This is not your average Lake Martin home tour, where they are all for sale and realtors are there breathing on you while you try and eat those weenies in BBQ sauce.  These homes are not (to my knowledge) for sale, they are just opening them up to tour. 

If you like seeing homes and getting design ideas, you may want to check it out.  If you buy tickets ahead of time, you will save $5.  If you wait until Saturday it will cost you $30, but the proceeds benefit  the Children’s Harbor, so you can feel good about that.  The Children’s Harbor is located just across highway 63 (or under Kowaliga Bridge by boat) from Trillium.

If you are interested call the Children’s Harbor at 334–857–2133.

For more details on the homes involved, see this article in the Birmingham News.

If you are interested in homes for sale in Trillium or anywhere else on Lake Martin, call me on my cell phone (number at the top of the page) or email me.

Related Articles:

Lake Martin Neighborhood Spotlight: Trillium
Tell Your Realtor To Shut Up And Listen To You
Lake Martin Is High, But So Is Real Estate Inventory

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Russell Marine had a lot of boats out for show.  There were also a lot of homes for sale in the Ridge that were open for touring, as well as some townhomes in The Ledges at The Ridge for sale.

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Friday, June 13, downtown Alex City:

6:00 PM – Coolbone Brass Band – they are a true marching New Orleans style “Brass Band.”  Don’t confuse them with your Uncle Leo in his ban-lon playing a snappy ditty on the oboe.  These guys march, play, dance, get among the crowd and entertain the whole time.  Don’t be late, I hear they are going to do something different on their opening song. 

7:30 PM – Amanda Shaw – she is a 17 year old fiddle phenom from Louisiana.  This is a great example of how the Jazz Fest seeks to bring you a wide variety of different music.  I think they tried to book her last year and are glad to snag her now.

9:30 PM – Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk – they are fresh off a date at the other Jazz Fest (New Orleans).  If you have never heard of the Neville Brothers and therefore Ivan, then you deserve to miss this rare treat.  Most people have to pay $50 a head to hear any Neville; you can hear them for free.  If you don’t have the good sense to show up, nothing I say or link to here will change that.

Saturday, June 14, 2008 – Lake Martin Amphitheater

6:30 PM – Randall Bramblett – he has toured and played with folks like Greg Allman, Widespread Panic, Traffic, and a little band called the Grateful Dead.  Bill Berry of R.E.M. says he’s “the most talented and prolific song writer I have the privilege of knowing.”

8:00 PM – Zac Brown Band – I don’t know much about him but he seems to be a fun “southern” style act that gets the crowd rolling.  Check out his web site.

10:00 PM – Joe Bonamassa – I am really excited about this one.  He opened for B.B. King when he was 12 years old.  I hear him and his music played all the time on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Blues Channel 74.  He is all over various magazine covers, and is a pretty big deal in blues & guitar circles.  They have been trying to book this guy for a couple of years now.  He is good.  He is to 2008 as Derek Trucks was to 2006 – that is, the guy that your friend will see on the t-shirt a year from now and will say “Bonamassa played for free on Lake Martin?  Please tell me you went.”

More About the Alex City Jazz Fest:

The Jazz Fest is a FREE BYOB event made possible by its sponsors.  If you choose to drink, please drink responsibly.  Bring your lawn chairs and blankets to each location and enjoy the atmosphere. This event is always a good time and one of the Lake Martin area’s biggest parties.  In fact, it is one of the few remaining music festivals of its size in the southeast that is still FREE.  Sure, you have to pay a parking fee Saturday at the LMAT, but it’s still pretty cheap at $10 a car.  A lot of the money goes to the Kowaliga Area Volunteer Fire Department, so you can feel good about that.

The Alex City Jazz Fest always needs more sponsors, so please click here if you are interested in becoming a fan favorite.  $300 is the minimum sponsorship level, but if you want to be a “Friend” you can contribute whatever you can.

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Why do most Lake Martin lovers wait until Memorial Day to come to the lake?  Beats me.  Springtime has great weather – plenty of sun and temps in the low 70s.  What a beautiful day.  Enjoy:

Willow Point’s 18th green:

Willow Point’s Driving Range:

The tee box on number 10, one of the holes that play along Lake Martin:

Willow Point Villas (available for rent by members):

The Pool & Cabana:

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No one cares about that.

Especially my clients… nor should they.

One of the first things my dad taught me about Lake Martin real estate was “don’t show them what you like, show them what THEY like.”  Simple but true.

The key to helping people be happy with their waterfront property is to focus on what they think, not you.

A realtor’s local knowledge and experience does matter, but only to the extent that they use that to help their clients get what they want.  There are all kinds of buyers out there.  Some Lake Martin buyers prefer Kowaliga Creek to Blue Creek.  Some prefer the Preserve at Stoney Ridge to the Ledges at The Ridge.  It doesn’t matter what I prefer.

On the selling end, in order to be the best listing agent, I must look at a seller’s lake home with the eyes of an unbiased buyer, not filtered by my own preferences.  I have to market each home based on its own unique properties.  You don’t market a condo in Stillwaters the same way that you do a cabin in Little Kowaliga.

So how do you find out what people want?  You shut up.  You ask a good question, then you shut up and listen to their answer.

Not that I am perfect at this.  I constantly have to remind myself to be quiet and listen.  I make it a habit to ask specific, dialog inducing questions - not “did you like that waterfront lot?” - rather “what about that lot did you like?”  The latter helps me understand their reasons instead of just logging a result.

The more I learn about the client, the better I can help, and the happier they will be.

I believe it was jazz great Dizzy Gillespie that said, “It’s taken me much of my life to learn what notes not to play.”

Amen, Dizzy.

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I talk to FSBOs all the time.  What I try to do is help them by giving them the clear and un filtered truth about the Lake Martin market and how the market might react to their home.  The decision to list or not to list is certainly up to them.

That being said, there will always be a segment of people that choose to sell their real estate themselves, without the help of an agent.  So I figure I might as well be helpful in case the FSBO experiment doesn’t go well, maybe they’ll call me.  They often do. 

I read a great article for advice to FSBOs in today’s Wall Street Journal.  Click here to read it.  It had a lot of helpful sales strategies for FSBOs.

I would add to the article these suggestions to anyone selling their waterfront property themselves:

John’s Tips to any Lake Martin For Sale By Owner:

1.    Get Your Own Website – Go to a domain seller like godaddy.com and buy your own website address.  If your home’s address is 123 Lake Street – buy www.123Lake.com or whatever is available.  The shorter the better.  I do this for all of my listings.  Use this on your flyers and advertisements.  If you advertise your home on something like fsbo.com, its website will be something incoherent like www.fsbo.com/e34h3449ir4827 – no buyer can remember that, especially one that has been at Chimney Rock drinking beer for 3 hours.  Once you have bought your site through godaddy, go to the control panel and choose “domain forwarding” to point the site to the long one at fsbo dot com.  That way anyone who types 123lake.com in their browser will be taken automatically to the fsbo site. 

2.  Buy Custom Signs – Those “For Sale By Owner” signs you buy for $3 at WalMart might be appropriate for your used go-cart that you put out on highway 63, but do you really think it conveys the right image to someone you are asking to spend $600,000 for a waterfront home on Lake Martin?  I use Cliff Grinnell at EBanr.  His office is in Alex City on the Dadeville Highway. You need at least 2 – one for the road, and one for the waterfront.  Make them double sided for greater visibility.  I would go ahead and buy 4 so that you can switch them out to avoid being faded or dirty.  Also be sure to get 2 “info tube” things at WalMart or Home Depot so you can put some flyers in both signs.

3.  Make Effective Flyers – You start by taking great pictures of your home or lot.  Then spend the money and have them printed by a high quality color LASER printer.  Go to Kinko’s if you have no color laser printer of your own.  Get them to go ahead and run 150 copies while they’re at it.  The big cost here is the setup for a new print job, each additional copy is not as expensive, so you might as well print them all at one stop.  If you’re putting the flyers in the info tubes in the signs, don’t waste a lot of space by pictures of the outside.  They know what the outside looks like.  Just use one or two of the lakeside so that they can easily remember which one is yours (odds are that yours is the 10th flyer they have pulled that day).  If you are putting the flyer elsewhere then include more pictures of the waterfront.  Most Lake Martin buyers are concerned about the property’s waterfront, so highlight that.

4.  Be Available At An Instant To Talk Or Show The Home – Put your cell phone number on all advertisements.  Don’t confuse buyers by giving your home phone in town, your home phone at Lake Martin, your office phone, your fax, etc.  Just one will do.  Then KEEP THE CELL PHONE ON YOU at all times.  When it rings, answer it.  If you don’t answer the phone, the majority of buyers will move along and not leave a message.  If they want to see it now, show it now. 

5. Call Or Email Me With Questions – Every property on Lake Martin is unique, with its own special selling points to promote and challenges to overcome to a potential buyer.  If you’re stumped, give me a shout.  I am glad to help you think of an answer, even if you plan to continue to sell it yourself.

Do you have another helpful FSBO tip for the rest of Lake Martin?  Leave a comment below and help us all out!  If you can’t see the “Leave a Reply” box below, click “Continue” then scroll down to the bottom. 

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Obviously, I am in the business to sell Lake Martin real estate.  I don’t go into a listing intending not to sell it, not to give bad service.  But I find that in talking to some sellers, they are leery of signing a listing contract for fear that they will be held in slavery by an agent.  Once they figure out that they can fire me anytime they want, it makes them feel better about the agreement.  I only want them as clients if they’re happy with how hard I am working for them.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I found myself telling this to the owners of these new listings.  I assured them that if they wanted out of the listing agreement at any time, for whatever reason, that’s OK with me.  They wouldn’t owe me a dime.  I even wrote it into the listing agreement to let them know that I meant it.  It was surprising to most of them.

Coincidentally, I saw a great post on the same subject by Jay Thompson, the Phoenix Real Estate guy.  I agree with his take 100%.  It is a real advantage to own your own small brokerage.  I can make rules like this for myself.  I don’t have to wade through some big corporate bureaucracy.  I make the policies, and can work with clients to suit their needs, not according to the whims of Big Brother.

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Not likely.  There is still a lot of inventory to sell which I think will continue to make 2008 a great time to be a buyer.  To wit:

A comparison of the first quarter sales in 2008 shows that in the entire Lake Martin residential waterfront market on the MLS(*), there were fewer sales this year than in 2007.

If you look back to the post where I reviewed Lake Martin waterfront sales in 2007, you will remember that January – March 2007 saw 43 waterfront properties sold:

The same statistics in the first three months of 2008 in the Lake Martin MLS shows sales of only 17:

Is it time for sellers to to give up?  Will 2008 see only 58 waterfront homes (17 * 4) sold?  Of course not.  History shows us that the four months February – May of every year counts for almost 50% of residential waterfront sales on Lake Martin.  We still have half of that critical period to go before we get a better prediction on 2008.

Also remember – January and February 2008 sales were also affected by the drought.  Just look at news reports from that period – they were dire.  Some people openly wondered if the lake would EVER come back.  The water level really didn’t start shooting up until the last week in February – when it rose a whopping 4 feet in 7 days.  Since then, spirits have been buoyed and more buyers are crawling the coves.

So can sellers relax?  Will Lake Martin’s water level comeback springboard the real estate market back into the raging sellers’ market of 2005?

Not likely.

There is still a lot of inventory.  There is a lot of competition for the buyers’ attention.  It is still very possible to sell in this market (the fact that my lights are on testify to that fact).  I am telling all of my sellers that we must continue with intense focus on the golden trinity of real estate: pricing, marketing, and staging.  As a seller, you must do all 3 exceptionally well in order to sell on Lake Martin right now.  The sellers who get overconfident now will be the last to sell this year, guaranteed.

Are you considering selling your waterfront property now that Lake Martin’s water is up?  Or maybe you just wonder how the last 24 months have affected its possible value?  Call or email John for a no guilt, no hassle, pain free Comparable Market Analysis.  See the contact info at the top of this page.  If you don’t want to sell after we talk, no hard feelings – I promise.

(*)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.

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It’s hard to believe, but in the 5 short weeks since I wrote this post  about the water hitting 480, Lake Martin stands inches away from its highest possible mark of 490.  All of the nay sayers have been proved wrong.  Many (myself included) wondered if it would take more than one summer to recover from the worst drought recorded in 80 years.  The next time we have a rain shortage, I hope we remember how fast it bounced back.

How has it affected businesses around the lake?

Real Estate

I have been extremely busy in the last month especially.  I have picked up all sorts of new waterfront listings.  I have been running all over the lake taking pictures and shooting video tours.  Buyers are calling again.  Turns out, my phone does work!  It’s a good feeling.  I am no exception, many other Lake Martin realtors tell me the same thing.

All agent fluffery aside, 2008 will prove a great time to buy property on Lake Martin.  There is still a lot of inventory out there from the doldrums of 2007.  Sellers have reduced prices and (if they’re smart) are still eager to sell.  Interest rates are down, so conditions are still very favorable for buyers.

Retail

JT Voltz at Blue Creek Marina tells me that they are “covered up” in work already.  Their staff is back full steam and looking forward to a better summer.

I spoke to Oskar (of Oskar’s) this morning and she said that their business has bounced back as well.  They are ready to forget 2007 and are looking back to 2006 to plan for their restaurant traffic this summer.

Early season success has not been limited to the Dadeville side of Lake Martin.  Green Valley Market and Cafe tells me that last weekend they served about as many meals as they ever have.  They opened in 2007, so they anticipate to easily break their own records of catering and restaurant business this summer.

David Naile of Nail’s Convenience Store in downtown Kowaliga says that the last couple of weekends’ nice weather has shown a spike in gasoline and c-store sales.  Naile confirmed that he is planning to expand his offerings inside the store to accommodate the higher traffic.

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Conference Information:

Location:      Central Alabama Community College, HEA Auditorium, 1675 Cherokee Road, Alexander City, AL

Date:      Friday, April 11th, 2008

Cost:     FREE registration and A FREE LUNCH will be provided

Topics:      Drought impacts, upgrading Lake Martin to Outstanding Alabama Water, Lake Martin dam relicensing, community-based watershed initiatives, and the role of the AU Water Resources Center in management of the Tallapoosa River Basin

Register:     To register (required),  visit the Tallapoosa Watershed Project web site at: www.twp.auburn.edu

Thanks to Dick Bronson at Lake Watch for submitting this event to the Lake Martin Voice!

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