While trying to find a friend’s address online today, I did something I haven’t done in a while – I googled my name – “john coley.” That’s it, no other description.  Just first and last name.

Guess what?  I’m number 1.

Well, better than that, my domain, lakemartinvoice.com, is number one.  Plus, various other links to me are scattered throughout the top 10.

I have finally beaten my longtime doppelganger John Ford Coley.

Country / pop music singer John Ford Coley (along with England Dan) was really popular in the 1970s and 80s.  A lot, and I mean a lot, of my parents’ friends called me “John Ford” growing up.  He is a legitimate star.  Literally, world famous.  Real.  So how does one guy blogging and selling real estate on Lake Martin overtake him on Google? More importantly..

What does this have to do with Lake Martin real estate?

Google doesn’t assign search results to the most famous person.  If it did, I would never beat John Ford Coley.

In their own words, Google “uses many factors in ranking. Of these, the PageRank algorithm might be the best known. PageRank evaluates two things: how many links there are to a web page from other pages, and the quality of the linking sites. With PageRank, five or six high-quality links from websites such as www.cnn.com and www.nytimes.com would be valued much more highly than twice as many links from less reputable or established sites.”

In short, LakeMartinVoice.com has, through years and hundreds of posts and page creations, become a trusted source to the search engines for all things Lake Martin, and now, I guess, the words “john coley.”

This is how I am able to be at the top of the results of pretty much any Lake Martin topic I choose.  It’s not a secret SEO strategy.  It’s simple sweat equity,  years of consistent, relevant writing.

It’s fun to show this to people who have been trying to sell their lake home themselves, and have their own site.  I create their listing page on my site and it’s instantly at the top of the search engine rankings.

They ask, “how can you outrank us?  It’s our house!”

My answer, “Google doesn’t know or care.”

You can have the prettiest, most informative site on the web, but if people can’t find it, and don’t want to read it, IT WON’T HELP YOU SELL whatever you’re selling.

Google sees that I am a recognized authority on lake martin real estate, so it automatically assumes that anything I write is more relevant.

It also realizes that over 100,000 visitors, reading about a quarter of a million pages means the people have spoken.  So I guess I owe you a thanks, dear reader.

Fact: about 90% of home buyers check the internet BEFORE calling a realtor.

If you own waterfront property on Lake Martin, why wouldn’t you want to be featured on Lake Martin’s most popular real estate website?

Contact me now!  We are ready to help.  Click here for a phone number.

For the record, I like John Ford Coley. Salve his wounds and buy a song from him.

The LakeMartin.com forum is a treasure trove of good discussion about Lake Martin real estate and lifestyle. The title question was posed by member Hero.

It is an excellent question, so I hopped online to try and help with an answer.

Here is his entire question:

“I have read and heard over the years that lake property value would average $1,000 per foot of shoreline. Now, I assume if it’s a really great lot (flat, point lot, nice area, etc) it could be more however if it’s not so great (steep, bad view, little water, etc.) it would be less
Example – if it’s a flat, large point lot with a really nice view, yard that included a nice seawall around the pennisula, a nice (but not great) house, boat house and pier in a nice (but not great) area would it be valued around the $1,000 per foot of shoreline? (more or less???)
I’m thinking about putting one the market but have no idea how it asses the value.
Any thoughts?”

Many forum members chimed in with answers (and I’m not just saying that because they recommended me:)). Read the entire post here.

My answer:

“a link below that may help. I wrote this post way back in February of 2007, during, granted, a different market, and geared to buyers. But the concepts are still the same and apply to sellers.

In fact, I would argue that the per square foot (for a home) or per waterfront foot (for a lot) approach is what doomed many flippers and builders on Lake Martin during the real estate bust. They sold a 2,000 square foot home on a 150 foot lot for $500,000 in 2007, so in 2008 they built a 4,000 foot home and tried to sell it for $1 million, and it didn’t sell. Hence the foreclosures.

Naturally, as a realtor and not an appraiser, I would disagree with the above and would advise talking to a realtor before an appraiser. It’s free, and no commitment is necessary.

However I agree that in many instances you get a bloated amount from the realtor. Whether you chalk this up to the agent trying to “buy” the listing with the intention of talking them down later, or attribute it to many sellers that say “I want your honest opinion” then get their feelings hurt when you give it – I don’t know what the answer is.

From years of experience and many, many, many Comparable Market Analyses done for people, I can tell you that when I don’t get the job, the far and away #1 reason I don’t get it is that my price was too low. I see it on the MLS for a price that I looked them in the eye and told them I thought was unattainable.

Let me tell you, it is a tough part of the job. Many times you are sitting knee to knee, eyeball to eyeball with a crying, grieving wife who just lost her husband, a couple counting on cashing in for their retirement, or someone who just lost a job. It weighs on my heart. But I figure it is more cruel to blow smoke up their skirt and string them along for two years and then say “see? we need to lower price.”

What’s even more remarkable to me is when the house has been for sale before, at a too high price, and they end up going with the original agent, at the same high price. I can never figure that one out.

Let me be the first to say, I am not perfect. I miss prices. But hopefully only by 5% or so, not by the 20% I think some things are still overpriced by. But I do back it up with numbers. Scads and scads of numbers and examples.

(you have mail)”

Thanks, Hero, for a good discussion question!

Now that I read it back, maybe I got a little dramatic on the tough part of the job. I am not saying I should be patted on the back for helping in the right way.  I am just saying it’s easier to tell them what they want to hear.

FOR A LOW PRESSURE, ACCURATE ESTIMATION OF YOUR HOME’S VALUE, EMAIL US at info [at] lakemartinvoice [dot] com.

Just as important as price is the marketing plan.  Are you tired of the same old approach to sales? Do you want to hear a plan that works with today’s buyers?

Related Posts:

5 Mistakes Made When Buying Real Estate On Lake Martin (from Feb. 2007, I was but a baby blogger).

Proof of End of Seller’s Market On Lake Martin (July, 2007)

  The Russell Forest Run is this Saturday Feb 27th.

 The 10k starts at 8 am.  10k is equal to 6.2 miles. $40 entry fee until feb 26th it is $50 the day of the race.

The one mile fun run starts at 9 am.  Entry fee is $10

You can pick up your packet at the Discovery Center in between Catherine’s Market and Spring House on Friday afternoon  between 4 and 6 pm, or on Saturday morning from 6 to 7:30 am. Good luck, hope to see you there.

I’ve started a new series of posts to focus on filming video of open house tours for waterfront homes for sale on Lake Martin.  The latest installment is on Cheyenne Lane – right next door to the Lake Martin landmark Chuck’s Marina.

I am not the listing agent, but, as a member of the Lake Martin MLS, I can help you if you’re interested in it (or any other property on Lake Martin, for that matter).  This 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath home is listed for $425,000.

The listing agent is my friend Rhonda Jaye of ERA Lake Martin Realty.

The home is on the south side of Lake Martin, just east of Martin Dam.  You get to Cheyenne Lane by taking AL Highway 50 to Centerport Road, then taking a right into the Chuck’s Marina signs, then right on Cheyenne, the home is on the left.

Related Posts:

All Lake Martin Video Home Tours by John Coley – Lake Martin Voice Realty

I have a cool Lake Martin home for sale at 40 Cottage Loop in The Village.  The Village is just east of Martin Dam, off of Overlook Road.  I was surprised to see a flock of wild turkeys feeding around the helipad.

The Village installed this helipad a couple of years ago as a public service, so that the area would have a spot for emergency airlifts.  It’s a nice bonus for owners in The Village to have that safety feature.

I was on the way to check up on the home I have for sale when I saw this flock of turkeys.  I hit my brakes, grabbed my long lens, and sneaked back through the woods to try to take some pictures.

These hens have a sharp eye out. Many people don’t realize that turkeys don’t look in the direction that their beak is pointed, but perpendicularly. In this case, right at me.

As always they were wary and elusive. After this pic they putted at me and headed off. They flock together like this during winter for protection.  In the spring the toms get territorial.

I tried to loop around one more time to get a nice clean picture of a gobbler:

I call the above one “Almost.” This is what I feel like during hunting season. A quarter second after this pic, I leaned around the tree, and he was gone, dissolved into the understory of the forest.

If you would like to see a nice, new waterfront Lake Martin home that is a really good deal, read about 40 Cottage Loop, watch the video, and give me a call.

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:

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.