Diamond Dwellings announces 1991 Regalview Drive in Hamilton Mill. New to the market and (as of this writing) listed at $664,000 (recently reduced to $650,000 ) For updated pricing, check out the full listing by clicking here.

Here’s some more details…

This gorgeous 2 Story Home is in the prestigious Coventry section of Hamilton Mill. Finished terrace level also has storage, full kitchen, pool table / pool room, exercise/fitness room and more. Kitchen has granite counters, tile backsplash, stainless appliances and is open to vaulted keeping room. Master bedroom has a sitting room with fireplace and giant closet – even enough room for his clothes!

Pebbletech saline pool with infinity/disappearing edge with spa. Covered patio and covered deck. Don’t forget the deep view of the #3 fairway on Hamilton Mill golf club. (memberships are available at a discount)

Have you checked out Foursquare.com?  It’s the fun new, location-based game that everyone’s playing on their iPhones (it works on blackberry and other phones too).

Check out Diamond Dwellings profile page and join in the fun.

I’ve been cutting my lawn with a reel mower for 4 or 5 years now.  It’s amazing the “look” you can get just by cutting with a reel – regardless of anything else you do to your lawn, like fertilizer, etc.  I’ve found a great company called ReelWorks that deals exclusively in service (and some sales) of reel mowers and they are right near Hamilton Mill & Chateau Elan, on Thompson Mill Road (here’s a map).  They’ve been working on my reel mower since I started using one.  The service has been great.

Sanding and lime are also critical elements for getting that putting green look with Atlanta’s soil conditions (I’m specifically talking about the prevelant Bermuda grasses).  Sanding is a very serious job and requires great equipment to do a large lawn properly (and get the desired result).  Call The Sandman to get more info on that.  Usually mid-summer is the best time to sand your yard.

Lime is actually the secret weapon for kick ass bermuda lawns in Atlanta.  It cuts the acidity of the nasty red clay soil (it comes back too so you have to keep up the liming once or twice per year). Lime is just the simplest thing ever to find & apply.  You can get it at Home Depot (or anywhere) and you almost can’t apply it too heavily.  Within a week or so (with water) you’ll see the lawn actually “soften” in addition to a deeper green.

By the way, if you are going to sell your home in Gwinnett, nothing adds perceived value and curb appeal like that putting green lawn!

If you decide to try out these companies, please tell them I sent you

Lately I’ve become excited about biking.  In fact, I’ve been riding a LOT.  I first caught the bug doing the indoor kind called spinning. That’s where you lock yourself in a room with 20 other people and jam some really loud music for about an hour — while riding a funny looking stationary bike. Anyway, that’s what got me into it.

I recently bought a mountain bike (pictured) AND a road bike (cuz I wanted to do both). My road bike is what they call a hybrid.  It sorta looks like a mountain bike with skinny tires.  And, I also bought a mountain bike for my son so we could ride the trails together.

As it turned out, I bought all three bikes from three different shops in the Hamilton Mill area so I thought I’d write this post to share my experiences and give some links to those shops.  Since I had great experiences with all three shops, I can really recommend all of them!  Each is slightly different depending on what you want, but all of them passed inspection with me

My hybrid bike is pictured below.  I had to steal this picture off the KHS website (can’t believe I don’t have a good picture of it yet myself).  I bought it from Addicitive Cycles up in Hoschton.  I went there before any other shops because a reliable source told me that “all the real serious bikers go there”.  Based on what I saw going on there, I guess I could imagine that to be true.  Since I’m just a total newbie to biking, I can’t really confirm or deny that for sure.  You can judge for yourself.  BUT, I can say that Cody and his team up there were awesome, friendly and made me feel very welcome even though they obviously deal with a pretty “serious biker” clientele.

I only had my hybrid for about a week when I realized that I really wanted a mountain bike too (for the trails) and the hybrid for the roads and the paved trails in Mulberry Park.  My mountain bike (top photo) is a Specialized (that’s the brand) and I bought from Outback Bikes located in the Hamilton Mill Publix shopping center.  I LOVE that bike.  It’s super cool (I think).  Outback Bikes is a great little shop.  They actually have two locations.  They had good inventory also.  Great service (not just saying that either).  By the way, if you want to start mountain biking in Gwinnett, Ft Yargo is a great trail to start on.

I bought my son’s bike over at Knight Bikes & Skateboards.  As you can tell from the name, they have bikes and boards.  It’s a bigger shop so they have pretty good inventory of both.  I think they had a few more “middle-of-the-road” bikes and bikes for kids, etc.  It might be the family bike shop of the three (although Outback certainly fits that bill too).

Are you into biking too?  Please let me know in the comments here.

The first quarter of 2010 has come to a close.  21 homes were sold in Hamilton Mill over those first 3 months of the year.  This is our usual “quick snapshot” of the sales results.  It’s meant to give you a basic idea of what’s happening in the market.  You’ll see as you look into the data that sharp analysis and accurate market values for your home (or any other comparable home) requires a more complete review of many other important variables such as closing costs (not reflected here) & seller motivation — including, of course, foreclosures and short sales.  As always, more information and often more up-to-date information is often available here at HamiltonMillDwellings.com as the days and weeks pass going forward.

Pricing & Values…

Back in January, I used the term “reserved recovery” to describe our local market conditions here in Gwinnett County.  I still think that represents an accurate assessment.  In fact, I think we can expect exactly that for months to come — even a few years.  If you look back at Georgia’s real estate values for decades (before 2003 or 2004) what you see is very slow, steady growth.  Month after month & year after year – 2%, sometimes 3% annual growth.  We’re returning to that pattern of positive (but slow & steady) growth.

How’s The Gwinnett Market…

This week I wrote a blog post about a national data report that just came out.  It shows that pricing is still declining very slightly.  However, sales volumes are rising with DOM (days-on-market) going down.  This data supports my comments above.  Here’s a link to find that national report.

What’s Next…

At the end of April, most of the first time home buyer tax credits will have expired.  There is no indication from Washington that these credits will be extended any further.  Most markets are improving slowly – and hopefully that trend with continue without these interventions in place.  Spring is upon us and I’m predicting an improved Q2 vs ’08 and ’09.   We shall see

Probably want to click here…

Here’s the link to download the new report.

Please note that this file is not the final print version.  If’ you’d like a print copy, please email matt@diamonddwellings.com

My good friends at Altos Research just released their latest Real-Time Housing Market Update. This is a national view of the market based on a 10 city composite index. Since Atlanta is one of the 10 cities it’s always particularly interesting to me when the updated report comes out.

It looks at price — we’re down 1.5% over the last quarter (not bad); listing inventory — we’re up 9.7% in the last 3 months (BUT, that’s very normal going into spring); and average days on market — we’re down 17.1% (wow that’s good)!

The overall composite shows pretty similar numbers to the Atlanta real estate market numbers that I listed from the report above. Overall pricing is down 1.8% with inventory rising 12.8% (again that’s probably more about the normal “spring rise”) and days-on-market down 6.7%

So, this is really more “bouncing along the bottom” data, indicating more of the relatively flat market we’ve had for many months now. It’s good news in the sense that the market has proven to have a pretty firm bottom. The strong rise is still a ways away for sure.

Just click here if you want to download the complete Altos Research report.

If you’re selling your Gwinnett home this spring, it’s a great idea to get a professional opinion about decorating choices, furniture placement and even lighting options to make sure that you’re highlighting the best features (and minimizing others).  We’ve been working with MJN Interiors for some time now & so I thought I’d post their information here as an easy resource.  Ask for Michelle (and tell her I sent ya!)

Here’s a great testimonial from their website…

Hit the mark perfectly

We met Michelle during the redecorating of our family room (another “Must Do” project) with the expertise of a fabulous faux painter, an artist really, named Kass.  Kass not only recommended Michelle she practically insisted on her and it was truly the best piece of advice we received.
We were so delighted with our family room transformation that in less than a year we decided to tackle our bedroom … with Michelle’s help, of course!  We hired out part of the painting, did some ourselves but left the “heavy lifting” (i.e., window treatment design, accent furniture selection, etc.) to Michelle.  I simply told Michelle how I wanted our bedroom to “feel” and once again Michelle hit the mark perfectly.  My reaction was tears of joy and awe at the transformation and my husband said our furniture never looked more beautiful!

Michelle is a true treasure – she’s fantastic at her craft, talented, a great listener and one of the nicest people we know.  We are so very happy that we were introduced to Michelle and look forward to our next project with MJN Interiors!  We wish her all the very best!

Patty & Scott Neumeister
Johns Creek, GA

Click on the MJN website below to see more details including more testimonials & contact info.

(note of disclosure: MJN is part of our paid ad sponsor program as well as a local business partner)

I ran across an article that parses IRS data on which states are gaining population and which are losing population.  GA is doing pretty well on the list… only a couple of states gained more population that we did here in GA.  Texas and North Carolina picked up more households than the 37,000+ Georgia picked up.  The big losers were Michigan and New York.

The information was assembled by the AP from IRS data points.  Here is a link back to the article.

The fun part is figuring out why…  Jobs, taxes and corporate relocation would be the things that would pop to the front of my mind.  Michigan has been getting pounded for a decade on the jobs front.  As the economy slowed down, that wasn’t improved.  New York, New Jersey and California have all increased taxes on the wealthy, and there has been a flight to lower tax states like Florida and Nevada as a result.  Texas has also been very business friendly.  North Carolina has become a central point for tech oriented companies, and might even get a bigger reputation that Silicon Valley in CA.

Georgia has reasonable taxes and a friendly business climate.  Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta connects to the world in a way that few airports elsewhere can… Atlanta is VERY connected.  The climate is mild, but not as hot as FL during the summer…

But there is no question that the I-85 corridor, extending through Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina is one of the best business corridors in the country right now…

Last year I wrote about Senate Bill 55 in the Georgia Senate.  Basically, the bill required the Counties to include foreclosures in assessments.  Previously, assessments for taxes excluded foreclosures, so they (falsly?) increased values and tax revenue to the counties.

While that makes it tough for the counties, it is a needed break for home owners.  The counties complained that they would lose revenues… well, the people are losing revenue, too.  They have to suck it up.

In the last year, the bill quietly passed and was signed into law by Governor Sonny Perdue.

Here is the link to the original post.

from Lanebailey.com

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Over on one of my other blogs, I re-blogged a post from Jeff Corbett.  He is VERY involved int eh mortgage and housing industry and loves diving into the ugly underbelly of the industry.

In this post, he lays out the reasons he sees why there will be increased volitility in the mortgage and housing sectors.  Basically, since the Fed is currently slated to stop buying mortgages next month…

It is worth a read…

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