RETIREMENT COMMUNITY PLANNED NEXT TO BELLE HALL

By Molly Parker , Staff Writer, Daily Journal

A Georgia developer is asking the town of Mount Pleasant for permission to build a new retirement community off Seacoast Parkway that would include 25 duplexes and a 200,000-square-foot complex with apartments.

Church Design & Construction, based in Snellville, Ga., is poised to purchase a parcel totaling nearly 46 acres west of the Belle Hall subdivision and parallel to Interstate 526.

The development would occupy about 33 acres of what is now woodlands with the continuing-care retirement community building standing as the focal point.The structure would include 120 independent-living apartments and up to 60 assisted-living and/or skilled-nursing beds, according to documents filed with the town’s planning department.

The planning commission will consider the proposal at its next meeting at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 19. The developer could not be reached for comment.

The 25 duplex cottages planned for the community “are situated to instill a sense of neighborhood at the entrance to the project and also provide a residential edge adjacent to the existing Grassy Creek subdivision,” the document states.

The Grassy Creek subdivision would be a next-door neighbor to the development and separated by a 25-foot buffer. The remaining 13 acres of the site under the plan would be dedicated to office and retail uses associated with the retirement community.

Internet Marketing vs. Print Advertising

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) performs an annual national survey of home buyers to identify trends. The 2007 survey from NAR indicates that most buyers are going online to search for their next home, and that online advertising produces over 9 times the results of newspaper advertising.

The Internet continues to be the up-and-coming medium to advertise homes for sale. Here are some of the results of the 2007 survey, including the changes from last year’s survey:

WHERE BUYERS FIRST LEARNED ABOUT THE HOME THEY PURCHASED:

• Real Estate Agent— Still number one, but down to 34% from 36%
• Internet— Up to 29% from 24%, BIGGEST MOVER!!!
• Yard Sign— Down to 14% from 15%, continues to decline
• Friend or Relative— Steady at 8%
• Home Builder— Steady at 8%
• Print newspaper— Down to 3% from 5%, biggest drop
• Directly from Seller— Steady at 3%
• Home Book or Magazine— Steady at 1%

However, many Sellers are still demanding that listing agents advertise their home in newspapers and magazines. This is probably not the best use for their agent's time or marketing dollars!

When you choose your next listing agent, make sure that he/she is e-savvy and e-connected, and that your home is advertised extensively online to reach the maximum number of potential buyers – this will make a difference!

THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW YOUR CELL PHONE COULD DO

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Among the things that you can do with it:

FIRST - Emergency

SECOND - Locked Car remote keyless access.

THIRD - Access Hidden Battery Power.

FOURTH - Disable your phone if STOLEN

FIFTH - Free directory Service

For the full story, click HERE.

THE MORTGAGE MARKET THIS WEEK

The Week in Review:

It was a relatively quiet week for mortgage rates last week. We continue to hear news of various financial institutions taking large write offs relating to the subprime market but the “Wow” of it seems to have died off. The market understands it and has adjusted expectations accordingly. This morning, however, Goldman Sacks downgraded Citigroup to a “Sell” from a “Hold” position saying that there may be another $ 4 Billion to write off related to subprime losses. This news is hurting the stock market and bonds are benefiting! It’s a crazy market.

The big news last week did not move the market but came from the Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke. Mr. Bernanke announced that the Fed would be doubling its communications effort as it relates to the economy and the Feds forecasts. This is viewed positively and is a significant departure from Alan Greenspan’s approach where the market was often left scratching its head after his encrypted communications. So, we are hoping that more is better in this case.

The Week Ahead:

This is a short trading week given Turkey Day on Thursday. The market will be closed on Thursday and open only half days on Wednesday and Friday. So, the most interesting thing happening this week will be news on Housing Starts and Building Permits which comes out on Tuesday.

I anticipate a slow week and recommend locking rates as they continue to be very strong!

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Rates:

Conforming ($417,000 or less)

• 30yr Fixed 5.875%
• 5yr ARM 5.500%
• 7yr ARM 5.750%

Jumbo (Greater than $417,000)

• 30yr Fixed 6.500%
• 5yr ARM 5.625%
• 7yr ARM 6.125%

Justin Whitney, Home Loan Consultant
C- 843-270-8366
justin_whitney@countrywide.com
www.loansbyjustin.com

LATEST MARKET INDICATORS (NOV 07)

Market Indicators for Single Family Homes (SFD)

(To view the whole article, including the supporting graphs, please click HERE)

We are still selling a considerable number of homes in the Charleston area: Sales activity is back to 2004 levels, which was not a bad year!. So why is it that all the news that you read about real estate are bad these days? My opinion is two-fold:

a) Good or encouraging news don't sell! Newspapers and media want big headlines that make the news. So they choose whether to look at the glass half-full or half-empty, according to their view of which headling will do better for their sales. Right now they are looking at a half-empty glass...

b) It is true that we have a very high level of inventory. But we are comparing today's levels with the 3 "hottest" years for real estate in recent times (04-06), where inventory was extremely low! The trends are encouraging, we are seeing a lot fewer speculative homes being built, and the inventory seems to be coming down. The real test will come in the first quarter of next year!

How does this compare with Mt. Pleasant and Belle Hall? Inventory in Mt. Pleasant did increase more dramatically than in the metro area as a whole, since it trebled from the 2004-05 level.
But the current trend is to stabilize and decrease. For the whole of Mt Pleasant, we can see sales activity regressing to 2003 levels (a little slower than the metro average), but still
selling a substantial number of homes per month.

Belle Hall sales statistics show that this market appears to be more resilient than Mt. Pleasant as a whole, but because the sample size is smaller, we can see more fluctuation, which makes it harder to identify patterns. Inventory levels in Belle Hall, although high compared to 2004-05 levels, have shown the strongest trend to decrease, compares to the whole of Mt. Pleasant and the rest of Charleston. This is certainly good news for Belle Hall owners looking to sell in 2008!

NEW HOME BUILDERS OFFERING BIG INCENTIVES

These days my "in-box" fills up every day with "Special Offers" from builders and developers giving away freebies, increased commissions and buyer incentives. Some are offering to pay closing costs, upgrades, extra rooms, etc. Others are thinking a little outside the box: One recently offered a 2-year membership to Freedom Boat Club to whomever bought one of their new townhomes in Johns Island!

Although these incentives may work to lure home buyers, I always recommend to my clients that they view them with some skepticism. It is also important to find out:

• Have the developers increased their prices recently, just before "giving away" the discounts? (i.e. is it a "perceived" sale and not a real one)
• Have they been successful selling the subdivision, or are there any other issues that are important to know? (i.e. are there any widespread construction quality problems, problems with utilities or pending assessments on the HOA, etc.)
• Is the developer is a publicly traded company (these companies are driven by quarterly results and are able to effect larger discounts to get inventory off their books just in time for reporting to shareholders)
• Are the offers "gimmicks" or items of real value?
• At the nominal contract price, is it likely that the home will appraise given recent comparable sales activity?
• Is it a "spec" home - is it already completed or about to be completed? Builders are more negotiable on "spec" homes than on new construction, given they need to reduce their carrying costs.
  

Don't get me wrong, there are REAL BARGAINS out there (just recently a 2,600 sq. ft. brand new home in Summerville was being offered for $72 per square foot - you probably could not BUILD it for that price, without even counting the cost of the land!

Many national and local builders want to see their inventory homes off their books before the end of the year!

Happy home buying!!!

BUYERS OVERWHELMED WITH CHOICES

With around 10,000 active listings in the Charleston Metro Area, buyers can get a little overwhelmed when looking at available homes, unless they have a "plan of attack" that helps them narrow those choices.

Have you tried to buy a home lately? Your Realtor will show you many times the number of choices that you would have had two years ago. This proliferation makes it difficult to decide! Unless you have a "photographic" memory, you will probably get somewhat confused by the time you look at the 15th home! I have seen many buyers get "brain freeze" when it comes to making a decision, just because the amount of information becomes overwhelming...

When I work with a buyer client, I prefer to implement a "drill down" approach to the search, designed to narrow choices from the general to the specific. Therefore we first work on identifying preferred areas/neighborhoods, then subsections and maybe streets! This then makes searching for a particular home much simpler!

Once we are ready to look for a specific home in a neighborhood, here's what I recommend to my buyer clients (I tell them this may not work for everyone - it works for people like me, who like numbers):

1. Take abundant notes at every showing. Most people will forget details by the time they look at their 10th home! If you take notes and identify salient characteristics of each home, this will help you later.
2. Design a "Criteria Grid" where you write and prioritize your buying criteria, assigning relative importance to each criterion.
3. Rate every home you view against your buying criteria. This will produce an "absolute grade" for each home which may help you decide between homes that are "tied" in your mind...

In addition:

• Check your criteria grid grading against your emotional and "gut feel";
• Ask your Realtor to help you choose by playing "devil's advocate"
• Don't act until it feels absolutely right! These days you will not need to rush into making a decision (unless the price is very right!)

WHERE IS THE HOUSING MARKET GOING?

This is a question we get asked many times a day. My sellers want to know if they are going to lose more equity. Buyers want to wait until the market bottoms. Lenders and appraisers are caught between making money and taking risks.

My answer: Contrary to what the media says (daily), we are still selling homes at a reasonably good rate in the Charleston metro area. Sales volumes are now at the 2003 level (which was not a bad year!). Yes, there is downward pressure on prices (but please remember that prices went up 20%-30% per year in certain markets from 2003-2005, and yet the only ones complaining were first home buyers who could not get into the market). And yes, there is a large inventory that is slowing down any recovery.

The toughest competition for existing home sales are now new home builders. Because most of these are national, publicly traded companies looking to improve their quarterly balance sheets, they are discounting their prices aggressively to effect sales. And they do it mostly in the shape of incentives, so their deals are not always evident from looking at the recorded sales prices (closing costs, free upgrades, decorating allowances - there is even one developer offering free two-year membership to the Freedom Boat Club if you purchase one of their townhomes!)

This means that if you are unlucky enough to have bought in the last two years, and you live in a community where the original developer/builder is still offering your floor plan as new construction, there is very little chance that you can sell your home without losing money.

Big developers can take the hit! and they do, when they sell at a loss they take the write-off and their shareholders will be the ones paying for this short-term mentality in the long run. Having said this, I think that it is about the right time to start looking at buying select stocks in corporate building companies, after these writeoffs, when the shares are lower. I believe they will bounce back sharply. One simple reason: Demand and supply. More people, limited land.

That's why I thing that the Charleston market will rebound quicker than the average town and I am very optimistic for next year - despite the doldrums, we have lots of factors in our favor: The retiring baby-boomers (just starting), increasing employment, growing medical and financial services and a strong military presence.