Gwinnett County Real Estate: A great short sale bargain in Braselton

Here is a beautiful property located across from Chateau Elan’s public golf courses and convenient to I-85, shopping and more. This home features 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths, upgraded appliances and granite countertops, a huge pantry, convenientgarage to kitchen access, an open free flowing floorplan, great community amenities, a large lot, Mill Creek schools and a very low price. The berooms are especially large and the home has two staircases for easy access. There is a large upstairs laundry room and a cool built in desk in the upstairs hallway. The Falls of Braselton subdivision is divided by the Gwinnett / Barrow line and this home is on the Gwinnett side.

Offerred for $202,900, this home is listed as a short sale and all offers will require lender approval. Call Chris Compton today at 770-682-7735.

Gwinnett County Real Estate: Buying a Short Sale Property

In a recent post, I described the short sale process as a win-win-win situation, and it is. The lender avoids taking yet another property through foreclosure. The homeowner avoids the foreclosure process and the enormous credit impact associated with it and the buyer gets a great deal.

If the deal closes. If…

When you make an offer on a property being offered as a short sale, you need to understand a little bit about short sales and what to expect. The first thing to understand is that although these transactions are becoming more and more commonplace, there is an excellent chance that your realtor will not really know a lot about the process. Is this because they are not good at their job? No. Short sales are just not common enough for the average realtor to have come in contact with a lot of them and while your realtor is hopefully an expert in more common areas like property selection, valuation, negotiation, etc., this “newer” field may be daunting.

The second thing I want you to know is that the process is not fast. Your patience is going to be tested and if you are not ready to exercise extreme patience, maybe you should pass on this particular deal. From the time you submit your offer, you should expect at least 4 weeks before you find out if the bank has approved it. If they approve it, you are going to save thousands of dollars, so if you don’t have to move tomorrow, this might be worth your time.

My next little nugget is very important if you don’t want to waste your time. You can apply this technique to other deals as well – it is not restricted to the short sale arena. Negotiation requires both parties to succeed in order to be successful. If you try to steal the property, you are just going to wait for 4 weeks or more and get rejected by the bank. In a typical short sale transaction, the bank will send out realtors they trust to evaluate the property’s value. Then the bank will evaluate the offer to see what percentage of the property’s value they are going to realize after paying all of their expenses. If that percentage is 80 or higher, they will probably accept. If it is lower than 80, they will proably reject the offer.

What does that mean in English? If the property is worth $100,000 dollars, don’t offer $80,000. Sure, the home owner wll agree to it, but the bank won’t and four or five weeks later you will have to submit another offer or look for another property. Remember they need to NET 80% of the value. Offer 90% and you have a great chance. How do you determine the value? That’s where your realtor comes in. If you don’t have a realtor, you can call me, Chris Compton at 770-682-7735. I will walk you through the process and help you succeed.

Short sales are odd transactions because you are buying the property from another individual, but their lender has final say so on the deal. Make sure that their lender is getting what they need and you will find yourself in a great home for a great low price.

Gwinnett County Real Estate Market Report for June 2 – June 8

Hello sports fans. Currently on the market in Gwinnett County we have 9918 homes. The lowest priced home is $52,900 and the most expensive is $7,950,000. The average list price is currently $308,460. All data comes from First MLS.

In 2008, 2434 Gwinnett County Homes have sold for an average of $229,044. The lowest price has been $42500 and the highest price has been $2,080,816. Note that I previously reported a higher priced sale. I get the data from First MLS, so I assume that they have corrected an error since my last report.

During the week ending June 8, 173 homes sold in Gwinnett. 605 homes were listed and 657 saw their prices change with over 90% of those changes being in a downward direction (that is correct – they got cheaper.)

Gwinnett County Real Estate: Short Sales

What is a short sale? Have you ever heard the term “Short Sale?” Is that a home that is only listed for a month or is the owner less than five feet tall?

None of the Above.

Gwinnett Braves Stadium Construction Update and Photos

The Braves had their official groundbreaking ceremony last week, despite the fact that ground was actually broken quite a while ago.

I stopped by the construction site yesterday at 2500 Buford Drive in Lawrenceville and took a look around. They have done quite a bit since the last look I had. Here are some photos. As you can see, they have fleshed out the field. I was tempted to run the bases!

The picture above was taken from way behind home plate – well outside of the stadium.

The picture above was taken from just beyond the right field foul line.

They just added this sign to the site.

Gwinnett County Real Estate Market Update

Back on May 10, I reported on some price reductions in the Gwinnett County Real Estate Market. You can read that report by clicking here.

Of the five homes that I reported as reduced, three are still on the market at their reduced price. 2015 Lavendar Drive in Ivey Chase has been slashed again, this time to $229,900.

2926 Swarthmore Drive went under cntract on May 23, 2008.

There are lots of bargains out there. This is the perfect time to buy real estate. Prices are low and interest rates are low. Don’t sit around and wait for a better time or you may find yourself out of luck due to a radical change in US banking policy or lending standards.

Remeber the old adage – “Pigs get fat, Hogs get slaughtered.”

Call me today at 770-682-7735 and let’s fatten up your portfolio!