HometownGeorgetown.com

On Thursday, I attended the Grand Opening/Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony of Bedrock Homes, a builder who has recently come to the Georgetown, Texas area. I was going to say “a new builder,” but that wouldn’t be accurate because these folks have over 20 years of homebuilding experience in other locations. Builder Mike Trotta has dived into Georgetown life with enthusiasm and a dedication to become a part of the community and to give back. I met Mike because we are part of the same Leadership Georgetown class, a program established by the Chamber of Commerce to educate citizens of our town and to inspire us to take leadership roles as the community grows.

Pleasant Valley is located near the intersection of FM 1460 and Inner Loop, one of the hottest areas in town. In doing a search of the Solds over the past six months, I came up with four homes, all built between 1993 and 1997. Two of the homes were built by Jimmy Jacobs, a well-known custom builder in the Georgetown area. These houses are adorable! High quality and affordable, they each sold for less than $160,000.

The Bedrock homes being built are priced from the $130’s to the $170’s and will be ready for move-in next month. I only had time to see the model before I had to rush to another meeting. It looked fantastic. The rooms are spacious with tons of natural light. This would be a home you’d be proud to show off to family and friends. I’m going to meet with a Bedrock representative on Thursday to take a tour of the homes in the other subdivision where they’re currently building, Briarwood.

If you’d like more information on Pleasant Valley or Bedrock Homes, please call me at 512-876-6544 or drop me a line at jenel@HometownGeorgetown.com. I’m here to help!

Buyers are back! I believe it. I’ve seen evidence of it at my office, and I’ve heard from other agents and builders in town that their properties are being shown a lot. The numbers don’t yet reflect this trend, so the evidence is all anecdotal. Either buyers are taking their time to look around a lot before making an offer, or their offers are simply not being accepted in great numbers.

Of the 46 new listings, 19 are priced between $100,000 and $200,000. Affordable family homes are out there. The median home price for the new listings is $221,225, but that number is skewed by one listing with an asking price of over $2 million. When you take that one out of the mix, the median home price is $219,500 on the new listings. The median home prices on those homes that went Pending this week (an offer was made and accepted) was only $176,900, and the median sales price on the homes that sold was only $187,500. The comparison between average price per square foot is interesting, too.

So does this mean that a home that’s priced at $150 per square foot is way overpriced? Not at all! The finish-out on homes makes a huge difference in the price per square foot, as it should. For example, a home with granite countertops should cost more than a house with formica countertops. That just makes sense. All this chart shows is that the homes that are currently selling are priced lower per square foot than most of the homes that are currently being placed on the market. Now, those sellers who are in a hurry to sell (i.e., motivated) might want to lower their asking price to reach a level where more buyers are currently looking for homes.

I’m going out today to take a look at a great four-bedroom country home with five acres outside of Georgetown that’s priced at just over $200,000. It was built in the 1980s but recently remodeled. If that sounds intriguing to you, please give me a call at 512-876-6544 or send an email to me at jenel@HometownGeorgetown.com so I can give you more information. Of course, if your dream home is not a house in the country, I can still help!

The MLXchange software that I use to search for Georgetown Texas homes for my clients has a great deal of flexibility. If you have a deathly fear of stairs, I can gear the search to look only for single-story homes. If you want to live within one mile of your favorite H-E-B, I can pinpoint that grocery store on a map and search for homes only within a one-mile radius of it. Or if you don’t want to pull your seven-year-old away from her friends, I can search for homes in that particular school’s attendance zone. (A couple of caveats: One, Georgetown is growing at such a pace that attendance zone boundary lines are likely to change from year to year. And two, mistakes are sometimes made when listings are put into the system. If the school is important to you, you should speak with someone at GISD before purchasing the home.)

Just for fun, I decided to run a search for homes available within the Annie Purl Elementary School attendance zone. 72 residential properties listed as being in the Annie Purl zone are currently active on the market, ranging in price from under $80,000 to just under $365,000. If you bought a home for $80,000, and you paid 10% down, your principle and interest payment would be less than $500 per month on a 30-year loan with 6% interest. You’ll pay more than that per month when you factor in taxes and insurance, but still, it makes a lot of sense to use your money to build equity rather than giving it to a landlord every month. A home is an investment; an apartment is an expense. If you’re even beginning to think about making the leap from renter to owner, give me a call. I can put you in touch with a lender who can help you decide if you’re ready to buy and how much of a house you can afford. My number is 512-876-6544. There’s no obligation, and the lenders will talk to you for no charge. We love helping people to get into their first homes - nothing beats the excitement and pride of a first-time homeowner.

My favorite of the homes currently on the market in this area is a house I’m listing at 2001 S. Church Street here in Georgetown.

A two-bedroom, two-bath bungalow in Old Town, this home has something special - a fully finished one-bedroom, one-bath apartment above the two-car garage. That means that whoever buys the house could use the apartment themselves, or they could rent it out to get help with the mortgage. It’s close to Southwestern University, so it should be pretty easy to keep rented. The house is delightful. It was remodeled last year - rewired, replumbed, re-roofed… And yet, it still has the red pine wood floors that were installed when the home was built by the Belford Building Company more about 80 years ago. Give me a call if you want to take a look for yourself. I’m very proud to show this home. 

In the past six months, 72 homes sold within the Annie Purl Elementary School attendance zone. The least expensive of these homes sold for under $60,000 back in August. The most expensive also sold in August, for over $400,000. That large country home came with fourteen acres. The median price for the homes that sold in this area over the past six months was $149,500; the average was $161,250. The average size was almost 1900 square feet, and the homes spent an average of 71 days on the market. One home sold in just two days, while another languished on the market for almost three years.

The City of Georgetown has announced public meetings to discuss proposed bus service within our city limits.

• Wednesday, January 9 at 2 p.m. in the Friends Room at the Georgetown Public Library, 402 W. Eighth Street
• Wednesday, January 9 at 6 p.m. in the Williamson Room in the Georgetown Municipal Complex, 300-1 Industrial Avenue
• Thursday, January 10 at 2 p.m. in the Sun City Activity Center Atrium, 1 Texas Drive

In a report on bus service alternatives, KFH Group, Inc. has proposed both a three-bus service and a four-bus service.

Map from page 5 of KFH Group, Inc’s transit alternative report

Map from page 7 of KFH Group, Inc’s transit alternative report

Both alternatives offer service to pretty much the same areas - out University Avenue, Williams Drive, to the major shopping and medical centers. The plan would call for all of the buses to meet at a transit hub at approximately the same time. This transit hub would most likely be a major shopping area. That way, passengers going to that area specifically would get off, and others would be able to transfer to other buses efficiently. Sun City is mentioned specifically as a bus stop.

The three-bus service is considered the minimum necessary to effectively serve Georgetown, but it has a major disadvantage in that it calls for the same bus to serve both Sun City and north Austin Avenue, where there are several apartment complexes and the high school. The four-bus service would be more expensive to operate, but those two areas could be split so that each would run more efficiently. A third alternative (not pictured) would include elements of the other two scenarios, and would add a midday shoppers and medical bus.

The number of hours per day and the number of days per week that the buses would run will also be open for discussion. The choices seem to be between a twelve-hour day at a minimum, up to a fifteen-hour day alternative. The latter would, of course, be more costly. Some of the costs should be defrayed with tasteful advertising in and on the buses, as well as on bus stops. The location of bus stops will be another point of discussion.

Sales over this past week have been understandably slow. Too slow, in fact, to do any meaningful analysis. So I decided instead to compare Georgetown, Texas home sales for the week of December 24 through December 31 (eight days, actually) for each of the past ten years.

Individually, the average home here in Georgetown hasn’t changed much. Three bedrooms, two baths, two car garage. In 1998, the average home sold during Christmas week was built in 1989. Nine years old. In 2007, the average home sold over this week was built fourteen years earlier. That number surprised me somewhat. With the number of homes being built in our area, I would have thought that the average home sold today would be younger than the average home sold ten years ago. The average lot size these days is about half what it was ten years ago.

The square footage figures were a little tricky. From 2003 backward, the search results brought up several homes that showed a square footage of zero. Most but not all of these were built in the year they were sold, so the number probably hadn’t been finalized. I simply disregarded these homes when coming up with the average square feet and the price per square foot.

It’s fun to look at these charts and try to analyze why things happened the way they did. For example, only in 1999 did homes sell more quickly than they did this year (over Christmas week, at any rate). Then in 2000, we saw a dramatic rise in home prices. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Homes sold very quickly because buyers saw them as bargains. Sellers then realized they could probably get more money for the homes, and they were willing to wait a little longer for those sales. This past week, the homes that sold were active on the market an average of 49 days. I think this is because they were priced very well. We’ve seen significant price reductions around here over the past couple of months. These homes sold quickly because they were priced right in the first place. The quickest sale came after only 13 days.