My listing videos of Lake Martin homes have proved so popular that this year I have decided to come up with a new series of videos and blog posts:

Lake Martin Open House Videos!

These will (mostly) not be my listings.  I thought it would be fun to tour through open houses at Lake Martin and video them for viewers and buyers.  Since we are in a rural area, and since most people work during the week, I figure that there are a lot of folks that would like to see inside some of these lovely homes. So stay tuned for more open house videos!

Also, please keep in mind that, as a member of the Lake Martin Area Assoc. of Realtors- I can help you if you are interested in this or any other home, even though I’m not the listing agent.

The listing agent on this home is my friend and office neighbor Becky Haynie with RealtySouth.  Their office is right next door to mine (Lake Martin Voice Realty) in the Nail’s commercial mecca, downtown Kowaliga.

This was a fun open house.  The weather was beautiful (if not a little windy) and clear.  I knew these particular sellers to be excellent cooks.  I was not disappointed! They had some tasty sausage balls and coffee to fight off the cold, plus some strawberry cupcakes and some sort of raspberry-esque fruit juice to cleanse the pallet.

Their home is on a point, almost an island, in the Real Island area of Little Kowaliga Creek on Lake Martin.  From the water, if you are riding west with Real Island Marina on your right, after you pass the marina, this home is on the next point on your right.  The lot and the home design make it very distinctive.

Also – it’s a leased lot.  If you are unfamiliar with how leasing waterfront lots from Alabama Power goes, please click here to read more about Lake Martin leased lot homes.

Stay tuned to Lake Martin Voice for more open house video tours!

This post is a continuation of my earlier Lake Martin Real Estate Sales 2009 – Year In Review.

In that post, my two main points were:

1.     Number of Homes Sold Was Up, therefore 2008 Was The “Bottom”
2.    Average Prices Of Homes Decreased

In this post, I will address the trends of Lake Martin waterfront lots sold in 2009, and also try to take a look at the future of the prices of Lake Martin homes.

Lake Martin waterfront lots sold in 2009 are still slow moving and low priced

Every statistic we discussed in the previous post dealt with waterfront homes (or condos, or townhomes) only. If we consider lot sales only, we see that they have not yet seen the sales increases that homes have. Additionally, I think that prices have decreased even more than homes have in 2009.

Take a look at the number of waterfront lots sold* on Lake Martin from 2006 to 2009:

You can see that we are still down in terms of number of lots sold.  Please keep in mind these are TOTAL lot sales, taken from the entire Lake Martin MLS, all reporting brokerages, everyone.  In 2006, 55 lots sold all year.  2007 sold 34.  In 2008 – the bottom year in home sales - sold 18.  In 2009, 19 were sold.

I guess you could say that since 19 is greater than 18 then we are on the way back up.  But 1 is not much of a difference and doesn’t signal as a dramatic a change in direction.

Again, I think the big difference here is that many of those lot sales were builders that planned to build spec homes.  Funding (and logic) for that dried up with the drought of 2007 and the banking crisis of 2008.  As a result, there are quite a few foreclosed waterfront lots out there for sale, and the prices look like 2004.

One “good” thing about decreased lot sales is it slowed down the spec home building that contributed to the over supply of Lake Martin homes for sale.  It caused a spike of lake homes for sale, especially in 2008.  See the chart below for numbers of homes for sale on the entire Lake Martin MLS:

SELLERS – This chart should convince you that you must really do a good job of staging, pricing, and marketing your Lake Martin lot. Marketing especially is important.  You can’t just stick a sign in the yard anymore.  We will create a custom marketing plan to help your lot stand out from your competition. Please email us at info {at} lakemartinvoice {dot} com or call John Coley or John Christenberry now.

BUYERS- If you are looking to buy a waterfront lot on Lake Martin, you’re in luck. Right now is the best time in about six or seven years to buy one. Prices are (for the most part) rolled back to those of years ago, you have many from which to choose, and the home sale comeback should give you some assurance that everything will be OK. Contact us now to help you sort through them all and find the best deals.

Related Posts:

Lake Martin Real Estate Sales 2009 – Further Study (coming soon)
Lake Martin Real Estate Sales 2009 – Year In Review
Lake Martin Real Estate Sales 2008 – Year In Review
Lake Martin Real Estate Sales 2007 – Year In Review

All Lake Martin Market Reports

(*)Disclaimers: All of the above info was taken from the Lake Martin Area Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service. Accuracy is not guaranteed but deemed reliable. The above does not include sales by FSBOs or developers that sell privately and not through the MLS. But, I do think that the above represents a very large majority of all sales on Lake Martin.

I am pleased to say that in the February 2010 issue of Lake Magazine – Lake Martin Edition, we received a nice mention.

I am really thankful to Kenneth Boone and Emily Gregg for the ink. We made the “Lake Martin News” section of the magazine, on the bottom of page 11, under the title “New Real Estate Agency Opens on Lake.”

If you haven’t already, please pick up a copy of February’s issue. Here are a few of the articles (as they put them on their website I will link):

Drop Anchor – succinctly written and illustrated, tells you the how, when, and what of using anchors on Lake Martin, along with a rule of thumb so simple that I can remember it.

Soaring Socialites – an article about Cedar Waxwings. As I age I am becoming alarmingly out of the closet about my birdwatching. I try to tell myself it’s a manly pursuit of knowledge, not only for old ladies.

Emporium Wine

Passage Of Wine – Henry Foy urges passage of Alabama State laws that would be more friendly to fortified wine, and I raise my glass to the idea. However, as a friend and frequent customer, I hope Henry plans a follow up article on jerez, the rich types and uses of which he scantily describes as “used for cooking and sipping.” I know where he’s going with it, as most Americans identify sherry as something to buy in Winn-Dixie along with Worcestershire sauce. But you could say the same thing about Dom Perignon or, for that matter, the excellent Chimay I bought from him recently.

Strong sales of waterfront homes on Lake Martin showed us that 2008 was the bottom of the market.  2009 was the best year since 2006 for numbers of homes sold, but prices continued to take a beating.*

2009 proves to be a very interesting time for Lake Martin home and lot sales.  Please note that everything below relates to waterfront home, condo, and lot sales only.  There is a treasure trove of information here, and I would like to present it all.  This first post will attempt to cover the two major themes:

1. 2008 Was “The Bottom” And The Market Has Bounced Back

2. Prices Decreased Again

the details:

1. 2008 Was “The Bottom” And The Market Has Bounced Back

Grade A readers of Lake Martin Voice know that I am a firm believer of fellow RE blogger Nicolai Kolding’s Phases of the Real Estate Market. Basically, he holds that the number of homes sold LEADS pricing. In other words, keep your eye on how well the number of homes sold this month compares to the same month last year, because that trend signals the direction of average price sold.

I think that 2009’s strong number of waterfront homes sold finally lets us know that we HAVE seen the bottom, and it was 2008. That assumes you define “bottom” the way that most pundits do, that is, from a seller’s perspective.  I think a buyer might call it a peak and would interpret this as bad news.  Rather than parley about definitions, I offer the facts:

As you can see from the above chart, at Lake Martin, at least, the bottom was in 2008.  In 2009, just about every single month beat its counterpart for sales in the previous year.  When you look at the cumulative sales totals for the entire year, 2009’s dominance is evident.

In 2009, on the entirety of Lake Martin, all agents, all brokerages, all (reported) sales, tallied 194 waterfront home sold.  Compare that to 137 in 2008 and 156 in 2007.  It still wasn’t as good as 2006, but hey, you’ve got to like the trend.

The Convincing Bullets:

• The magnitude of the beating that 2009 put on 2008 convinced me.  194 sales vs. 137 means that we were 42% up from last year.
• The beating was consistent across almost all months – no one fluke month
• Was not caused by one big sell off – Crowne Pointe helped but did not make the year great
• If you don’t agree, what will convince you? I’m not trying to be challenging, I’m curious. Please comment below and let me know if you have a different opinion and upon what numbers you base it.

2. Prices Decreased Again

It’s very hard to track average sold prices in a small real estate market like Lake Martin. Our small sample size makes that number swing wildly month to month, which is why I crunch this number (officially) only once a year.

In my Lake Martin Real Estate: 2008 Year In Review post I laid out a method to study average sold price trends at Lake Martin. I looked at each sale recorded in the MLS, removed those with an unreported sales price, and then categorized the others in several price strata – like $0 – $99,999; $100,000 – $199,999; and so on. This resulted in a nice little bell curve to visually represent the average sold price patterns.

When I did the same analysis this year I found plenty of evidence to lead me to believe that property prices dropped again in 2009. This marks the second year in a row of devaluation. See the below chart:

Focus on the gray line of 2009. See how it shifted backwards, and evened up with 2005? There you go.

Take a look at the peak in 2009. 52 of 194 homes – or 28% – sold in the range of $200,000 – $299,999

Note – I don’t think this simply means that more “cheap homes” were sold. Look at how much of the total area is under the price of $500,000. Find the peak of 2006 and 2007, then draw a mental line down to the X axis. Most of 2009’s sales are behind (to the left) of it.

Bullets to ponder:

• Does this mean that home prices are back to 2005 levels?  In some cases, yes.
• When will the drops stop?  I think 2010 will hold steady, because of point #1 above.
• Is now a bad time to sell? If you have to sell it for what you paid in 2007, yes.  If you can be flexible, no. It might not be pretty but the rising sales numbers prove we can get it done.

Looking Forward

Basically, my outlook is positive for 2010. As long as we convincingly beat 2007 and 2008 in number of homes sold, I will feel good about calling the bottom. If we don’t, I still think we will need to analyze 2010 on its own merits and not as a hangover from the drought of 2007 or bank woes of 2008. In my opinion 2008 will still be a bottom in its own right.

1. I think home sales will equal 2009 (approximately)
2. I think average prices will finally quit dropping, and stay about the same as 2009.

I will give further numbers behind my theories in later posts, but I formed them on the timing of the home sale turnaround, and will try to quantify the lag between that and average sold price moves.

SELLERS – Yes, we can. Please contact us – we can tailor a pricing, staging, and marketing plan specific to your property. Praise God, last year was our brokerage’s best sales year ever. We have a method that combines industry leading marketing and old fashioned elbow grease.  It works.

BUYERS – The clock is ticking. Yes, there are still awesome deals out there, but it takes a lot of sifting to find them, and then it takes experience to be able to negotiate the best deal. Now is the time to end the “I should have bought years ago” blues.

Related Posts:

Lake Martin Real Estate Sales 2009 – Waterfront Lots
Lake Martin Real Estate Sales 2009 – Further Study (coming soon)
Lake Martin Real Estate Sales 2008 – Year In Review
Lake Martin Real Estate Sales 2007 – Year In Review

All Lake Martin Market Reports

(*)Disclaimers: All of the above info was taken from the Lake Martin Area Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service. Accuracy is not guaranteed but deemed reliable. The above does not include sales by FSBOs or developers that sell privately and not through the MLS. But, I do think that the above represents a very large majority of all sales on Lake Martin.

ALDOT has Highway 63 under heavy construction. I shot this video today, about a mile north of Lake Martin’s Kowaliga Bridge. It’s across the road from where Windermere Road intersects Highway 63, aka Our Children’s Highway. The construction zone stretches from Russell Crossroads (location of Catherine’s and the Springhouse) south to just below Windermere Road.  As of this writing, the highway is passable, you just need to slow down a bit.

I think that Russell Lands is also using this opportunity to create a golf cart path that will go under the highway. The theory is that you would be able to walk, jog, etc. continuously from The Ridge Club to Willow Point.

Up until now, I have sold Lake Martin real estate under my family’s name – Coley Real Estate.  Effective 1/15/10, I changed my company name to Lake Martin Voice Realty.  I am also welcoming John Christenberry on board with me.  John is a fellow Lake Martin Realtor, and we are excited about the future.

Why change a company name?  What does it matter?

Two reasons.

1.) Continuity

Our little ole blog, Lake Martin Voice, has been very blessed to become the best resource of real estate and area information for Lake Martin. Do a Google search, about the Lake in general or your neighborhood, and chances are we are at the top of the results, and rising. We have more blog posts, more twitter tweets, more videos, and more pictures on the web than all the other brokerages combined. All of this is not just a nerdy hobby, it serves to sell homes. In fact, a high percentage of our leads now come from Internet marketing, and we have been blessed to have record sales years in tough markets.

It only makes sense to name the business after its strongest marketing presence.

In the past three years, most of the time when I answer the phone, if it’s a person calling that doesn’t know me, they ask, “is this Lake Martin Voice Realty?” This started happening a couple of years ago. I used to explain, “no I am technically Coley Real Estate Lake Martin, and Lake Martin Voice is my blog.” But in 2009 it happened so much I just started answering, “Yes, how can I help?”

Naming a business after a blog may seem backwards to someone who thinks the real estate business is the same as it was 15, or even 10 years ago. These days, the web doesn’t represent a piece of your marketing, it is your marketing. According to a 2009 survey by the NAR, 90% of home buyers use the Internet when looking for a home. No one mentioned thumbing through the Yellow Pages.

2.) Teamwork

John Christenberry and I have joined forces. John has been a Lake Martin real estate agent since 2005. He comes from ERA Lake Martin Realty, formerly called Russell Lands real estate, at their Willow Point Branch. He’s had a lot of success there, and we look forward to working more closely in the future. We have done several deals together in the past. What struck me first about John was his honesty and integrity. Even though we (at the time) were working for different brokerages, we were able to talk openly and share ideas, without worrying about one guy “stealing” from the other.

Another of John’s attributes is that he works extremely hard. In a profession that sometimes tolerates those with a less than stellar work ethic, Christenberry stands out as a person that puts in the hours.

It’s easy for salesmen to give fluffy assurances of being honest and hardworking, so let me give you just one example of how this would affect you as a client:

One deal we did together was in 2007. He was still with Russell Lands at the time and was the listing agent. I was assisting the buyer as a transaction broker. We got a signed agreement, and were working towards closing when we hit a major snag. The in the course of the closing agent’s title search, it was discovered that there was a “cloud” on the title. In the early 1970s, the original subdivision developer failed to get his wife to sign off on a plat map. The wife died. He remarried. The next wife did not sign either. Then they both died. So now we have a title that can only be approved by deceased individuals. Closing was scheduled for about seven days away. The title agent said that we would have to do a bid to quiet title, a legal filing in court with a judge that would take about 3 months. Needless to say, this was horrible news. The only way to fix it was to get the two known relatives to sign off on it, and we didn’t know where they lived. The deal seemed dead. Even the title agent said it would be hopeless.

I won’t pretend like we knew it would turn out OK. We were seriously bummed out. When the title agent tells you it’s a waste of time….

John and I decided to knuckle down and give it a shot. We had 2 names – a bother and a sister. We knew that in the early 1980s one lived in Louisiana and the other lived in Alabama. I took one sibling to search for and he took the other. We did search after search online and came up with a list of about 30 people each. We could eliminate some by their (apparent online) age. Others we just had to call. Praise God, we both found our people. They were well into their 80s, one lived south of Birmingham, one still lived in Louisiana. Neither could drive, so each of us had to call around and find an attorney or a notary close to their home, that would travel to them, to get the documents notarized.

In less than 24 hours, defying the odds, we eliminated the cloud. Most importantly, the sellers were happy and the buyers were happy.  We were exhausted and relieved. We couldn’t believe it.  I was really pleased to be in that particular deal with someone else who would be as relentless as I was about getting the deal done in the right way.

That’s why we both are excited about teaming up. We think that the end result will be, not an ego driven ra-ra “look at me” type of brokerage, but one where we work hard, using every available tool in the belt, to make our clients happy.  We pledge to keep the focus away from our own Glamor Shots and on our  sellers’ properties – or our buyers’ desires. Nothing else matters.

So what? Two agents? You’re still small.

True. But these days in real estate you don’t have to be big. If this downturn in the market has taught us anything, if there is anything we can learn here, is that the old rules don’t apply.

Real estate is still a people business, driven by word of mouth and friend referrals, but the way word of mouth works has changed. See point #1 above.

What about Walter Coley?

My father Walter Coley is still the Broker of Coley Real Estate at 45 Main Street, Alex City. My old branch office is going away. Technically, all that happens is I have changed my brokerage name with the Real Estate Commission and changed my signage. I still have my  office in downtown Kowaliga.

Walter is, as always, unaffected. He kidded me bucking family tradition. It was nice to be able to say that I was the 3rd generation of Coleys in Coley Real Estate. That fact promotes trust from clients. They figure that anyone that has been around that long will think twice before doing something to sully the family name.

That part has not changed. Neither John Christenberry nor I would do anything to hurt our reputation. Personal integrity is still a huge part of how we get clients the real estate business. But in the world today, your online reputation is your reputation. The two have come together inseparably.  You can’t be one person in real life, and quite another online, and vice versa.  How many fallen celebrities, even fallen governmental regimes, have had to learn that lesson the hard way?

We feel that doing our best to be transparent, honest, and hard working will continue to bless our business. The challenge is getting that idea across over the web. That’s what we will do.

Needless to say, we would like you to do two things:

1. Check out our existing listings
2. Call us if we can help you, as a buyer or seller.

Sorry for the long post, but I guess we’re guilty of being very excited!

Lake Martin real estate legend Mickey Phillips  went to be with the Lord on January 11, 2010.

A lot of good things can be said about Mrs. Mickey.  I can’t say it much better than her obituary which was published in the Montgomery Advertiser.  Here is a summary:

Mrs. Mickey K. Phillips 1936-2010

Funeral service for Mrs. Mick­ey K. Phillips, 73, of Alexander City, will be Thursday, Januar­y 14, 2010 at 11:00 am at the First Baptist Church of Alexan­der City.  Burial will follow in the Hillview Memorial Park. The family will receive friends on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm at Radney Funeral Home. Mrs. Phillips passed away on Monday, January 11, 2010 at her residence. She was born on August 10, 1936 in Phenix City, Alabama to George Jo­seph Kennedy, Sr., and Cumi Hawkins Kennedy.

She was a member of First Baptist Church Alexander City and was an active supporter of the Children’s Harbor Ministry. She was very involved in her community having served as a charter member of the Al­exander City Rotary Club, Children’s Trust Fund, Board of Directors for the Corporate Foundation for Children, and Vice-Chairman of the Alexan­der City Chamber of Com­merce.

Mrs. Phillips was very passionate about her real es­tate career. She was a mem­ber of the Ten Million Dollar Club, Top Sales Person for Russell Lands in 1992-2001 and was awarded the Russell Lands Inspirational Award in 2004. She served as President of the Alabama Association of Realtors and the Tallapoo­sa County Realtors Associa­tion and served on many state and national commit­tees and received numerous awards for her service. Re­cently the Discovery Center at Russell Crossroads was named in her honor.

Mrs. Phillips was a wonderful mom, wife, an exceptional grandmother, loving sister, and a kind friend.  In lieu of flowers the family re­quests that memorial contri­butions be made to Chil­dren’s Harbor, One Our Chil­dren’s Highway, Alexander City, AL 35010. Memorial messages may be sent to the family at www.ra­dneyfuneralhome.com. Radney Funeral Home is arranging.

Check out this old ad for Lake Martin’s Kowaliga Beach.  I think it was from the 1950s. You can’t rent a cabin on Lake Martin for $60 / week anymore.

Thanks to reader sprink56 of the Club Sea Ray forum for supplying this picture of a vintage newspaper ad of Kowaliga Beach on “Beautiful Lake Martin.”

You could rent a cabin for $5 a night.  Can you believe it?  It says this was for an Open House at Kowaliga Beach, even gives directions to Lake Martin and brags about the road being paved. I can’t tell if this is from the original opening or just a seasonal opening.

Can anyone help out on this that was around back then, or worked for Mr. Toppy?

If you know, please comment below!

Related Posts:

Pictures of the Old Kowaliga Indian, Restaurant, and Kowaliga Kubbard

Christmas time gives way to project time around the Coley home.  My wife started cleaning out the photo trunk on Saturday and needed my help to cull the many hundreds of photos I have saved over the years.  Since there was a marathon of Bruce Lee movies on the G4 channel, I obliged her in sorting those that could be thrown away.  Many of them are useless, anyway, like my 48 out of focus shots taken from inside New York’s Hard Rock Cafe I took I was in eighth grade.

Some of them were keepers, though.  See below.  For some reason I took two pictures of the old Kowaliga Restaurant – before it burned to the ground and they rebuilt in its current location.  It burned in June of 1999.  I am guessing I took these pictures of the Kowaliga Indian around 1993.  In this one you can even see the Kowaliga Kubbard.

For those who never knew it, the Kowaliga Kubbard was sort of a convenience store without gas. They also had a little kitchen in there.  They served sandwiches and burgers for lunch, but breakfast was by far my favorite.  They made big huge buttery biscuits and all that goes with them: eggs, grits, sausage, everything.  And when you needed more jelly or whatever, you just walked back into the “employees only” section and grabbed some more.  They didn’t care.

The above shot shows the lake view.  This was before the days that ole Kowaliga had to be glassed off to protect him from vandals, or at least from we kids that would hang on his arm.  I know that I have had my picture taken while doing that, but I can’t find the photo.

You also can see the catwalk that leads into the old restaurant entrance. This is where the kids would hang out while waiting for a table, or if you were too loud and your parents sent you “out.”

Circa 1993 – 1996 was the golden age of Kowaliga to me.  The Kubbard was rolling.  The restaurant was booming.  There were still enough local people in there that it felt like it was “ours.”  Yet by then I had met enough out of towners to realize that folks from Montgomery – and  – even as far away as (gasp) Birmingham – appreciated its worth.  Plus by then it had expanded into that glass atrium / bar area.

But the most critical contribution to its zenith in my mind was that I was friends and / or relatives with a lot of the wait staff. There is nothing more impressive to a future wife than to be able to score a margarita in 45 seconds when there are 75 people waiting out on the deck who are supposed to be ahead of you.

Then again, for all my sentimentality, I must admit that I can’t imagine Aquapalooza 2009 being handled by the old facility and the old ways.

Hey reader – do you have any old pictures of Lake Martin landmarks like Kowaliga Restaurant?  Leave a reply in the comment section below, or post them to the Lake Martin Voice Facebook page, the  I Love Lake Martin photo group on Flickr, and let us all take a look!

Not that you need reminding, but if you haven’t done it yet, you need to make sure that your Lake Martin home is safe from freezing weather.

If you don’t have a waterfront home on Lake Martin, but have a friend that does, why not call them up to remind them about the freezing weather?

Or better yet, offer to go down to their cabin and “make sure everything is OK?” Chances are, they have already made arrangements, and you will look like a really concerned friend without having to put forth any real effort! The best time to lock in that 4th of July invite is in the cold of January, I always say.

Snow flurries are falling here on Lake Martin, although the camera can’t tell, yet.