On October 11, 2011, Pike Road residents voted to raise property taxes to support a new, independent Pike Road school system.  Plans for this school have been in the works since 2006, and the approval of a 16 mill property tax increase means construction of a K-8 facility will begin in 2014.  Grades 9-12 will be phased in, one per year, thereafter.

The Town of Pike Road’s website is a great resource to find out more about the new school.  Here’s the short version of what it’s all about (for the longer version, click here):

The Pike Road School will be a Professional Development School, or PDS.  This means it will partner with 4 universities in this area to help future teachers learn alongside veteran teachers and university faculty.  The goal is a win-win environment for students in Pike Road, for the universities, and for other students in Alabama who will benefit from the resources and research done at the school.

The school will be within Montgomery County, but independent of the Montgomery Public School System.

But this is a real estate website.  Why all the talk about a new school?

If you currently live in Pike Road, in my estimation, you’ll likely see property values rise.  Think of other independent school systems in Birmingham, for example, and the demand for housing in those zones.  This is merely anecdotal evidence, but since the vote in October, developments that have been ghost towns since the recession are booming: Bon Terre, Providence – have you been by in the last few months? Whoa.

If you have any questions or would like to speak to a Realtor about properties in Pike Road, give us a call.  We’d love to help you find your piece of Pike Road and take advantage of the new school system. Call John at (334) 221-5862, or contact him by clicking here.

If you need to jump on I-85 N quickly, like a suburban atmosphere in a rural part of Pike Road, and prefer neighborhood amenities like a pool and clubhouse, Stone Park might be a good fit.

Stone Park has new construction homes that are Craftsman in style.  According the Stone Park website, standard features include  10 foot ceilings, granite counter tops, custom cabinets, and fenced yards.  You’ll see exterior designs that are similar to most new-construction neighborhoods, i.e. 2 car garages on the front of homes. You’ll also see sidewalks and underground utilities.

Homes range in size from 2,015 SF – 3,200 SF, and prices begin in the low $200’s.

At this time, Stone Park is one of the closest new construction neighborhoods to the proposed Pike Road School site.  The new school will be located in the back of The Waters development, which is maybe a mile or two from Stone Park down Marler Road.

If you’d like more information on homes for sale right now in Stone Park, or have any questions about Pike Road real estate, call John at (334) 221-5862, email us at threeriversrecon @ coleyre. com, or simply click here to fill out the contact form.

Gray Ridge is small – there’s one main street that runs through the development – so there’s no thru traffic, and it’s very convenient to I-85.  Some parts of Pike Road are very rural, but Gray Ridge has a suburban feel. It backs up to the established neighborhood of Lochshire, and is also close to Bridle Brook and Woodland Creek.

Gray Ridge is just north of the Pike and Vaughn Roads intersection.  Turn left from Vaughn Road onto Pike Road, pass the CVS and entrance to Lochshire, and Gray Ridge is the next neighborhood on your right. You’re close to Vaughn  Road, Chantilly Parkway (Wal Mart, Home Depot), and The Shoppes at EastChase.  For a Pike Road location, it’s very close to East Montgomery, and since you can hop on I-85 quickly at either the Mitylene or Waugfh exits via Highway 80, drive time into the city is pretty quick.

Gray Ridge is another neighborhood that was originally begun before the recession of 2008.  One or maybe two homes were built, and then it sat silent for a few years.  It’s been in the hands of a couple of developers along the way, but Gray Ridge is now being built out by Stone Martin Builders. Similar to Bon Terre and Providence (both neighborhoods also on Pike Road), there are lots for sale and floor plans to choose from.  According to the ad in Montgomery Advertiser East Montgomery December 28, 2012 paper,  homes in Gray Ridge have 2,000 – 4,300 SF of living space and are priced from the $170’s to the $210’s.

I’ll let you do the math.

If you’d like to know more about homes and lots for sale right now in Gray Ridge, or have questions about Pike Road real estate in general,  contact us by clicking here, or call John at (334) 221-5862.

Video Tour of Providence Neighborhood In Pike Road, AL

Providence is located southeast of the intersection of Vaughn and Pike Roads, and I think construction of this neighborhood originally began around 2007 or so.  The homes and lots were pricey, and the architectural style was going to be “French Country and European” according to the original developer’s sales material.

Then we had a recession and Providence construction came to a screeching halt.

Enter Stone Martin Builders around 2011, and the neighborhood is back on track, but with a new vision, significantly reduced prices, and more limited choices in architectural styles and floor plans.

According to a January 11, 2012 article in the Montgomery Advertiser’s East Montgomery newspaper, there are “at least 104 lots” now available in Providence, and the builders have several floor plans you can choose from.  These are big homes:  designs range from around 2,000 square feet to 4,300 square feet, with prices from the $219’s – $300’s.

Stone Martin has bought other partially built Pike Road developments and is quickly building them out.  Bon Terre and Gray Ridge, also neighborhoods on Pike Road in close proximity to Providence, are quickly filling up with new homes, too.

Why the push to be in Pike Road?   #1, in my opinion these homes are being built at significantly lower prices than anywhere else in town. Look at the square footage and prices above and do the math.   #2 The Pike Road school system.

This past October, Town of Pike Road residents voted to raise property taxes in order to support a brand new Pike Road public school system, separate from the Montgomery Public School System.  The new k-12 school is expected to open the first phase of its K-8 facility in 2015.  All residents of Pike Road will be zoned for this new school.

To recap: new construction, large homes, low prices, new school system = get it while it’s hot.

If you have questions about Providence or any homes in Pike Road, contact us by clicking here, call us  at (334) 22-15862, or email us at threeriversrecon @ coleyre . com.

The Feed Lot has products that will help you take care of it.

In this neck of the woods, Bermuda grass is the ground cover of choice.  It has a fine blade, is invasive, and varieties are used for golf course and football field turf.  Whether you care for it or not, it’s probably in your East Montgomery yard.

Upon moving to Montgomery, we built a house and battled weeds in our Bermuda lawn for 5 years.  When properly treated, it has a slick, highly manicured look, and weeds stick out like a sore thumb.  Our neighbors had effortless, immaculate lawns.  We had no kids and time to kill.   We fertilized,  we fretted.  We constantly had weeds.

The difference?  They had their yards sprayed by a lawn service and we didn’t.  Or, rather, we wouldn’t.  There was principle involved.  We didn’t need to pay someone else to keep our tiny yard tidy.  Where’s the fun in that?

The clover finally did us in.

Wait – isn’t this post supposed to be about The Feed Lot?  Stay with me . . .

So we called in the folks at Southern Lawns and got on their program that involved spraying fertilizer “stuff” on our lawn 3 or so times a year.  It was magical.  The weeds were gone.

Fast forward another 5 or so years: a new house, bigger yard, same problems.  We loved our experience with Southern Lawns and highly recommend them, but once again, we’re on a mission to do it ourselves.

Someone recommended The Feed Lot as a great resource for weed control products that actually work.  It’s the real-deal hardware/country store on Meriwether Road in Pike Road.

So we’ve gotten the “pre-emergent” fertilizer down that’s supposed to kill the crabgrass . . .

We’ll let you now how it goes . . . In the meantime, we’re Realtors, so give us a call if you need help finding your next yard (and home) in the Montgomery area.  We’d love to do the legwork for you!

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.

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!

A future network of nature trails will showcase that beauty and connect the communities of Pike Road.  These trails will accommodate “walkers, joggers and bicyclists as well as horseback riders” (Town of Pike Road website). The Pike Road community encompasses a LOT of land, and the trail will be a way to begin to connect these areas.

A $700,000 grant has been approved to begin the project, and Pike Road has purchased property for the trail head and trail end. It’s an Alabama Department of Transportation grant program, and will take some time to complete.

According to the Town of Pike Road website, the first 14.7 miles of the trail will run from Highway 231 to Flowers Road. I don’t have specifics, but according to my google map, this is the general area below (Hwy 231 runs up the middle of the map, with Flowers Road at the red marker):

I can’t run all 14.7 miles at once (yet!), but since East Montgomery isn’t known for its mountainous terrain, at least I stand a chance with the first 5.  We’ll update you when the trail is ready for action.

To read more about the Town of Pike Road, see their official website, and see more posts from the Pike Road section of our blog.

If you’ve never been to The Waters, or are interested in the community life in Pike Road, this would be a great event to attend.  It’s a picturesque development year-round.  I can imagine it is beautiful during the holidays.

For more picture of The Waters development, click here

New construction in Lochshire

New construction in Lochshire

New construction in Cawfield

What does this mean?  I’m not making any predictions about the market, but I will say I haven’t seen much new building going on in the past year.

It’s nice to see a little real estate action.

Have you noticed new construction in your area of the River Region?  Comment below and let us know what’s going on in your neighborhood.

If you’d like to find a new construction home or any property in the Montgomery MLS, give us a call.  We’d love to help!