The Elegant Augusta Real Estate Blog

Caroline Ashe Your Source in Augusta, GA Real Estate February 22nd, 2008

Listen for the Rumble…the annual Kelsi Long Memorial Ride is coming to town!! This year the ride will begin at Augusta Harley-Davidson for a trip down to the MCG Children’s Center.

There is a $20 donation per motorcycle- the proceeds go to the MCG Children’s Medical Center. Be a part of the fun and do something for the kids!! You can’t imagine how it feels to see the faces of the children (and the staff) light up when we ride in.

The ride is in memorial of Kelsi Long, a tiny angel who tragically was stillborn due to Down’s Syndrome. You can read her story at www.kelfoundation.org.

Special thanks to this years sponsors: Augusta Harley-Davidson, NBC Channel 26, and Eagle 105.7

For more information on the ride please call Augusta Harley-Davidson @ 706-651-0444 or Mike Maddox at 706-556-8427.

I participated last year, and had a wonderful time! My vow this year is take even more pictures. You can check out my article on the 2007 Kelsi Long Memorial Ride.

See you there!!

If you want to view a larger version of the flyer, click here: Kelsi Long Memorial Ride Flyer.

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Caroline Ashe Your Source in Augusta, GA Real Estate February 20th, 2008

It’s been (almost) a couple of years now of blogging. Over that time, I’ve published some good posts, some great posts, and some really BAD posts. Going back through the archives is almost like a digital archaeological dig…the top layers are of a little better quality than those layers dating back to the beginning of the website. I’ve learned a little bit about writing over time.

Just for fun, I’d like to relive some of the posts that I’ve featured since the start of the site, some good, some not so good. Would you care to stroll along memory lane with me?

The Top 5 (or so) most read articles in terms of traffic:

1. Top 10 Haunted Sites in Augusta (The winner of the traffic contest by a country mile. Go figure!)
2. A tie between Augusta’s Haunted Column and A profile on West Lake Country Club
3. A profile on North Augusta’s River Club
4. Investing in Student Housing (a guest post)
5. (a whopping 3-way tie) Fun Stuff to do in Augusta, a writeup up Bettis Academy, and the 2007 Kelsi Long Memorial Ride.

My favorite 5 real estate articles:

1. Disproving the National Real Estate ‘Crisis’
   
2. 5 Stupid Home Listing Tricks
3. Investing in Multi-Family Housing
4. When Home Buying Tours go Bad
5. Real Estate Relationships 101

My favorite 5 that were (mostly) unrelated to real estate (but I thought were really good anyway!):

1. North Augusta Trivia
2. The Listing Appointment from the Twilight Zone
3. The Story of ‘New Savannah’
4. How to subscribe to an RSS feed (Not sure why I bothered, but a good writeup despite that. Grr!)
5. Elegant Homes don’t have Hand Grenades

Drop me a line and let me what you think! Should I stop now, or keep it up? Drop me a line and let me know what your favorite is, or even point out a stinker (there’s a few)!

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Caroline Ashe Your Source in Augusta, GA Real Estate February 19th, 2008

Many first time home buyers are confused about what earnest money is and why they should offer it when they attempt to purchase a home. Earnest money is a deposit given from the buyer to the seller, as ‘evidence of good faith’ in purchasing real estate. This shows the buyer’s commitment to the property considered for purchase, and that the buyer is truly interested in the property. It also gives the seller incentive to pull their property off of the market for someone that is serious.

I like to put buyers in sellers shoes. If you were selling your home and someone asked you to take your home off the market for 20-60 days, wouldn’t you want money in place in case the buyer backs out for no reason? There would be no repercussions on the buyer for doing so! When earnest money changes hands, the buyer has invested money in the transaction and insures they want it to continue to a successful conclusion.

Do not worry- if you have a reason within the contract to back out, you will get your earnest money back. On the other hand, if the deal works out successfully, on the day you close on the home the earnest money is applied to your down payment or closing costs. So you can plan on having your earnest money applied toward your real estate purchase.

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Caroline Ashe Your Source in Augusta, GA Real Estate February 6th, 2008

My pal Stacy Macioszek over in Bluffton, SC has been nice enough to include me on her list of people that are ‘memed’ or ‘tagged’ to tell a little about themselves. It’s a simple game to get people to share a personal tale or two.

The meme rules are: I state 7 interesting things about me, and then link with 7 people to hear their stories.

Well Stacey, upon reflection, I always thought I had led an interesting life until I had to write something!! Since you were such a great sport doing your meme (you are much more interesting), I’ll give it a shot:

• When I was a little girl I dreamed of being a stunt woman. I spent several years giving my mother heart attacks practicing my craft. My favorite stunt was when I used my favorite blue skates and an umbrella to sail down the main street of Palacios, Texas.
• Both my husband and myself come from immigrant families. My father was born and raised in Paris, France; while my husband Austin’s mother was born in Berlin and raised in Recklinghausen, Germany. Both of our fathers served in the military.
• The best part of my honeymoon to Alaska was sitting on the deck of a ship with Austin under a wool blanket, sipping hot chocolate while watching icebergs float by.
• I have two sisters, and the one that is closest to my age is fourteen years my senior! SURPRISE baby!
• My first dog was ‘Mokey’ named after a character on Fraggle Rock. My second dog was ‘Puddles’…no explanation necessary.
• The first apartment that Austin and I lived in had an interesting plumbing problem…the soap suds from the apartment upstairs would bubble out and over the top of our toilet…NASTY!
• I love to paint and I love to volunteer for charities. One time I combined both: I painted a 30′ foot mural for an elementary school (with some help)!

Now for the hard part…7 people to link to. Hmm.

So let’s hear from: Dave Smith, Ryan Ward, Eric Bramlett, Wayne & Donna Long (do they count twice?!), Joe Lane, Eric Blackwell, and last but definitely not least, a fellow female Realtor pounding the bricks in Sacramento California: Julie Jalone.

I look forward to hearing your stories!! Anyone else have an exciting tale to tell?

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Caroline Ashe Your Source in Augusta, GA Real Estate February 4th, 2008

In a survey of 100 real estate markets, localmarketmonitor.com (a real estate research firm) rated Augusta Ga has one of 13 ‘undervalued markets’ when comparing historical real estate values to the equilibrium or ‘expected’ home value.

They compared Augusta GA’s average home selling price of $173,400 to the expected value of $204,700- yielding a result that is approximately 15% under the expected average valuation. What follows are the cities on their ‘undervalued’ list:

• Wichita, KS -23%
• Fayetteville, NC -20%
• McAllen-Edinburg, TX -20%
• Memphis, TN -19%
• Indianapolis, IN -19%
• Pittsburgh, PA -18%
• Little Rock, AR -17%
• Dallas-Fort Worth, TX -17%
• Cincinnati, OH -16%
• Des Moines, IA -16%
• Columbus, OH -16%
• Augusta, GA -15%
• Houston, TX -15%

The situation here in Augusta continues to fuel a marketplace that is friendly to buyers, while providing a further indication of the lack of a ‘bubble’ in the area. Home values just weren’t driven very high by cheap mortgages and investor speculation, promising a smooth recovery for the local housing market over the next year to two years. Even better – if the data holds up – home owners should see a significant rise in their home’s value as the market recovery continues.

The survey found that 47 of the 100 markets studied were ‘overvalued’, and 40 were ‘fairly priced’. If you are curious about those overvalued markets, here are the top 10 most overvalued markets according to their research:

1. Naples, FL 90%
2. Riverside-San Bernardino, CA 75%
3. Modesto, CA 74%
4. Miami-West Palm Beach, FL 69%
5. Stockton, CA 69%
6. Santa Barbara-Santa Maria, CA 68%
7. Port St. Lucie-Fort Pierce, FL 67%
8. San Jose, CA 65%
9. Los Angeles-Anaheim, CA 63%
10. San Diego, CA 60%

The average home in Naples Florida sells for $521,900 when the expected equilibrium price should be around $274,900. I can only imagine the correction that has to take place in some of those markets before recovery. Wow.

If you would like to see a historical record of average home prices in Augusta, I’ve included one here (click for larger version):

UPDATE: As if to put an exclamation point on my post, Mark Thompson, PhD and a Chair in Business at ASU, also wrote a piece today in the Augusta Chronicle today titled Area’s housing market can wait out US decline (registration required).

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