As a Lake Martin blogger, and huge Elvis fan, I must say that the above was my favorite headline I have ever written.

For those of you that are hip to the Lake Martin Voice Twitter stream, you have already heard the news.

Tonight, July 3, 2009, the King of Rock n Roll, Elvis “The Pelvis” Presley, will be appearing at Jim’s Bait Shop, on Highway 50 in Walnut Hill, Alabama, just south of Lake Martin.

I am going to try to be there to get some video - but if anyone else can get pics or video - PLEASE send it to me.  Or better yet upload it to the I Love Lake Martin group on Flickr. It’s free.  Or you can use Twitpic or Flickr 2 Twitter to upload pics and video, just make sure to type in #lakemartin somewhere in the description so the rest of us can find it!

And yes, the above is a picture of the back of the self car wash & and vacuum area at Jim’s.  The King will truly be amongst the people.

And, as E himself said in King Creole, “Crawfish!”

The Lake Martin real estate market shook off a 24 month slump by posting 22 waterfront home sales in May 2009 through the MLS.

This is the highest recorded number of lake home sales since May of 2007 when 23 were sold.

This should be welcome news to sellers of lake front property, who saw sales sputter on Lake Martin in April. This rally brings 2009 total sales to 53, slightly ahead of 2008’s May to date total of 50.

Could this be a return to normalcy for the Lake, and for luxury second home markets as a whole?

It certainly is encouraging to see the current month trounce the same month last year. Year to year improvements on units sold are seen by many analysts as a critical sign of real estate recovery, and it is a statistic that I am hyper focused on for Lake Martin.

The Bad News (Or Good News To Buyers)

One thing that sellers did not like to see was the total number of waterfront homes for sale in the Lake Martin MLS ROSE AGAIN this month to a total of 555. I can’t find another month on record that had this many for sale. This dubious honor will no doubt keep the balance of supply and demand in the favor of buyers, for at least several months.

A Look Ahead

I am not ready to call the bottom yet.  I would like to see at least three or four months in a row of slayings like this. One interesting figure is that, as of this writing, there are 34 water front homes pending in the Lake Martin MLS.

How many of these will close in June? Some are short sales and are taking a long time during the due diligence phase.  Some are not short sales or foreclosures and will close in July anyway.

Right now, praise God, I have been busier than ever.  I have 5 homes under contract and probably 1 will close in June.  My point is, in June 2008, only 7 sold on the entire Lake.

Therefore we have a good chance that if even half of current pending sales close in June 2009, Lake Martin sales will trounce June 2008.

Hey buyers - are you going to wait around and let all the good ones get picked over? Why not give me a call and let me point you to the best deals at 350k, 450k, 550k, and beyond?

To the reader - what do you think about this rally? Is this bull market cyclical or secular?  Are you ready to call the bottom? Why or why not?  Please leave a comment or reply below.

For Every Post I Have Written On Sales Statistics, See:

Lake Martin Market Statistics Category

(*)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.

The Alex City Jazz Fest continues to provide the Lake Martin area with the best value in music and entertainment.  Since the Jazz Fest is free, it’s hard to beat that value.

You can also make the case that, on the Lake Martin concert scale of things, the Jazz Fest offers some of the best music, regardless of price.

A look at prior years’ Jazz Fests rosters shows you talent that you might pay heavily to hear: Joe Bonamassa, Derek Trucks, the Neville Brothers, Dr. John, just to name a few.

OPENING WITH A BANG

Don’t be late to downtown Alex City on Friday night, June 12, 2009.  The first act is old style delta blues master Kent DuChaine.   He starts at 6:00 PM, so you better get there early.

Kent is a throwback to the blues pioneers of the pre-1950s era.  He plays an old steel Dobro, with a slide, of course.  He plays anywhere, anytime.  In fact he has been in the Netherlands or something playing the week before Jazz Fest.  Kent has headlined blues festivals in Europe and the US, but (for some reason) you can still see him at local bars (Marty’s in Birmingham) and private parties.  He plays hard no matter if the crowd is 10 or 10,000.

I won’t go on and on about his impeccable blues lineage, except to say that through his days with Alabama blues legend Johnny Shines, he has a direct tutorial line to Robert Johnson.  In fact I think he plays Johnson’s tunes to perfection.  Most musicians I hear, even self billed blues players, do horrible justice to Robert Johnson songs. Most feel the need to try to have a modern interpretation that just falls flat.  Or, they attempt acoustic and just sound weak, tinny, and condescendingly corn pone hokey.  Kent plays Robert Johnson’s blues not exactly how he sounds on the Library of Congress recordings, but how he would have played them in a beer joint outside of Clarksdale, MS on a sweltering summer night. Think Clapton’s Unplugged “Rollin and Tumblin.”  Rip-roaring. Brazen.  Pillaging the countryside. Unafraid of the Crossroads.  Mocking the hell hounds.

DuChaine also expertly covers the Chess era of the blues.  Muddy, the Wolf, Sonny Boy, and the like. He switches effortlessly between the boasts of “Red Rooster” to the solemn wail of “Death Don’t Have No Mercy.” Kent also mixes in his own material with the masters.’  Solid Gold.

I’ve heard Kent play probably 30 times in my life.  He only gets better. Do yourself a favor and get a taste of real authentic delta blues.  I almost hate to label him like that, for fear that some may judge too quickly.  But, as my wife -  who “does not like Western movies”  - sobbed uncontrollably through the last 2 hours of Lonesome Dove, I think that most people won’t realize he played delta blues, they will just know they loved it.

CLOSING WITH A BLAST

Susan Tedeschi will be the last act for 2009 Jazz Fest, Saturday Night at the Lake Martin Amphitheater.

She is super talented.  I hear her a lot on the Sirius - XM Blues Channel.  From her recordings, I think we can expect more original stuff than covers, but that’s OK by me, because she’s really good.  It seems like every time I hear a strong, soulful female voice singing on the Channel, I check the artist’s name and it’s her. Tedeschi also just so happens to be married to former Jazz Fest headliner Derek Trucks.

Did I mention the Jazz Fest is free? Don’t let my lack of ink on the other acts deter you.  I’m trying to say that it wil all be good.

Full 2009 Alex City Jazz Fest Schedule

Click Here for Jazz Fest on Facebook

Click Here for Jazz Fest on myspace

After several consecutive months of meeting or beating prior year’s sales, waterfront homes sold on Lake Martin dropped in April 2009 to 9 total, 7 fewer than were sold in April 2008.

When I wrote about the number of Lake Martin homes sold in the first quarter of 2009 in this post, I commented that there were many homes with the status of pending, meaning that they were under contract to sell.  I thought that if all those closed, we would easily beat April of 2008.  But apparently many of those are still under contract.  Maybe this means that May 2009 will trounce May 2008, because at this writing there are 28 pending and in May 2008 there were only 14 homes that closed. Granted, I am sure that some may be homes under construction, or condos with long due diligence phases.  I do think that Lake Martin (like almost all other markets) is experiencing longer times between contract agreement and closing.  Lenders (more specifically their underwriters) are requiring more and more red tape and documents during the process, so it is taking longer to close.

Here is the chart showing monthly waterfront sales on Lake Martin.  You can see the drop in April 2009:

Once you add them up cumulatively, you can see that 2009 is already behind 2008.

We will have to wait and see if Lake Martin has a surge of sales in May to make up for the stall in April.  Please keep in mind, these statistics are for the entire Lake Martin MLS, all realtors, all brokerages. Here is a look at the numbers only:

Obviously a big part of the equation is the amount of waterfront homes and condos for sale, aka Active Listings.  Take a look at this graph of the total waterfront listings in the Lake Martin MLS, starting in 2007:

You can see that in December 2007 and January 2008, the listings bottomed out at about 341, and then rose from there.  It looks like we also found a bottom in December 2008 and January 2009, but at 421, which was a 23% increase from prior year.  Will we continue to see more homes come on the market in 2009?  Personally I do not think we will see as many homes come on the market in 2009 because as I stated in this post covering first quarter 2009 sales, there are virtually no new spec homes being built right now. Sure, there are a few here and there, but I don’t think they will be a big effect.  Look at the huge leap from January to May 2008.  We didn’t see that this year, but we ended up in the same place.  My biggest question with supply is if we will have fewer new spec homes on the market, will they be replaced by Lake Martin foreclosures, short sales, and lender REO?

Looking Deeper

Since the late spring is such a crucial time in the Lake Martin real estate market, let’s take a deeper look at the numbers and answer some general questions like:

1.   Of all the homes for sale right now on Lake Martin, how many are homes, how many are condos, and what is the price breakdown?
2.  What is the price breakdown of homes and condos that have sold in 2009 so far?
3.  What about Lake Martin waterfront lots for sale?

1. Lake Martin Homes and Condos For Sale Right Now

If you check the Lake Martin MLS, there are 851 residences for sale right now.  559 of those are waterfront.  557 are on Lake Martin.  Of that 557, 158 are listed as condos or town homes.  7 are mobile homes.  So that leaves 392 single family homes that are on the water.  I think that is overstated, as I have seen many condos that are incorrectly designated as homes, but for now I will work with these.

Of the 392, only 23 are on leased lots.

The price breakdown of the 392 homes for sale on Lake Martin is:

2.Sold Homes and Condos

Here is how that same chart looks if we apply it to the 31 homes that have sold through April 30, 2009:

3. Lake Martin Waterfront Lots Breakdown

At this writing, if you run a search in the Lake Martin MLS, and you select “Waterfront” = Y, you find that there are 162 lots for sale.   If you look more closely, you find that four of those are on Yates Lake, seven on Lake Tallassee, one on Lake Jordan, and seven are on private lakes or “other.”  If we are focusing only on Lake Martin, that leaves 143 lots for sale on Lake Martin.  Here is the price breakdown:

In short, we have an big oversupply of lots for sale.  To put it into perspective, look at it beside the sales and inventory statistics, as of April 2009:

You read that right, yes, only 3 lots have sold through the MLS on the entire lake so far this year.  2008 was the same story.  It is interesting to note that in May 2008 7 sold, the equivalent of 20 months of inventory, which is approaching a balanced market condition.  It tells me that the market has the potential, in spurts, to act normal. So what’s holding it back? Price, I think.  Sellers, especially lot sellers, need to take a long hard look at price because they have 3 times the relative amount of competition than do home or condo sellers.

APPLICATION

If you made it this far, you have to be wondering, what does this all mean to me?

Buyers- If you are interested in buying property on Lake Martin right now, the biggest problem you will have will be sorting through all of the noise.  Yes, there are good deals out there, and yes there are still some overpriced dogs.  When your perfect spot comes available, will you be ready?  Call me, I can help you find your dream home or lot!

Sellers: Do not despair, you CAN still sell in this environment, but it requires extraordinary effort from you and your agent.  Call me, I can help you address these 3 crucial aspects of selling: 1.) pricing, 2.) staging, and 3.) marketing.

Related Posts:

Lake Martin Sales - 2008 Year In Review

Lake Martin Sales - 2007 Year In Review

Or for every post I have done on the subject:

Lake Martin Market Statistics Category

(*)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.

Will you be at Lake Martin this Saturday, May 16, 2009, and enjoy touring waterfront homes on Lake Martin?

Then you may be interested in the Third Annual Lake Martin Tour of Homes. Proceeds from the tour will benefit Children’s Harbor. Children’s Harbor serves seriously ill children and their families at the Family Center at Children’s Hospital in Birmingham and at Lake Martin, which is just south of Kowaliga Bridge on Highway 63

Last year the tour was of homes in Trillium. This year the tour will visit four homes in The Ridge designed by architects Bill Ingram and Bobby McAlpine.

The tours will begin at The Ridge Club from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Tickets are $25 in advance and can be purchased in Alexander City at MacDavid & Company, Cloud Nine, The Shoppes of Queens Attic, and Catherine’s Market. Tickets will also be available the day of the tour at the Ridge Club.

To learn more about Children’s Harbor, an extremely worthy cause, visit www.childrensharbor.com.

If you are looking for last minute things to do around Lake Martin this weekend, I remind you that the annual Renew Our Rivers Cleanup is happening tomorrow, May 9, 2009.

As always the event is sponsored by Alabama Power - details here.

Volunteers will meet at DARE Park in Dadeville at 8 a.m. The cleanup will end at noon.
Contact: Denise Walls at 256-215-4404, e-mail dwalls@lakemartineda.com, or sign up through Facebook.com, search for Lake Martin.

Usually they have a sign in post at Kowaliga Bridge, but I haven’t noticed that among the promotional items this year. It only mentions the DARE park as a sign in post.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the DARE park, it is on the eastern side of Lake Martin, off of County Road 34. Here is a google map:

Cotton’s BBQ has some competition.

Last week I ate at the Red Hill Cottage Cafe with my fellow Lake Martin realtor John Christenberry.  He had been there before, and claimed that their barbecue was as good as Cotton’s.  I laughed at him and accepted the challenge.

Verdict:

John was right, it is really good.  Apparently their angle is that they cook everything on Green Egg Grills.  They are also distributors for the Green Egg and you can get related supplies there, as well as a bunch of other lake home decor and furniture.  It all looked nice, but I was there on a mission for Q.

I am an admitted stickler for good BBQ, therefore  I am really tough on Q restaurants.  The Red Hill Cottage Cafe passes easily.

Method: As stated before, they cook on Green Egg Grills, so that means their Boston butts are directly suspended over the coals.  The good thing about this is that when the fat is rendered out, it drips down into the coals, sizzles, and returns as flavor bombs that return to the butt.  Yum.

Presentation: I ate a sandwich, and the meat was of the pulled persuasion as opposed to Cotton’s that chops.  No judgement here, to each his own.  But I do think that the pulled method helped Red Hill expose the fabulous job on the meat.

Sauce: The sauce was good.  Tomato based, sweet yet not overwhelming.  They also did not put too much on it to hide the meat.  That’s one thing I don’t understand about some places, they purportedly spend 12 hours cooking the meat and then smother it in sauce that they cooked in 30 minutes.  Personally I like Cotton’s tomato based sauce better. One suggestion - I wonder how good Red Hill’s pulled pork would fare with a vinegar based sauce that can penetrate every nook and cranny on that sandwich?  Plus they would be the only ones in the area with a vinegar based sauce.

Cost: It was cheap.  $2.95 for a sandwich.  Every lunch gets free dessert. I would say that the same meal at Jim N Nicks would be $15 pre-tip and it would not be 1/2 as good.

The Last Word: Great - a welcome addition to the list of Lake Martin restaurants. Their barbecue is so good that I wonder why they do anything else.  It is every bit as good as Cotton’s, and for me that is saying a lot.  I think they will benefit each other, because they all help traffic, which helps all area restaurants.  In fact, Red Hill, along with Green Valley, Cotton’s, and Catherine’s, are worthy foils to the east side eateries of Niffer’s and another of my prime favorites - Oskar’s.  But thankfully Red Hill’s menu is different enough from each of them that I think all can peacefully coexist.  Johnny G’s, however, had better step it up.

Where: The Red Hill Cottage (I guess it’s the name of the decor store) and Cottage Cafe are located on Alabama highway 229, just south of the intersection with Highway 50, by Castaway Island Road.   Official address is 4068 Red Hill Road, Tallassee.  Phone is 334-857-2233.

When: According to their menu, they are open 7 AM to 7 PM Wednesday through Saturday.

What: DOWNLOAD RED HILL’S MENU HERE - they serve a lot more than BBQ.  Even breakfast.  In fact, I went back the day after the Q meal and ordered 2 smoked turkey sandwiches, 1 smoked ham sandwich, 3 bags of chips, 3 co-colas, and got 3 free desserts (nanner pudding, bread pudding, and strawberry cobbler).  My bill total was like $15 pre-tip.  Not bad, and the sandwiches were great - a worthy “chick option” to the Q.

Hey Reader - what’s your take?  Leave a reply below and let me know about your experience!  If you don’t see the “Leave a reply” below this, click on the word “Comments” and leave one so we can all benefit.

“Have Lake Martin sales picked up yet?”

I get this questions a lot.  Waterfront sales on Lake Martin are cyclical anyway, and after a tough Oct - Dec 2008 everyone is anxious to see if 2009 will be the year the market takes back off.

So far, it looks like January - March 2009 (1Q09) is in lockstep with waterfront sales in 1Q08. There were 20 sold in 1Q08 and 22 sold in 1Q09:

I guess I could make a sensational headline like:

“2009 Sales Are Up 10% Over 2008” but when that 10% = 2 sales, well, it seems like (statistically) a close call.

I think the real story lies in the active listings and new listings columns.  In March 2008 we added 110 listings for sale around Lake Martin, and had a total of 418.  In 2009, there was a little more total for sale, at 474, but in March 09 only added 53 to that total.

So what?

To me that is a sign of hope that sellers are pulling back a bit, and only selling when they are serious. I also think it is obvious that there is a lack of new spec homes on the market. Waterfront spec homes were still hitting the Lake Martin real estate market back in 08 because the pipeline can sometimes be about 8 months. In other words, new spec homes popping up as new listings in January 2008 were likely started around April 2007. But by April 2008, everyone had figured out that we were in an extreme buyers market, and quit starting spec homes.

The only spec homes now on the market are holdovers from 2007 and 2008, and in some rare cases, 2006.

Foreclosures? Short sales?

Yes,  Lake Martin is starting to see more foreclosures and short sales.

It’s hard to come up with an easy list of Lake Martin foreclosures or short sales because there is no field in the Lake Martin MLS to designate as foreclosure or short sale.  In contrast, you can easily search for waterfront homes or lots by choosing “Y” in a Lake Martin MLS search here.  For foreclosures and short sales, you pretty much have to deduce it by the seller (a bank or some other financial sounding company) and also the trusty Lake Martin grapevine.

What will the Lake Martin real estate market do in 2009?

No one can know for sure at this point, of course, but here are a couple of indicators that I watch:

1.)     2009 monthly sales beating 2008 - by this I mean in number of homes sold.  We have already seen in 2008 that average prices fell.  So according to what we know about real estate cycles then we should expect to see individual months in 2009 beating their 2008 counterpart BEFORE we see prices rebound. But, current year MUST start beating prior years.  It happened in the last part of 2008, and 1Q09 beat 2008 timidly, which is why the smart money eyes will be on the crucial period of 2Q09 (April - June 2009).

2.) Cities / States that were Bubble Sources - I am not a real big believer in strong trickle down connections between markets, at least in a 1 to 1 relationship.  But it is interesting to watch with the economy as a whole.  I watch Florida, California, and Atlanta.

Related Posts:

Lake Martin Market Statistics Category

(*)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.

The 5th Annual State of Our Watershed Conference, The Tallapoosa River Basin –Moving Toward More Effective Water Policy will be at the Betty Carol Graham Technology Center at the Central Alabama Community College in Alexander City on Wednesday-Thursday, May 13th-14th, 2009. This year’s conference will focus on moving toward sustainable water management policy for the Tallapoosa River Basin.

This year’s organizers and sponsors include the Auburn University Water Resources Center, Alabama Water Watch, the Middle Tallapoosa Clean Water Partnership, Lake Watch of Lake Martin, the Montgomery Water Works and Sanitary Sewer Board, and Central Alabama Community College

Go to www.twp.auburn.edu and, under TWP Highlights click the 5th Annual State of Our Watershed Conference link to go to information on the conference, including the Tallapoosa River Basin Management Plan (8.2 megabite pdf file), conference announcement, and conference registration (required for lunch headcount), and additional information.

"lake martin, alabama" By Gingher on Flickr

During the boom years of soaring prices for Lake Martin waterfront homes, many people who loved the lake and wanted something more than a weekly rental have settled for a yearly lease.

For some it was a fairly easy decision, since the monthly rent amount was only a fraction of what their payment would be for a comparable home on the water.  No more.  I run into people all of the time that pay $1,500 to $1,800 a month to rent a Lake Martin cabin.

Now, with rates at historic lows, and lots of pressure on sellers on Lake Martin, the rental excuse is just about gone. Consider a recent example of numbers that I ran for another agent:

Currently, his client is paying $1,250 a month to lease a cabin.  The client is fearing that the lessor is going up on the rent. So what kind of home could he buy for that much per month?

If you figure that you bought a deeded home for $325,000, and put 20% down, that would give you a loan amount of $260,000.  Bankrate.com tells us that right now in Alabama, rates for 30 year fixed loans are at about 4.875% - that gives a monthly payment of about $1,376 per month.

Ha - you say, renting is still cheaper.  Wait a minute - have you considered the after tax affect?  Yes, second home mortgage interest is deductible!  In the above scenario, you would pay about $12,588 in the first year.  So if you were in a 20% income tax bracket, the effect is a $2,518 per year or $210 per month reduction in tax.

$1,376 - $210  = $1,166 per month, or less than your cabin lease of $1,250.

True, you would probably have insurance expense that is greater than your renter’s insurance right now.  And true, you would have to pay property tax.  But I think that would pretty much wash out with the tax savings, to say the least.  Plus you would be OWNING a Lake Martin home instead of renting. You would never have to worry again about increases in rent, or whether they are going to renew at all.  You will be buying low - so why are you waiting?

You can’t find a good cabin on a big, private, wooded lot in a great area?  Wrong.  See more info here!

You do realize that you’re out of excuses, right?