Like most people, I’d prefer to have a nice brick house over a typical wood/vinyl sided house; less maintenance, etc. So, I had been keeping an eye on one such house in Cartersville, GA. It was a 4-sided brick house, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2-car carport, and a basement for the sweet price of $109,000.

A few days after viewing it, I drove back by for another look to discover a crew working on it. Online, the house was then listed for $115,000. That seemed pretty reasonable, depending on what exactly was being done to the house.

So, a couple of weeks later they are mostly finished and now I’ve discovered that the price has risen to $139,900. That’s $5000 more than the house right across the street from it and that one has an in-ground pool, work shed, and a much better kitchen to boot!

So, it appears that $20,900 gets you the following:

• Refinished wood floors
• New Paint (Inside & Out - brick isn’t painted)
• New vinyl in the kitchen
• New carpet in living room
• and new interior doors? (not certain on this one)

I’m a bit disgusted by just how much the price has risen. It doesn’t, any shape, resemble a $140k home. The one across the street from me right now is priced at $132k and it’s much larger and in much better shape (although, it’s not brick).

However, if they can get that for the house, more power to them. Hopefully, whoever does buy it is smart enough to not become house-poor over it.

For those interested in viewing the brick house, it’s located right about here on Turner Drive.

UPDATE: Bartow County will be added to this service!

There are a lot of foreclosure listings available online, most of which require a paid subscription to find out where the property is located. However, there is a new service available called “My Early Edition” (www.myearlyedition.com).

MEE provides all the details you need to locate foreclosures in and around the Atlanta Metro area…for free. The service even goes so far as to not only give you the address, lender information, and current owner, but will also do a reverse look-up to give you the phone number(s) associated with the property.

Here’s a screenshot of one of the searches I did:

The site could probably use a little work on the interface (Sorry Dave! ), but it is free and it’s frequently updated. Plus, since it was created by one of my friends from college, I can tell you for certain that you aren’t going to get bombarded with special email offers once you create your account.

Plus, new features are going to be added that will make this a very valuable tool for those searching for a deal. So, sign-up now and take advantage of this site while you can.

Got a dingy house in need of a paint job, new roof, and a new lawn? Easy, just a few minutes in Photoshop and Presto-Chango, it’s move-in ready!

With more consumers going online to do their home searches, it is now more important for sellers and agents to be able to draw a home-buyer with just one simple, small picture of a home than ever before. So much so, in fact, that quite a few are now relying on Photoshop to give their properties the competitive edge online.

Done right, these digital make-overs can give home buyers an idea of how a house could look, influencing them to buy. But, they shouldn’t be the first images that they see and they certainly shouldn’t be presented as genuine photos of a residence. Ultimately, doing so will affect an agent’s credibility when they take an excited couple to see a house, only to discover all the flaws that were hidden in the picture.

Example

Here’s an example of one I found on FMLS. It’s a small 3/1 home in Acworth, GA. Nice lawn eh?

Most of you can probably tell the grass is fake on the above. But, it’s just one of many that are out there. I’ve seen much better ones. Here’s the same image after I’ve done my own editing on it in Photoshop:

Not as easy to notice now is it? And that only took about 15mins.

So, what are some things to look for?

• Repeating patterns - Often the clone tool is used to copy a good section of the photo over a bad section. However, sloppiness with this tool can lead to patterns that are easy to detect.
• Shading - A flat lawn is a fake lawn.
• Texture - If it doesn’t look like it has the right texture to it, it probably doesn’t.
• Straight Lines -Razor-sharp lines only exist in the digital world and Superman’s jawline. Grass leaves a fuzzy edge.
• Wrong Color - Grass is green…but not that green. Many people think they can just paint some green over a lawn and expect it to look right…wrong. Lawns have texture and they have multiple shades of green.
• Brightness - Another trick is to grab objects from other photos to correct something in an existing one. However, the new objects are often not color corrected before being used. So, they end up with some things that visually stick out of the photo.