Buying Home In Cumming (Atlanta, Sandy Springs: sales, real estate, 2013)

[AAron990]

Hi,

I have been trying to hunt for a home. I am in search for last 6 months and wasn't actively looking. Here are the questions i have.. Appreciate your feedback

1)Cumming house prices are very Hot. House prices have gone 25% compared to last year. Agents are saying this is not the peak price and the market will go up and then it will stagnate.. I feel hard to believe that prices are going to stagnate.. I still have 3-4 years time to go for a home.. Any body thing the market is going to come down in next 3-4 years?

2)My work is downtown and my kids will start going to school from next year.. Any other places other than South forsyth which has good schools and house Price at (300-400)?

[flyonpa]

I don't see Forsyth Prices dropping, unless there is a major recession again.

3-400K is still doable in South / West Forsyth areas, as long as you don't want a McMansion on large / Huge lots.

[DaBurgh]

Don't stress over it.. in 3-4 years you'll be able to still find areas with good schools in that price range

[Pacifico]

Though not an issue for most, think long and hard about buying a home with a "Cumming" mailing address. Your out of state friends and family will never stop letting you hear about it.

[dblackga]

1. Cumming is a hell of a commute to downtown. People do it -- but it takes a large chunk out of their life.
2. Forsyth in the early 21st century is what Dunwoody and Sandy Springs was to Atlanta in the 1960s/70's. A cousin bought a home in Alpharetta in the 80's and said, "God, whoever thought we'd be living in the country?!" Now the "country" is up past Cumming -- and their home is now four times what they bought it for.

[netdragon]

Originally Posted by AAron990

1)Cumming house prices are very Hot. House prices have gone 25% compared to last year. Agents are saying this is not the peak price and the market will go up and then it will stagnate.. I feel hard to believe that prices are going to stagnate.. I still have 3-4 years time to go for a home.. Any body thing the market is going to come down in next 3-4 years?

They will stagnate unless areas closer in keep going up. Cumming is pretty cheap for land area compared to areas like Smyrna or Sandy Springs because it's so far out. That's why it has room right now, because it's so cheap. When it's no longer a bargain, it will stagnate. The closest employment centers are Windward and Gainesville. It will always be far out. It will always be behind areas like Smyrna, Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, Johns's Creek, East Cobb or Roswell in land value. To avoid confusion: I'm not talking about housing prices, I'm talking about land value. You may have a lot of $500k homes in Cummings, but with the size of some of those $500k homes, and how much land they have, they would be over a million in Smyrna or Sandy Springs where a much smaller home with a back deck as a back yard is $500k and a 7br home on a half acre will run you over a million, easy. So you need to watch what's going on in those areas that are priced higher. When they take their next jumps, so will Cummings. The only exception I could see is if Gainesville becomes a major employment center someday.

[alonrev1]

Forsyth county is headed for disaster, stay away

[mrpanda]

I bought my new primary residence in St Marlo County Club located in Forsyth County in the summer of 2011 when real estate prices were trading at 1996 prices. After I bought my primary residence, I concentrated my real estate investments in Forsyth County, mostly in the Lambert and South Forsyth MIddle / High Clusters from 2010 - 2013 so I do a quite a bit of research in this county.

I do believe Forsyth County will do well in the long run because of the data below. Real Estate prices rise as the demand outstrips the supply. I can potentially see a new highschool forming in Forsyth County, currently there is only 5: Lambert, S. Foryth,C. Forsyth, W. Forsyth, N. Forsyth. I can also potentially see higher density homes being built in this county, but i do not see the high per capital income demographics moving into Forsyth County changing.

The rental inventory is super tight right now with only 19 days of inventory in the Lambert High cluster.




Forsyth County is the 6th Fastest growing county in the nation

Source:
Fastest growing U.S. counties - Forsyth County, Ga. (6) - CNNMoney.com

20th wealthiest county in the nation:

Source:
Fastest growing U.S. counties - Forsyth County, Ga. (6) - CNNMoney.com

Demographics of Forsyth County looked ripe for growth.

White 87.5%
Black 3.1%
Asian 7.4%
Hispanic 9.6%

Median household income: $88,262
Per Capital income: $35,277
Median value of owner occupied homes: $274,200.

5 elementary schools in south forsyth are ranked in the top10 among 1165 elementary schools in Georgia.[/SIZE]

2 middle schools in south forsyth : Riverwatch (rank #2) andS. Forsyth Middle (rank #3) are ranked in the top 10 middle schools among 483middle schools in Georgia. Vickery Middle School which is in west forsyth isranked #10 in the state.

Property taxes are less than 1%, Strong job growth, and theAsian demographics of Atlanta is currently exploding into South Forsyth, andthe appreciated 31% since the bottom of March 2012 prices.

[BR Valentine]

Mr Panda - there will be a sixth high school. It's one of the things to be funded by the bonds approved in the May referendum. The location remains TBD but the school is scheduled to open in 2018.

[netdragon]

I'm not trying to be a jerk with the following post, but I don't want people mislead with misinformation.

Originally Posted by AAron990

1)Cumming house prices are very Hot. House prices have gone 25% compared to last year. Agents are saying this is not the peak price and the market will go up and then it will stagnate.. I feel hard to believe that prices are going to stagnate.. I still have 3-4 years time to go for a home.. Any body thing the market is going to come down in next 3-4 years?

Believe the hype and get ripped off.

First of all, 25% is bogus. According to Trulia, Cumming has gone up 3.5% y-o-y in median sales price. Compare this to Smyrna, for instance, that has gone up 8%. On Zillow, Smyrna is at 15% home value increase and Cumming at 10.5% increase, per a formula that seems weighted towards listing price. Redfin has median list price for Smyrna at up 14.4% and Cumming as up 8.9%. And Smyrna sells over 1% closer to list price than Cumming.

However, unlike Trulia (sales price) and Zillow stats (obviously list price), Redfin has both

Beware when you see things like "house prices have gone X compared to last year" when we just came out of a recession. Compared to more core hot areas like Sandy Springs, Vinings, Smyrna, etc, Cumming is never going to have the land value it needs to really hit the next level in a long time, since it is still exurban. People can go ahead and argue it's suburban. It's not.

So when you look at Redfin, you see what's really going on. It has both listing and sales price increases. Redfin also has the newest data (unlike Trulia). Redfin shows an astronomical 198% increase in sales price in Cumming and a 3000%+ increase in sales. If you look at the graph in 2013, it's terpid. Clearly new homes are driving the market in Cumming. This has happened before in Smyrna during 2006/2007 and is unsustainable. New homes are a different sort of animal from used homes.. Cumming has some big homes built in it with lots of land, but they will never, ever compete with equal sized home in East Cobb, Sandy Springs, Smyrna and Dunwoody with the same amount of land. This is born out by price per square foot. Smyrna is $113, and Cumming $103 (redfin - sales price) and that's even with Cumming homes being a lot of large-lot custom homes that you don't find for under $1 million in Smyrna. This is Smyrna, with a largely older housing stock and small lots. The newest homes have almost no yard. I'm not even trying. Sandy Springs blows Cumming away.

It doesn't have the infrastructure to support the level of density needed for high land values. The commute is horrendous.

Real estate agents have a nice racket in North Fulton driving speculation by words. It's all going to collapse eventually and there will be some cut-off point in terms of distance out, where people get ripped off.

Another problem with exurban areas is we are on the front edge of an urbanization trend, judging by millenials. It was even forecasted by the federal government in the 90s based on trends. Smyrna is directly North of a partially gentrified and fully gentrifying part of Atlanta (NW). It's directly West of Sandy Springs. Which is going to catch up with Sandy Springs first? Smyrna or Cumming? I have my money on Smyrna.

Is Cumming a good investment? Compared to the rest of the nation, maybe. For the Atlanta market? Probably not.

That's part of why they want the MARTA extension, since they know it's a market built on air.

My advice is by closer to the top-end of 285 and you'll do much better. If you need more land than you can get in the top-end, then do Cherokee County or Gwinnett County instead.

Originally Posted by mrpanda

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Property taxes are less than 1%, Strong job growth, and theAsian demographics of Atlanta is currently exploding into South Forsyth, andthe appreciated 31% since the bottom of March 2012 prices.

Not according to the statistics I see. Furthermore, even if it were true, 31% appreciation since the bottom of the recession market is not too impressive. My 4br home in Smyrna has already increased $100k in value from the bottom in about 2011/2012. That's about 40%. Such stats are misleading. No one was selling homes at that time unless they were desperate or selling one home for a loss to buy another at a gain.