only people who showed up were other nosy neighbors and Realtors.

On a side note, one reason turnout was probably bad was because the weather did not cooperate the day of the auction. Therein is the other issue. If you as a seller spend $10,000 advertising an auction for a certain Saturday, you have that auction on that Saturday whether or not you have sun, rain, or snow. With 10 months or more of inventory in many areas including our own, in the midst of a buyers market, on a day where the weather does not cooperate you don't have many buyers interested enough to brave the elements for "one more auction" or perceived distressed sale as there are so many to pick from in this market.

Rising Commodities Lift all Homes

10-27-08
Hank Bailey


Home prices tend to rise with commodity prices over the long term. Currently, the Producer Price Index for construction is up 39 percent over the past five years, and prices for commodities like oil, copper, steel and cement are sky-high. Sooner or later the increasing costs of these raw materials will push home prices higher.

As the supreme commodity, every home is full of materials like steel, wood, and copper wiring. Presently, an oversupply of homes may be keeping prices low, but home prices are rooted in hard costs and will eventually adjust to reflect the price of production.


In many cases today, homes are being sold for less than their replacement cost. One good example of this was a property that a local home seller told me where their insurance company did an analysis based upon a very detailed custom home which came back that their replacement cost was roughly 25% more than what they take for their house in a sale, and it was almost 40% higher than tax appraisal. The issues obviously is that it seems that those homes that were custom built versus spec houses which probably had a tighter budget, are more apt have more cost with a therefore higher replacement value than they could sell the property for in the open market.