Ryan Ward's Blog: All Categories

Sunday, November 9th from 1-3 pm we will be holding our new listing open in Dunwoody located at 2834 Burnham Ct. This is an exciting new listing because not only do I believe that we have the home priced at a great value, but, because this is truly an exceptional home. classic by many Dunwoody standards, this home definitely has the nicest kitchen renovation I have ever seen at this price point. Just look at a couple photos:

Beyond just the beautiful kitchen, there is a magnificent screend porch, new paint and hardwood floors. You can get the full details about this home as well as another 75 or so photographs on its own Dunwoody real estate website. Please join us if you are out and about this weekend looking for a new home in the Dunwoody area.

OK, so it isn't conventional to think of this as a good sign, but, it is imperative that this trend continue if we are to get out of this slowdown anytime soon. We simply have too much inventory and fewer housing starts contributes to lowering inventory. The federal government reported today that housing starts are down about another 6% bringing it to 50 year lows. Here is an excerpt from the report:

"Privately-owned housing starts in September were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 817,000. This is 6.3 percent (±12.0%)* below the revised August estimate of 872,000 and is 31.1 percent (±8.3%) below the revised September 2007 rate of 1,185,000. Single-family housing starts in September were at a rate of 544,000; this is 12.0 percent (±8.3%) below the…

For several months now, the FMLS has reported roughly 33% declines in the total number of home sales compared with the same time one year earlier. Condos have consistently performed even worse at something around 40% of a decline in sales volume, but, I'd like to take a look at this from a different perspective. We are so used to seeing the glass half full or half empty that we sometimes read market conditions through a colored lens that doesn't allow us to make honest and objective assessments of where we are and where we are going.

I'm aware that past is often prologue and we must look back to see where things may be going, but, not at the expense of what is happening at the present time. Atlanta real estate, like real estate in most other places right…

Deciphering boundaries between Alpharetta and Milton can be difficult to manage using the FMLS because too many agents still enter listings that are actually in Milton as "Alpharetta" because they don't understand (this is just my opinion) that there is a specific desire by consumers to search specifically for homes for sale in Milton vs. Alpharetta due to some of the inherent differences between the 2 cities. Complicating the statistics even farther is the very large number of unmapped properties in Milton which makes it impossible to even use the map search feature to accurately ascertain what's happening in Milton compared with other areas.

My experience has been that while there are truly some differences between the two, for the most part, the real…

The FMLS puts together statistical reports monthly from their data and this chart is something I meant to post about a week ago. Sorry to be a little late on the most recent numbers, but, here they are. This chart reflects closed sales over the past 6 years. It may illustrate the market better than just about anything I've done recently.

I apologize that this isn't the fanciest chart you may have seen, but, I didn't make it. The point here is that for all of the pontificating about the market not being as bad as the media says, the truth is that it is quite bad - for sellers.

Atlanta real estate is definitely not hurting as bad as many areas, but there can be no question that we are hurting. In economic terms, this would border on depression. Remember…

In a previous post, I talked about the how and why I think that good single property websites can help to market our listings. At that time, I had really just implemented them for all of my listings and wanted to get back to something that I said I would do about what some best practices might be for reusing them. Before I get that far, I do want to say that I can in fact say that it was one of the single property websites that sold a listing that we closed on this past week.

The story, as relayed to me from the buyer whom I did not represent, explicitly told his agent that he was not interested in a home like the one that he bought (contemporary), but, the agent saw the single property website that also doubled as the virtual tour and forwarded him the…

A $60 investment is all that is needed to make your listings shine. For the last year or so I have struggled with how to improve the photos that I take for my listings and to be honest, I always considered it one of my weaker points. Unfortunately, it's one of, if not the most important aspect in marketing a listing. After all, no matter how many eyeballs you get to view a home online, if the photos are terrible or even average, it's difficult to get a buyer excited about the home. I went through several cameras, fooled with all of the settings and still there was no good solution.

As I was organizing my basement one day, I stumbled across an old halogen lamp like the ones you see at construction sites that I used to use when I rehabbed homes so I decided…

About two months ago, I posted about a new single property website using WordPress that I developed for added exposure to our listings. I had several people email and call me to see if they could use the WordPress theme for their listings. It took a while, but, I finally got the theme in a condition that would be easy enough for anyone who is familiar with hosting their own WordPress blog to use. For reference, here is an example of one that I created for a listing in Sandy Springs.

Be forewarned as if you are unfamiliar with setting up WordPress from scratch, this would probably not be the best place to start. It could be done as I have included a fairly reasonable read me file to get it up and running correctly, but, it is a bit time consuming if you…