Snellville Home Owners Sell Out

Villas At Knollwood Lakes

As you travel east on Highway 124, you cross over from Lawrenceville to Snellville.  There is a neighborhood that pops up immediately that is one of the newer neighborhoods in Snellville.  With homes featured from the mid $300's to the high 7's and 8's, Knollwood Lakes is certainly in the top 10% of all homes in Snellville.  Most people move out to Snellville for the value and the quiet lifestyle.  With a slogan like, "Everybody is somebody in Snellville," who wouldn't want to move here.

Well all of that is about to change.  A few years back, Snellville decided they wanted more commercial business.  The moved city hall to a central location and rezoned everything around it.  The allowed a new strip mall to be installed on Webb Gin House Road.  All up and down Highway 124 and Highway 78 you can see the results of this move.

With the success of these commercial ventures, developers are clammoring for more land to develop.  One such spot just happens to be adjacent to Knollwood Lakes.  Homeowners that neighbor the land are up in arms.  They moved out here for the serenity and at best figured another neighborhood would go in.  Not something that would cause more traffic, run off issues and other reported problems.

"Residents of the Essex Square neighborhood moved one step closer to selling out to a commercial real estate developer Tuesday when the Gwinnett County Planning Commission recommended that the project be allowed to proceed

The 1980s-era neighborhood between Snellville and Lawrenceville is increasingly surrounded by commercial development. Tired of trying to fend off rezoning efforts, residents -- a total of 19 homes -- finally agreed to sell out to Strategic Realty Group to make way for a 300,000-square-foot retail center.

After a one-month delay to consider concerns raised by nearby home-owners, the Planning Commission voted 7-1 Tuesday to recommend that the project on Ga. 124 near Webb Gin House Road should be allowed to proceed."

Homeowners jumped at the chance to sell out because of all the news they've seen and are not sure when they will get another opportunity to sell so high.

This issue is ongoing and more details will be posted at later date.

Check out the AJC article here.

Fulton County Real Estate Market Report - August 2007

August 16, 2007

Fulton County Real Estate is probably the most diverse in every possible definition of the word in Georgia.  It contains the city of Atlanta, as well as cities like Alpharetta and Roswell which feature very high end homes, as well as areas like College Park where there is a bit of a depressed value.

This May (according to Tax Records) in Fulton County Real Estate, 1500 homes were sold, that's down from down from over 2000 a year ago.  However, as in other areas such as Gwinnett County, prices are up by 20K on average.

As in the rest of the state, condo sales are down by almost 50%, however, Fulton is still one few places that a condo or townhome hold its value.  There has been little to no dropoff in the $180K average price.

Currently there are 9,281 homes for sale in Fulton County.  Of those 10% will likely sell in 77 days or less and the rest will sit until they are in the top 10%.

Roswell, GA Makes Business Weeks Top 20 South Affordable Suburbs

Don't look now but BusinessWeek has put out another List.  BusinessWeek has the uneviable task of coming up with only 20 suburbs in the North and 20 in the south that are affordable.   I'm not entirely sure how Roswell made it into the top 20 or how other cities in Georgia missed the cut, but I certainly feel slighted here.  Roswell is a great community, don't get me wrong, but there are several communities in Georgia such as Duluth, Lawrenceville, Dacula, Suwanee, Alpharetta, Buford, Kennesaw, that have equal or better options than the ones the selected from NC, SC or AL.

Yes, I am bias, I have no qualms admitting that,  I guess I expected a more thorough analysis coming from a magazine that basically just wanted to publish a slide show, but come on, Tyler,TX - ?  Weston, FL?  How any city from Florida got listed on an affordability article is ridiculous.  However, if bestplaces.net paid for the spot, and they said it, it must be true.

It's also worth noting that the top 8 or so cities have crime indices in the 80's, while Roswell and other notables have them in the 30's.  No wonder, those cities are affordable. 

Here's a link to the article, read it for yourself and decide: BusinessWeek Article

Next week, I'll put out my own list of cities with high crime and low cost of living.  I'll be sure to hit martha up and some other sponsors as well.