House Hunting 101

It’s not Atlanta real estate, but I couldn’t resist posting about a small town for sale. It seems that the owner has decided to sell the entire town of Albert, Texas. And what’s even more intriguing is that he is selling it, via auction, on eBay.

Albert, Texas is a 13 acre town just 50 miles north of San Antonio. It used to have a post office, but now only sports peach and pecan orchards, a dance hall, a pavilion, a three bedroom house with a tractor shed and a tavern that is only open on weekends.

The reserve price is $2.5 million, which hasn’t been met yet.

Developers submitted plans recently for a mixed use development in East Point called Village at Redwine. The development will sit on 81 acres of land near Redwine Road and North Commerce Drive. 32% of the acreage will be saved for green space. Here are a few other particulars:

• 988 Residences
• 34,000 Square feet of office space
• 8,000 square feet of retail space
• Construction should take close to 2 and a half years to complete

Construction should begin sometime in January of 2008 on a $75 million project in Grant Park, near the proposed Beltline, which will include;

• 342 Apartments
• 57 Townhomes
• An 8 acre dog park
• Volleyball courts
• A garden
• A parking deck for 500 cars

So far, the project does not have a name, but plans have it going in on 18 acres of land fronting East Confederate Avenue between Avondale and Lester.

The apartments will be ready in early 2009, while the entire project should be completed sometime in 2010.

Most of us in the Atlanta real estate industry have been screaming this for a long time. Atlanta is a very stable housing market!!! We don’t see the huge price swings that folks in the Northeast, California and Florida see. Therefore we don’t have to worry about our local real estate market crumbling. I truly believe that if we could build an anti main-stream media bubble around metro Atlanta, and keep out the “the sky is falling folks” in the media, Atlanta would still be steaming ahead at a good pace when it comes to the real estate market. Check out the whole list of stable housing markets, in which Atlanta was #7 in America.

At the intersection of Chesire bridge and Lavista Road, a new community is being built. This mixed use development will consist of:

• 283 Luxury Apartments
• 134 Stacked Townhome Units
• 11,000 Square Feet of Street Level retail Space

Lavista Walk will be a gated community and the townhome units will be made up of one, two and three bedroom floorplans. Pricing will start at $209,900 for the 1 bedroom and go up to $419,900 for the three bedroom units.

The Opus Corporation is considering an area at the southeast corner of Piedmont Road and Cheshire Bridge for a new mixed use development. The targeted property is the current locations for Buckhead Midtown Vaccum, the Pot ‘n Pan restaurant, Piedmont Pawn, Da Chicago Dogs, Axiom Salon and a Nationwide Insurance office.

The proposed development would consist of 50,000 square feet of retail space and 360 rental apartments. If approved, it would be the first residential mixed use development on a block that is currently occupied by restaurants and local retailers.

In just about every direction, high density real estate is currently planned or under construction. Cheshire Walk and The Highlands are nearby on LaVista and Cheshire Bridge, and the new Lindbergh MARTA station are close by on Piedmont.

Whether this billboard earns business by making someone laugh or snags a bit of buzz by pissing people off, it was a stroke of genius by whomever designed it. I would love to throw out some link love to the website that is advertised on the billboard, but alas, the website only goes to a placeholder. Not such a genius move…

Thanks to the Best Article Every Day blog for uncovering this billboard and 12 others that were quite worth a look.

Tomorrow morning, WABE (90.1 FM) will air a seven part series on Atlanta’s Beltline, a 22 mile loop of historic railroad that will pass through and connect 45 in-town Atlanta neighborhoods. The series will be heard on NPR’s “Morning Edition” sometime between 5:00-9:00AM.

Beginning Thursday, September 13, “Morning Edition” on NPR (WABE 90.1 FM), will present a seven-part, in-depth series on Atlanta’s Beltline. In this News Special Report, Steve Goss and Kevin Keller explore the big picture of this one-of-a-kind green-space/transit proposal, including a conversation with Ryan Gravel, the former Georgia Tech student whose thesis gave birth to the project. You will also go on a tour of the proposed route, hear explanations of the green space and transit implications and learn more about neighborhood concerns.

Government officials, both city and state, met today to go over plans for the redevelopment of the 487 acre Fort McPherson property, which announced, in 2005, that it was closing in 2011. What these officials came up with was asking the U.S. Army to donate 155 of those acres for a research park.

a scientific research facility on par with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Research Triangle Park

Also announced today were some of the residential plans for the redevelopment project.

The proposal calls for rezoning by Atlanta and a partnership with private developers, the state and East Point to create 150 acres of green space, with 30 acres set aside for a festival and event grounds. The future site may also feature up to 4,600 homes, four million square feet of office space and 400,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.

If you’re a fan of keeping up with where celebrities live and what their houses look like, I’m going to share three websites with you here that should keep you in the loop.

• Luxist - Luxist is a luxury blog for everything from apparel to pets to luxury real estate. They have an Estate of the Day category which will sometimes feature celebrity housing.
• The Real Estalker - Keeps up with celebrity real estate purchases and sales across the country.
• Big Time Listings - Celebrity Big Time Listings also covers celebrity real estate from across the country.

One of the reasons I bring these celebrity real estate blogs up is due to the fact that over the past few days they have been giving some press to two top Atlanta celebrities with real estate transactions in the County Club of the South, in Alpharetta. The first was Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown’s house (yes, the one where they filmed “Being Bobby Brown”) that just sold. The other home (pictured below) belongs to Usher and is currently on the market.