Barry's Real Estate Blog

Fourth of July Celebration

The city of Marietta's Fourth in the Park celebration begins July 4 at 10 a.m. and includes a parade, free live concerts, museum tours, arts and crafts show, food, carnival games and fireworks finale.

The Marietta Freedom Parade includes 110 entries, 2,000 participants and an estimated 30,000 spectators.

The parade begins at 10 a.m. at Roswell St. Baptist Church and travels west on Roswell Street, north on E. Park Square past Glover Park and the Square, down Cherokee Street and ends at North Marietta Parkway.

Entries include marching units from the city of Marietta, Air National Guard Band of the South, civic organizations, beauty queens, scouts and local businesses.

Museums and shopping

The Marietta Welcome Center will be open from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. The Marietta Gone With the Wind Museum and Marietta History Museum will be open for tours. Historic walking tours are also available. Unique shops located around the Square will have special July 4 hours. For details, call the Marietta Welcome Center at 770-429-1115.

Entertainment Schedule

10:00 am - Let Freedom Ring Parade
12:00 pm - Colgate Country Showdown
2:00 pm - National Bell Ringing
2:15 pm - Parade Awards Ceremony
2:30 pm - Cobb Wind Symphony
8:00 pm - Peachtree Station
Dark - Fireworks

Arts and crafts show

With 80 vendors: 10 a.m.-9 p.m.

Food

Concessions for sale: 10 a.m.-9 p.m.

Carnival Games

Tickets for games available at booths located throughout the park: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

Fireworks

The fireworks display is scheduled to begin at 9:30 p.m. and will be shot from the First United Methodist Church parking lot. KICKS 101.5 FM will broadcast patriotic music during the fireworks. Rain date for fireworks is July 6 at 9:30 p.m.

Information Flyer

Participant Information

Map of Parade Route

For more information, call Marietta Parks and Recreation at 770-794-5601.

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According to Cobb County Tax Commissioner Gail Downing, homeowners will face a property tax bill increase during the next two years. The state Homeowner's Tax Relief Grant that previously funded a tax credit on homesteaded property will not be available this year or next.

"Declining state revenues during the current recession left the state without enough money to give the tax relief credits that homeowners have become accustomed to," Downing said.

Most Cobb homeowners will see an increase of about $228 on their 2009 tax bills. Those with a School Tax Exemption will see an increase of about $77. Increases will vary for homeowners living within one of Cobb's six cities.

In 1999, the governor and General Assembly appropriated the grant to counties, cities and schools, giving tax relief to homeowners in the form of a tax bill credit. According to legislation passed this year (House Bill 143), the grant will only be made available in the future if state revenues grow at least 3 percent plus the rate of inflation.

Downing believes giving homeowners advance notice will help them prepare for the increase when tax bills are issued in August. Homeowners can determine the exact amount of the 2009 increase by accessing their 2008 account information at www.cobbtax.org under the "Property Taxes" tab; search by parcel ID or address. The "Homeowners Tax Credit" deducted on the 2008 tax bill is the amount their bill will increase for 2009. Many homeowners with mortgages will need to make sure their tax escrow accounts are properly funded since their property taxes are paid by their mortgage company.

"It's unfortunate in slow economic times to have to deliver this message, but homeowners need this information so they can budget accordingly," Downing said.

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Six schools in Cobb and Fulton counties were among the metro area's top 10 performers on this year's high school graduation tests.

Scoring highest among metro schools with at least 50 test-takers was Cobb's Walton High School, with a 98.4 percent passing rate on the Georgia High School Graduation Tests.

Students in Georgia are required to pass all four tests, in mathematics, science, English language arts and social studies, to graduate.

Other top scorers, behind Walton High, were: two other Cobb County schools, Pope High and Lassiter High; Cherokee County's Etowah High School and Woodstock High; DeKalb School of the Arts; Fulton's Northview High, Chattahoochee High School and Alpharetta High; and Gwinnett County's Brookwood High.

Statewide data, showing improved passing rates on all four tests this year, was released by the Georgia Department of Education last month. School-by-school figures came out Monday.

Students have multiple chances to take the test; if they still fail, they can appeal to the state Board of Education for a waiver.

Find your school: Metro test scores

2009 High School Graduation Test Scores

2009 CRCT Scores

2008 SAT Scores

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Contracts signed show a big jump, especially in the Northeast, another indicator the market may be bottoming

Low interest rates and an $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers helped push pending home sales up for the third month in a row, another indication that the decline in the real estate market may be stabilizing, the National Association of Realtors reported on June 2.

 The group's Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in April, rose 6.7%, to 90.3 from a reading of 84.6 in March, and is 3.2% above April 2008, when it was 87.5, the group said. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters (TRI) had expected the index would edge up to 85 from a reading of 84.6 in March. It was the biggest monthly jump since October 2001.

Pending home sales activity was greatest in the Northeast, where the index increased 32.6%, to 78.9, in April, 0.8% above a year ago. The only region that showed a decrease was the South, where the index declined 0.2%, to 93.0, 3.5% higher than a year ago. In the Midwest the index rose 9.8%, to 90.4, and is 11.1% above April 2008. In the West the index rose 1.8%, to 94.8, but is 2.9% below a year ago.

VERY FAVORABLE CONDITIONS
Lawrence Yun, the group's chief economist, said buyers are responding to very favorable market conditions, and while the total number of existing-home sales is expected to improve, there will be sharp local variations. "The market has already bottomed in some areas, but this is an unusual housing cycle with some areas improving rapidly while others languish or decline," Yun said in a news release.

Typically there is a one- to two-month lag between a contract and a done deal, so the index is a barometer for future existing-home sales.

Paul Dales, U.S. economist for Capital Economics in Toronto, said in a report that if the April increase in pending home sales is reflected fully in existing-home sales numbers, it would bring them to an annual rate of 5.1 million, a level last seen before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September.

"The pending home sales index has now improved for three months in a row, adding to the evidence that housing activity is finding a floor," Dales wrote. Nevertheless, even if existing-home sales were to rise to 5.1 million, they would still be 30% below their peak. Accordingly, even if activity is finding a floor, it is at staggeringly low levels."

Original article by Phil Mintz, Business Week.  Click here to see original article.

 SEE RELATED HOME BUYER ARTICLES

March stats in national Case-Shiller index offer hope, local analysts say.

Metro Atlanta home prices kept falling in March, but the pace of decline slowed a bit, according to a closely watched index.

Local prices slipped 1.5 percent in March from February, following several previous month-to-month declines of more than 2 percent. Still, on a year-to-year basis metro Atlanta home prices were down almost 16 percent from March 2008, dropping to levels not seen since late 2000, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index.

But the long fall is over, argued Steve Palm, president of SmartNumbers, a real estate research firm in Marietta.

"Case-Shiller is a great survey, but you just can't read too much into that," he said. "We have every [home loan] closing tracked, so I know February was the bottom."

Buyers closed on 3,303 homes in April, up more than 20 percent from March although down 21 percent from a year ago, Palm noted.

During April, sale prices averaged $191,803, up 4.4 percent from March although down 18 percent from a year ago.

Residential real estate typically sees sales surge as spring slides into summer.

Whether April's data is more than a whiff of recovery depends on whether the spurt of demand can soak up huge inventories of unsold homes. That challenge is made greater as foreclosures and bank sales continue flowing into the market, dragging down the value of surrounding homes.

Half, if not more, of all recent resales have been bank or foreclosure sales, said Eugene James, division director for MetroStudy in Atlanta.

Inventory has started to drop, "but more importantly, the number of foreclosed listings are 13 percent of the total, which is lower than this time last year," James said. "These are good signs."

Nationally, home prices dropped 19.1 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to the Case-Shiller Index, which is based on a 20-city survey. They are down 32.2 percent since peaking in the second quarter of 2006.

Prices never soared in Atlanta the way they did in Las Vegas or Southern California. Prices here are down about 21 percent since the peak, compared to roughly 40 percent in Los Angeles and nearly 50 percent in Las Vegas.

Markets within each metro area vary widely as well. Some areas of Atlanta have already seen prices rise modestly. It's just that the broader region shares some problems cooked into the housing bubble.

Declining prices are the result of too many homes for sale, combined with financial trouble for many boom-time buyers.

That combination swelled the normal pool of homes for sale -- and that means the market will continue coping with the aftermath of the housing bubble, said Jim Crawford, a Roswell-based Realtor with Re/Max of Greater Atlanta.

"The Atlanta market, due to the no-money-down financing -- has been extremely difficult," he said. "It may remain that way in the near term."

One house's ups, downs

The metro Atlanta housing market has seen remarkable highs and lows. Here is how the sale price on one house in Clayton County, in zip code 30236, has fluctuated in recent years, based on numbers from SmartNumbers.

> The house, located in the Lake Spivey Country Club area, originally sold for $216,000 in 1993 as new construction.

> The first three times the property changed hands, the price went up. It sold in June 2005 for $343,000, a 59 percent jump from the original sale price; in September 2005 for $440,000, a 28 percent increase; and in January 2006 for $480,000, another 9 percent increase.

> In November 2007, with the housing boom over, prices metro-wide dropping and Clayton County's school system woes coming to a boil, the house went on the market for $334,400, a 30 percent decrease from the previous sale price.

> Within the month the asking price was cut 18 percent, to $274,900 . The listing expired on Nov. 30 and the house had not sold.

> In early 2009, the house, then bank-owned, was relisted for $251,900 .

> The house sold in April at auction, in fairly good condition and after 533 days on the market, for $136,500.

Article By Michael E. Kanell, Michelle E. Shaw
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

See Related Posts:

Home Values Survey Shows Discrepancy Between Sellers', Buyers' and Agents' Perceptions of the Housing Market

Atlanta's Home Prices Drop 11.2% But Still Better Than Most Other Places

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