All Blog Entries by Joshua Keen 
Real Source Brokers.com - Intown Atlanta Real Estate Blog
Joshua and his team of professionals specialize in helping buyers and sellers in the Intown Atlanta Real Estate market. This is Joshua's blog.
There are currently 131 blog entries published by Joshua Keen.
The Perfect Storm
Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 2:49pm. 136 Views, 0 Comments.
Spring is here.
I know it sounds silly coming to you on a rainy day in early February when it's 35 degrees outside and "wintery mix" is the weekend forecast, but the real estate market is on strange footing these days.
Here's A Fact:
Spring has sprung in the real estate market.
And the next 3 months are the best opportunity to get your home sold in over a year.
Why?
Several factors are creating a "perfect storm" for sellers in the current market.
I'll do my best to explain...
Wikipedia defines a "Perfect Storm" as an "expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically."
It's also a movie starring George Clooney as the captain of an ill-fated fishing boat.
But the perfect storm…
FHA Changes the Investment Game
Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 1:08pm. 72 Views, 2 Comments.
In addition to residential sales, my team is heavily involved in helping investors profit by investing in foreclosure properties. Mainly by purchasing small single family homes in Atlanta foreclosure market at 60% to 70% of future value, rehabbing them, and quickly reselling them for a healthy profit. Most of these properties are in blue collar neighborhoods that we resell to first time buyers using FHA insured financing. Most of the foreclosed properties we purchase were also financed by FHA insured mortgages.
The one wrinkle in this buy, rehab, and resell process was the arcane Housing and Urban Development anti-flipping 90 day rule 24CCFR 203.37a(b)(2). This rule "provide that a rehabbed property would not be eligible for another FHA insured loan if…
What's Up With FHA?
Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 5:31pm. 58 Views, 0 Comments.
FHA announced this week it will seek to implement changes to current policies. These changes are all restrictive and have a significant impact on the real estate buying public.
You can read all about the changes here: FHA Announces Policy Changes to Address Risk and Strengthen Finances
For those less inclined to sift through all the beauracracy ... here's a quick snapshot:
- The upfront mortgage insurance premium will increase by 0.5% from 1.75% to 2.25%
- The maximum seller concessions will decrease from 6% of the sales price to 3% of the sales price
- There are some credit score/LTV limitations that should not affect “A” paper lenders
When Do The Changes Go Into Effect?
FHA will issue a notice and have a comment period on most of…
Atlanta Foreclosure Report: January 2010
Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 10:45am. 108 Views, 0 Comments.
2009 was a record setting year in Metro Atlanta with 117,107 published foreclosure notices.
And the 2010 outlook doesn't look promising as the economy and job market continues to show signs of weakness.
But with just 8,181 foreclosure notices filed in Janaury 2010 we're able to breathe a small sigh of relief. Surprisingly, we saw the first January-to-January decline in 10 years. So what is the can this decline be attributed to? Likely a combination of several factors, not the least of which being that we are finally seeing fall out from the "subprime" crisis getting cleaned up.
But it's far too early to predict how the year will go from here. With many banks slowing the pace of foreclosure through the Holiday season -- it's possible this is just…
It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 3:51pm. 83 Views, 0 Comments.
If you've been following mortgage rates over the last month you've likely noticed a quick and steady climb. In fact, since a low of 4.5% on November 27th, 2009 to around 5.25% today (December 30th, 2009) they've done nothing but go up.
What's Going On?
Mortage rates are going up. And this rise in mortgage rates is something I've been expecting for a few months now. Mortgage rates are on their way up, likely to 6% or more over the next few months
Why Is This Happening?
Because that's what they were about a year ago (and where they would be today) before unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve. It's not the result of the economy is recovering ... the economy isn't in recovery mode. Last year the Federal Reserve starting their…
Move Your Money
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 10:19pm. 112 Views, 0 Comments.
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
I urge you to read, watch and take action.
Timing The Atlanta Market
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 5:06pm. 89 Views, 1 Comments.
The Case-Shiller data for October was released today.
Good news first: seasonally adjusted data shows a 5th consecutive increase for nationwide home prices.
Now the bad news: continued weakness in the Atlanta market with -.2% month over month; -8.1% for the year and a whopping -19.6% since the peak of the market in April of 2007.
The good, the bad and the ugly news: depending on whether you're a buyer/investor (good), seller (bad) or lender (ugly) we have seen prices this low since May of 2001.
| Market | MoM Change | YoY Change | Date of Max | Change from Max | Prices Last at This Level in… | Consec. Mos. of Increase |
| LA Area | 0.7% | -6.3% | Apr-06 | -39.0% | Sep-03 | 5 |
| San Diego Area | 1.1% | -2.4% |
The Year In Atlanta Real Estate
Sunday, December 27th, 2009 at 9:12am. 127 Views, 1 Comments.
An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves
Now that Christmas (and 2009) is behind us, it's time to look at "the year that was" for Intown Atlanta real estate. The vast Intown market requires we chunk this data down to more granular levels. It's only there, in the market-by-market comparisons, that information like this is of value.
But to keep things simple and to lay our foundation it makes sense to take a macro view of the entire market. From there, we can break out individual neighborhood markets in subsequent posts.
What are we looking at?
Today, we'll look at the how 2009 compared to 2008 for the overall Intown Atlanta marketplace - that's 34 zip codes.
We'll…
The Free Ride Is Over
Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 11:03am. 80 Views, 0 Comments.
Remember last year when all the banks - the big banks - were going broke and we gave them like $700 billion with zero interest and no strings attached so they would have some money to lend back to us at between 6% and 30% interest? But we had to do it ... to avoid a world wide financial market meltdown! - Jon Stewart
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - Flight Delay | ||||
| ||||
2009 Atlanta Foreclosure Report
Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 5:18pm. 78 Views, 0 Comments.
According to the most recent report from Equity Depot (an Alpharetta based firm), the Atlanta real estate market had a record setting 117,107 foreclosures notices filed in 2009. That's a near 50 percent increase over the previous record in 2008.
The report goes on to disclose a 10 percent increase in foreclosures compared to November (month over month) and ... get this ... a whopping 77 percent increase over December 2008 (year over year).
Gwinnett county led the pack with 2,074 foreclosure notices, close behind sits Fulton county at 2,006 notices. Dekalb county figures came in at 1,568, Cobb at 1,203 and Clayton lagging behind major metro counties with 866.
Fulton county ended the year with 24,609 total foreclosures.
Unbelievable. …
