Atlanta is still growing, in spite of the lagging economy and rising unemployment figures throughout the country. By 2020, Atlanta is expected to be the sixth-largest metro area in the country.
There are many opportunities for businesses and attractions throughout the Metro Atlanta Area. Forbes magazine ranked Atlanta as top among the “Most Wired Cities,” and “Best Cities for Singles.” Kiplinger magazine placed the city in the No. 1 spot for “Best Cities for Married with Kids.”
The cost of living in Atlanta continues to be a draw. Lower costs for major expenses such as housing, food, clothing and gasoline help keep the region’s cost of living below the U.S. average. Housing remains more affordable here than in other metro areas, and property tax rates range from 1 percent to 2 percent of home value.
High-tech employment in metro Atlanta is credited for 5.2 percent of total employment, which is more than 130,000 workers. Top technology employers include heavies like IBM Corp., Cox Enterprises Inc., AT&T Inc., and General Electric Co. There is also the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that employs more than 6,500 scientists and staff.
When I worked in Tulsa Ok in the early 1980s they had a way to store electricity in what amounted to a big ‘battery’. You see the electrical generating plants come on line and they run continuously because they take to long to bring on line. They can’t just turn them on and off at the drop of a hat as demand goes up and down.
The problem has been the high demand during daylight hours and the low demand during nighttime. How do you save the excess energy generated?
At night they generate just as much energy as they do in the daytime. The big issue is that the usage is down during the night so power is plentiful, actually wasted. The challenge is how to store that excess energy generated at night for use the next day, hence the ‘battery’.
Outside of Tulsa they built a thing they call ‘pumped-storage’. (To find out more about pumped storage, click here.) They built a lake at the top of a hill and at night they pump water from a lower level lake to the lake at the top.
They fill the upper lake with 4 giant turbines pumping water through 14’ pipes called, penstocks, up the hill with the excess night electricity. Then the next day, during peak power needs, the water flows back downhill through the turbines and generates electricity. Read more details about the Salina OK Pumped-Storage facility.
Now another alternative ‘battery’, the use of ice to store energy has been developed and written up in the NY Times article.
Alternative green energy sources need to be further explored, but I think some of these ideas are proving to be viable and I wanted to share them with you.
Mark Lackey, Associate Broker with Solid Source Realty shares why home buyers need representation when purchasing a home. In today’s market more than ever, a buyer needs help navigating the market to make sure that he or she is getting sound advice.
A few years ago we bought a new home and every Saturday and Sunday when we wanted to sleep in we were awoken with the rhythmic music of the tapping of hammers. Well that music of tapping hammers died a couple of years ago, when new home construction came to a near halt.
Like the line in the Don McLean song American Pie “some thing touched me deep inside the day the music died”, we were all touched when the tapping of hammers almost came to a stop in the last few years. Well I’m here to tell you that the music has resumed as I witnessed it with my own ears this week.
While searching the MLS for a home for transferee I found those listings we use to find, ones without a picture and only a sketch or rendering of what the home would look like. Well, my buyer and I ventured to see the development where the four sketches were being built.
Like music to our ears we arrived in a beehive of activity and red mud. There was raw dirt just recently exposed for multiple basements and the heavy equipment was parked on an empty lot down the hill. Trucks full of concrete were there with their loads spinning, waiting to pour down the chute to the carefully prepared forms.
There were vans and trucks of all shapes and colors parked along one side of the road. Back when we moved into the new subdivision I remember the traffic jams all the construction vehicles would cause and remembered complaining when they parked on both sides of the road totally blocking access. Now instead of complaints of traffic jams we welcome the confusion and congestion because it represents recovery for us all.
I just stood back and took it all in. Twelve homes under construction in one subdivision and five in another. There must have been at least sixty construction workers of some sort there. Think of it, sixty jobs when we are a country starved for jobs. And think of the other jobs the construction was creating through the ripple down to suppliers and subsequent trades to be on site during the building process.
Here was a ‘manned’ sales office with an agent on duty. When was the last time you heard that one. The builder was in his office, managing schedules of labor and materials. Everyone had mud on their shoes. It was great!
How sweet the memories that this experience conjured up, with the smell of freshly turned dirt, sawdust and diesel, Memories from years ago during the housing boom. It is amazing what once was an inconvenience is now music to my ears.
Folks, the music has resumed! The music of the engine that turns our world, housing and the jobs it creates. So listen in the distance for that heavy equipment moving dirt, the sound of trucks loaded with construction supplies rumbling down our road, the buzz of saws and that rhythmic tapping out of the hammers. The music is not dead, and it is touching each and every one of you.
In Gwinnett county and others around the metro Atlanta area, most of us have suffered a loss in home value from the real estate peak in 2005 & 2006. So we were not surprised to find out the White House has been effected too. You will be surprised to read just how much Zillow valued the White House. Seems like no one is immune!
Read the full article:
CNBC Article - Value of White House Drops by More Than $15 Million
FHA has announced sweeping changes that range from increased down payment requirement from 3.5% to 10% in certain cases, increased Mortgage Insurance Premiums (MIP) by half a percent and cutting allowed sellers contributions by half.
I wanted to purchase LED (Light Emitting Diode) flood lamps to replace the one around the home that take a 30’ ladder to change and because I use them for security and burn a lot of duty hours. I don’t climb ladders and don’t own one for that reason. I want the 30,000 hour life cycle to avoid climbing the ladder to change those in high places and I like that I can burn less the watts as an incandescent or compact flourscent to save money.
I have figured each LED watt is much less watt equivalent output as a traditional bulb. LED watts equal 4 to 7 watts incandescent, and not all LED watts are equal. I found this out when I bought a 4 watt and it wasn’t bright enough.
Next I then went to a 5o LED traditional looking flood bulb that was about 14 watts. It wasn’t bright enough for the outside lighting but makes great down light in the kitchen can lights.
Cree is LED maker that sells great LEDs for manufactures to put into their bulbs. I’m now up to a 21 watt LED to equal a 75 watt incandescent. It has 7 bulbs. They are some of the brightest. This is now bright enough to light the back yard and driveway.
The bulbs are typically made up in an aluminum housing that holds the LEDs in place. The weight was an issue on pointing in the correct direction and keeping the bulb from turning in the fixture. There are ones like the traditional glass flood but I had trouble finding one with enough light.
First research had me buying from new internet sources that I never knew before. Most experiences were positive. My first order, I ordered PAR 30 lights that are small flood type that are short and small diameter. They wouldn’t fit into the fixture so I had to order their big brother the PAR 38 which is equal in size to the traditional outdoor flood light.
I am now looking for a candelabra style bulb bulbs with the small screw in base for my porch lights. Each has 3 bulbs and I burn them from sun down to sun up. I have a programmable switch mounted behind the cover that a traditional light switch goes into. It can be programmed to change with daylight savings time and adjusts for sundown and sun up automatically each day. It is so cool to help me manage usage.
The candelabra bulbs I use are 25 to 40 watts. The largest LED wattage I have found are about 15 watt incandescent equivalent. Not enough light.
I also have not found a traditional round bulb for table lamp usage that throw off enough light. The key to look for is what watt replacement the LED is and there are no set standards. This makes it tough. I’ve bought 5 bulbs at anywhere from $20 to $69 dollars each. I’ve spent a small fortune experimenting buying online.
Research has turned up a Chinese company that will let me import at considerable savings (50%) but the minimum order quantity is 300. I wont need 300 in a life time with their duty cycle. I was so please when I found Home Depot started selling LED lights on line.
The latest I found in that FEIT, the manufacturer that I first bought their compact florescent bulbs in 1997 is getting into the LED business. Back then compact fluorescents were about $10 to $15 each. Now they are $2 to $4 each. With them and other big distributors coming on board prices will start to fall.
FEIT LED lights are now being sold in Lowe’s stores. That is where I bought the latest and best light. It is the Performance LED 21w = 75w, 75 Watt Replacement Uses Only 21 Watts. The Chamblee Lowe’s store had 4 quantity display pack on the shelf. I bought one to try, in case it was another let down in light quantity and quality. I am very happy with the black metal casing light, very happy and so is my wife.
The key is to follow my advice and experimenting, or buy one at a time and try it out till it the correct brightness for the application. There are also choices in light color so experiment there. I bought cool white and warm light. Anne, my wife likes the warm white and I like the cool white.
I was a pioneer using compact fluorescents back in 1997 to save on operating coast and to reduce the heat that incandescent bulbs give off that you then have to cool in summer. My early use of compact fluorescents brought down costs for all of you but at the cost of some inconveniences that are the light slowly starts up, strange light color and mercury when they broke.
Now with my conversion to LED, I am becoming mercury free as opposed to compact fluorescent, have a 30,000 hour light life, the lights operate cool so no heat is given off to the cool down in the summer, some light instantly so no waiting like with compact fluorescent, and they cost a whole lot less, up to 90% less to operate.
So you’ve decided the time has come to purchase a home. With the real estate market in decline, this can be an opportune time to purchase a property at a price well below market value. However, you will still need to make sure your credit is in order, so you can obtain a home at the best rate possible.
Your credit score will determine whether you can qualify to purchase a home, and will have a substantial impact on the interest rate you can obtain for a mortgage loan. A low credit score may mean that you will be charged high a interest rate on your loan, and in some circumstances, it may even disqualify you from buying a house altogether.
Before you even begin shopping for a home, it is a good idea to obtain your credit report from the three main reporting agencies: Experian; Equifax; and TransUnion. Lenders may use one or all of these agencies when determining if you qualify for a loan, so it’s important to know what the information is being provided by all three agencies.
You will also want to obtain your credit score from all three agencies. This score is not always included with credit reports, so you may have to purchase this information separately. Credit scores range from 300 to 800 – generally, mortgage lenders will want to see a minimum score of 650 before they will consider a loan applicant; most prefer a score of 700 or above.
If your credit score is lower than you expected, look through your credit reports for negative items, such as late payments and charge offs. If any of these items are present, make sure that they are accurate. If not, you will need to contact the reporting agencies to file explanations stating that these items are inaccurate.
If the negative items are accurate, only time and diligence will raise your credit score. In some cases, if an extraordinary event caused you to be late on credit card or installment loan payments, the lender will accept a letter of explanation detailing why these negative events occurred. However, this is the exception rather than the rule, so don’t expect the lender to be terribly willing to accept such an explanation.
Barring an explanation letter, you will simply need to re-establish a positive credit history to raise your credit score. The older a negative item is, the less it will impact your score, so paying bills on time and keeping loans current will help you raise your score relatively quickly.
If possible, you should wait until you have raised your credit score before you seriously begin looking for a home to purchase. Although there are lenders that will provide mortgage loans to applicants with poor credit, they will charge substantially higher interest rates, which can cost you thousands of dollars over the life of the loan.
At Atlanta Housing Source, we work with a mortgage company that can provide a “what if” scenario. What if I pay this balance off? What if I rearrange my balances more equally among all my credit lines? Etc. This allows our clients to know what to work on first and how long it will take them to qualify for the loan.
Peachtree Forest subdivision, located in the Peachtree Corners area of Norcross in Gwinnett county, Ga.
Peachtree Forest subdivision, Norcross, GA. is conveniently located in Gwinnett County near Jaybird Alley and Spalding Road. The neighborhood is only minutes away from fine shopping and dining at the Forum.
Peachtree Forest is very close to outstanding amenities like activity/soccer field, playgrounds, tennis courts, Peachtree World of Tennis, and one of the newest of Gwinnett County’s Water Recreational Park. Peachtree Forest is one of Norcross’ most established and desirable neighborhoods.
The outstanding local schools that serve Peachtree Forest are Peachtree Elementary, Pinckneyville Middle, and Norcross High. The school buses make stops throughout the neighborhood.
Homes in Peachtree Forest are typically priced from the mid $200’s to $400’s, so there really are homes in a choice of price ranges for any Norcross or Gwinnett County home buyer.
