With the current market conditions real estate agents more and more are being asked to reduce their commission. This is mainly due to the fact homes just aren’t bringing as much as they were a short while back. I totally understand the seller’s position. But on the other side of the coin when the market is good sellers don’t share their profits with agents. Most of the time it’s not a situation where the seller’s home hasn’t appreciated. It’s the fact sellers have taken most or all of the equity out of their homes over the years. Some don’t seem to realize they have made money on their home. This is how they got the 2nd mortgages and equity lines of credit. But for some they’ve simply gone too far and their expectations are based on high appraisals they’ve gotten from refinancing their homes. Very seldom can a real estate professional sell a home for what the refinance appraisal claims its worth. There are several different types of appraisals done in the market and they’re used for different situations. Home equity and refinance appraisals are always higher than what a home could sell for. Don’t ask me why, but it’s the truth!

I cannot tell you how many times sellers say to me that they need ”X” amount of money of their home in order to buy the next home. I think it’s easy to understand what you need…..has nothing to do with what your homes worth. Thus, sellers ask the real estate agent to reduce their commission in order to achieve their desired net at closing. Lets look at this another way. Indulge me for a moment, what if your boss asked you to take a pay cut because he or she is going buy a boat or put a pool in their backyard. What would you think? Doesn’t make sense does it? Are you going to work hard for them under this arrangement?

I know this may sound crazy, but in the current real estate environment this is the time sellers need to pay more in commissions. Yes I said pay more in commissions, not less. Stop taking all the incentive away from selling your home, think for a moment how you would perform in your own personal job if you were financially rewarded for completing a project on time!! Trust me, most real estate agents aren’t knocking it dead as far a pay goes. We have a lot of hidden cost home sellers never see or hear anything about. I suggest sellers focus more on their bottom line and not what the commissions are. I understand you want to walk away with as much cash as possible at the closing table. But that doesn’t always happen by reducing the commission!

The Cobb County School District’s Pre-Kindergarten classes will be relocated to state-designated private locations after the conclusion of the 2006-2007 school year. The District currently operates 26 Pre-K classrooms in 19 schools. Those classes will not be offered at Cobb schools for the 2007-2008 school year, but Pre-K classes will continue to be available at state-designated private facilities. A separate program that serves special-needs Pre-K students will continue to be offered at 39 of the District’s elementary schools.

Because the cost of the Pre-K program is not fully funded by the state, and because classroom space is at a premium in Cobb County, the District no longer can provide resources for a successful Pre-K program and still meet the requirements for regular elementary students. The District’s Pre-K program slots will be transferred to the Georgia Department of Education for reassignment to other private pre-school providers in Cobb County for 2007-2008. All 26 existing Pre-K classrooms in Cobb serving approximately 519 students will complete this school year with current staff and funding.

“There is tremendous value in exposing children to a learning environment before they begin kindergarten,” said Chief Academic Officer Diane Bradford. “While Pre-K classes will no longer be available in Cobb schools, they will continue to be available elsewhere in the community and we encourage parents of young children to take advantage of those opportunities.”

Parents seeking Pre-K classes for the 2007-08 school year may visit the Bright From the Start Web site at www.decal.state.ga.us to search a directory of local providers, or call (404) 656-5957.

Thirteen states have local housing markets, which are appreciating and Housing Predictor projects at least 9 more will be aded to the list by summers end.

Georgia
Mississippi
Texas
Utah
Arkansas
Alabama
North Carolina
Tennessee
Louisiana
Idaho
New Mexico
South Caroline

OPEN HOUSES – WASTE OF TIME

MSN Real Estate ran an online article March 25 2007 about OPEN HOUSES. For years I’ve personally felt OPEN HOUSES simply don’t work. The MSN article supports my position and even suggest having OPEN HOUSES on multiple weekends can even hurt your homes strength in the market. I know of recent incident where an open house brought in a person that wasn’t interested in buying a home at all. They were just looking (nosey neighbor). This person ended up being someone that gossips a lot and felt she needed to talk about this home that was for sale. She ran into and told several good potential buyers her personal thoughts about the property. This is what we consider bad viral marketing. This is not at all what you want to happen when your selling a home!! With out the open house this would have never happened. OPEN HOUSES open the doors to more problems and security issues than contracts to sell. I feel the same about agent caravans and luncheons. All of these marketing approaches are as old as a dinosaur. They do not work, they only make the seller think the agent is doing something to sell their home. They’re doing something alright….and it’s WRONG!! There’s no question marketing homes for sale has changed for ever. You’ll find very few high volume real estate agents that embrace or support these marketing practices. If they do they’ll send a new agent or an agent that is willing to try anything to get their business going.

Why don’t OPEN HOUSES work any more? The Internet!! Approximately 80% of the home buyers now shop for homes on line, after they see a virtual tour they know if they want to see a house or not. No one seems to have the time anymore to ride around trying to find a home by looking at OPEN HOUSES. It’s just not an efficient way to find a new home. It’s so 90’s!!

With over 80% of the home buyers shopping for their new homes on line I find it totally amazing how many home sellers list with real estate agents without any internet presents. If a real estate agent shows you a template site his or her broker gave them ….that web site is pretty much useless. You couldn’t find that site if you tried for days doing searches on the major internet search engines. Almost all of these broker/agent template sites don’t even have a domain name. They don’t work at all for internet exposure. Why would a seller list with an agent they cannot find on the internet? Agents have to have personal web sites with domain names and content that gets the site ranked high up on the main web pages like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Agents have to invest in web placement. It’s not cheap for internet placement. Technology scares the heck out of most real estate agents and spending any marekting money scares them even more. I find it amazing how many agents don’t add more than one picture to their FMLS listings and other free websites. I’m surprised how many real estate agents don’t even add virtual tours. Yet they will sit for hours in a house on Sunday praying someone will come and buy that house. A Virtual Tour takes 5 minutes to order and reaches tons of people.

This year alone Re/Max invested over 50 million into REMAX.com. RE/MAX.com is now the 5th largest real estate web site and climbing daily. That’s an amazing accomplishment in one year. RE/MAX is a global company. There simple isn’t anyway for any of Atlanta’s small boutique brokers to compete on a local, national or global level as far a internet marketing goes. Again 80% of the home buyers are looking for homes on the web. Why would sellers ever want and OPEN HOUSE?? If you look at the facts why would anyone put forth the effort when you only stand a 2% chance of being successful. That’s just just a plain waste of time?

I’ve always embraced cutting edge technology. My personal web site will get over 70,000 hits this month. My pro-active internet marketing campaign brings in 10 to 20 prospects a week. My other pro-active marketing campaigns allows me to communicate with 50 to 75 new people a week. These aren’t cold calls. These are people looking to buy or sell real estate. With my internet marketing campaigns my average listings get approximately 300+ people a month taking a virtual tour of any given property. The average suburban OPEN HOUSE gets maybe 3 to 4 people any given Sunday if lucky. Now would rather have 2 to 4 people coming on Sunday or 75+ people a week looking at your home? I think we know the answer here!!

The facts are consumer sentiment about open houses has dropped drastically over the years. So when you decide to sell your home. Ask agents what type of web marketing plan they have. Hire an agent that has a pro-active marketing plans and drip markketing campaigns in place. Oh by the way, make sure the agent even has a marketing plan in place!! The agents with pro active marketing campaigns sell homes faster and for more money everyday of the week! Pro active marketing is not putting a OPEN HOUSE sign with balloons on the street…..not by a long shot!!! Agent luncheon’s, agent caravan’s and open houses are PASSIVE SELLING!! If PASSIVE SELLING methods are the way you want to go then save yourself some money! Hire a cater and a home sitter, not a real estate agent!

The AJC reported this morning that the metro poulation is now over 5 million people. Take a look at how Atlanta grew. It took 122 years from the founding of Atlanta to reach 1 million people in 1959, The second million came 21 years later in 1980. The third million came 13 years later, the fourth million seven years and the fifth million less than six years. Atlanta is the land of opportunity. Everyday I speak to people thinking of moving here either for jobs, cost of living or they want to be near their grandkids. Yes I’m seeing more and more older people wanting the come to the metro area to retire. Many love the fact that Cobb County gives them a huge property tax break if they purchase a home in that county. What we need now is a better mass transit systems to move all these people from place to place. HOTLANTA I expect we’re see a lot more growth in the immediate future. With this type of growth you will see homes with close proximity to Atlanta appreciate faster than homes with long commutes.

The Jonquil City Jog will be held on Saturday April 28th 2007.

The following is the schedule of the events.

Registration and Packet Pick up - 7:00 am
5K Run/Walk - 8:00 am
Fun Run & Fitness Walk - 9:00am
Tot Trot - 9:15am

To register www.acitve.com

On March 8th 2006, I attended the public information open house concerning the proposed improvements to I-285 and Atlanta Rd. This project has been under consideration for some time now. The GA Department of Transportation is now down to two proposed plans for consideration. I personally felt Alternative Plan #2 was the best proposal.

The expansion is needed to handle the amount of traffic the East/West Connector and I-285 is dumping onto Atlanta Rd during peak commute times from all the new construction in the Vinings, Smyrna, Powder Springs and Kennesaw areas. Driving safety in this Smyrna, Vinings area will be greatly increased by easing the traffic flow and street lighting. The state of Georgia DOT plans to add more lanes, expand (widen) the Atlanta Rd bridge, adding large looping or widened on and off ramps. The big plus….they’ll be tearing down the Pilot Truck Stop and the warehouse next to it. Not having all the semi and commercial trucks trying to enter the Pilot Truck Stop will be a huge plus for safety and will help relieve the congestion we now deal with in this immediate area. I’m really looking foward to having the new expansion for the Vinings, Smyrna area. The entire road project will cause the Atlanta Rd exit not to have the industral and trashy appearance it now has!!

From what I gathered this is a 2009 start date for construction. Let’s hope it doesn’t take as long to finish as the Paces Ferry Rd – I-285 project did.

The following link will take you to more information I have posted to the web.

http://www.barrysoldme.com/uploads/files/I285%20-%20Atl%20Rd%20improvements.pdf

Georgia companies among ‘most admired’
Atlanta Business Chronicle - 3:09 PM EST Tuesday, March 6, 2007
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Fifteen Georgia companies have landed on FORTUNE magazine’s “America’s Most Admired Companies” list for 2007.

The complete list of the companies will appear in FORTUNE’s March 19 edition.

United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS) ranked 16th most admired in the United States, the highest of any Georgia company, according to the report.

The list also includes Aflac Inc. (NYSE: AFL), Beazer Homes USA Inc. (NYSE: BZH), BellSouth Corp. (now owned by AT&T Inc.), BlueLinx Holdings Inc. (NYSE: BXC), The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO), Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. (NYSE: CCE), Cox Communications, Delta Air Lines Inc. (Pink Sheets: DALRQ), Equifax Inc. (NYSE: EFX), Genuine Parts Co. (NYSE: GPC), GoldKist (now owned by Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.), The Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD), Southern Co. (NYSE: SO) and SunTrust Banks Inc. (NYSE: STI).

Published annually by FORTUNE, the list serves as a report card on corporate reputations. To create the list, executives, directors, and analysts were asked to rate companies in their own industry on eight criteria — innovation, people management, use of corporate assets, social responsibility, quality of management, financial soundness, long-term investment, and quality of products/services. A total of 616 companies in 68 industries were surveyed during the fourth quarter of 2006.