The “H” family has successfully sold their midtown Montgomery, AL home in a historically slow market. They are in the driver’s seat now.  There are some good real estate deals to be had. They’ve got the dough.

Out of all options laid out before them, they chose a home in the Sturbridge neighborhood in East Montgomery.

I was just curious.  So I asked them.  Here’s why. . .

1) “Well, I hate to say this as my #1, but we got a really great deal on this house in Sturbridge. When you add up the square footage, the age of the home (built in the 1990’s, a lot newer than our mid town home was) – it was just a great buy.  It had been on the market for a long time – maybe other buyers couldn’t see past the dirty carpet.  It needed a little cleaning, but we were glad to do it for the price we paid!”

2)   “Sturbridge’s location: it is in East Montgomery, but it’s still close to the rest of Montgomery.  It’s so easy to hop in and out of the neighborhood.  I can get to Target, Publix, the dry cleaners, Jalapeno’s Mexican restaurant and I-85 in about 5 minutes.  We made the leap from ‘Midtown’ to ‘East Montgomery’ knowing that some things like church and school would be a little farther from the new home than the old home, but Sturbridge is still a really conveniently situated place.

3) “The location of our house within Sturbridge was a big deal.  It’s at the end of a cul-de-sac on a street that dead ends into the neighborhood playground.  We feel comfortable letting our kids play with neighbors up and down the street.  Because its a dead end street, there’s not much traffic, and like I said, at the end of our street is a playground, the neighborhood clubhouse and pool, plus a huge green space for the kids to play in.  Not a bad place to be.”

Thanks for sharing your story, H family!  Enjoy your new home and new part of town. Anyone else have a story to tell . . . . ?

If you’d like to know more about Sturbridge, or any East Montgomery neighborhood, give us a call.  We can show you any property in the Montgomery Area MLS, and we’d love to help you find your next home!
Click here for another family’s story about choosing a home in Sturbridge.

Just because you’ve driven past Chantilly Parkway on Vaughn Road does not mean everything that lays before you is part of the Town of Pike Road, AL.  Even passing through the light at CVS on Vaughn and Pike Roads is not a clear threshold to the municipality of the Town of Pike Road.

It’s just not that simple.

The map above (from the Town of Pike Road website, click on it to enlarge) shows the patchwork that is east Montgomery County.  The map below (from the City of Montgomery website) details city trash pickup days, and on the lower right hand side of the map the patchwork of Montgomery City/Montgomery County/Town of Pike Road is evident here, too.

How does this affect the east Montgomery house hunter?

For example, you could research a home on Saw Tooth Loop in the Woodland Creek subdivision.  The neighborhood is across Vaughn Road from Bridle Brook, which is a Town of Pike Road community.  The street address for homes in Woodland Creek say “Pike Road, AL.”  But this home is actually zoned for City of Montgomery amenities: sewer, trash, schools.  Unless current zoning changes, it would not be zoned for a future Pike Road School.  Confusing?  Sure.

In 2008, in the neighborhood of Merry Station, all but one of about 20 homes were incorporated into the Town of Pike Road.  One home was zoned Montgomery County.  How did the homeowners figure this out?  They had to do a little research.  That home has since been incorporated into the Town of Pike Road.

So why does it matter? Different reasons for different buyers.  Some might prefer City of Montgomery services?  Some might want to be zoned for the possibility of a future Pike Road school system? And designations can sometimes be changed . . .

The main point if that if you have a preference, you’ll need to do a little digging.  Looking at the street address alone will not suffice.

The folks at the Town Hall in Pike Road are a big help.  So is having a knowledgeable Realtor working for you.  Give us a call and let us do the digging for you.

Montgomery, AL, like any real estate market, will always have its share of people selling their property themselves – aka For Sale By Owner or FSBO (pr FIZZ-bo).  And that’s fine with me.  I am not one of those realtors that looks down on FSBOs.  I think it is up to me as a real estate agent to prove to the FSBO prospect that I will save them time and make them money if I list and help sell their River Region home or lot.

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 the 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 Montgomery property themselves:

3RiversRecon’s Tips to any Montgomery 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 Montgomery Street – buy www.123Montgomery.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 who has been driving around looking at homes for 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 123Montgomery.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 231, but do you really think it conveys the right image to someone you are asking to spend $200,000 for a  home ?   Make them double sided for greater visibility.  I would go ahead and buy 2 so that you can switch them out to avoid being faded or dirty.  Also be sure to get an “info tube” thing at WalMart or Home Depot so you can put some flyers with your sign.

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 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.  Most Montgomery buyers are concerned about the school zones, 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, 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 the Montgomery MLS 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 the River Region?  Leave a comment below and help us all out!

One of my favorite things about having kids in Montgomery, AL, is the presence of kid’s clothing/toys/gear consignment sales like Kids Carousel. These sales are usually twice a year (spring/summer and fall/winter) and are HUGE: think hundreds of consignors and locations like Garrett Coliseum.

So what’s the deal?  Do people really buy other people’s used stuff? YES!  Do consignors really make money at these sales? YES!!

For those of you who have never been to one of these events, here’s how it works:

1) You can simply come and shop during public shopping days.

2) You can consign items and shop early.  There is usually a minimum number of items you must consign (15) in order to be a consignor.  Log onto the website, enter your gently used items, and print out tags.  Bring your tagged items during the “check in” days before the sale and get a priority shopping pass.  You are now part of a select group that gets to shop early AND make money from items you sell!

3) You can volunteer to work a few shifts during the sale and shop even earlier.  Workers must be consignors, and receive “payment” for their time by getting to shop before the consignors.  Volunteer requirements are varied, so check each sale’s website for specifics.

Again – these sales are huge (hundreds of consignors at each, with a minimum of 15 items to consign), and they don’t take junk.  You’d be hard pressed to find better deals on all sizes of kids’ clothing, baby gear, toys, shoes, furniture, etc, so check one out.

Kids Carousel has a spring/summer sale coming up next month at the old Sam’s Club building across from Best Buy on the Eastern Blvd. “Take-In” days are Feb.13-22, and the sale runs from Feb. 27 – March 6.  To consign, click here for the Kids Carousel website or call Stacie at (334) 286-4689.

When you get that check after the sale, you’ll be ready to start tagging for the next one!