Alabama- Here we come!! (Huntsville, Madison: comparable sales, sale, assessors)

[Southlander]

Oh, and Maria?
W E L C O M E to A L A B A M A!!

[Mariafromny]

Thanks everyone for your help. Again, I am VERY open to suggestions on other subdivisions,counties etc. As many of you know it is SO hard looking for a house in an area that seems to include so many schools, counties, and other things.
Please know that I appreciate any & all of your comments. I will keep in touch about our move. I have found that in the last 2 weeks I have been on this site non-stop!

[dreamlinks]

Originally Posted by Southlander

If you've got the street address, you can put it into googlemaps and get a satellite view...which should show if there are nearby hummers and towers. Although, I'd think being near a water tower would be a plus - better water pressure! Which can be a problem in more rural areas. Also, one reason for those big lots - septic tanks. Just something to be aware of.

But how can you get the street address? The MLS doesn't give street address. Ask the agent for any one interested?

[dreamlinks]

BTW, I am glad that I found this forum. Very good and informative!

We will move to Huntsville, AL the coming summer and we've been looking for a house from online MLS listings now. Nice to meet you all!

[Charles]

Originally Posted by dreamlinks

But how can you get the street address? The MLS doesn't give street address. Ask the agent for any one interested?

Use the valleymls as the first source in finding a house because it has the best set of filters. It doesn't provide the street address or the square footage though....but you can filter on square footage.

To get the street address, find the same house using Trulia, Zillow, Yahoo Real Estate and/or Google Maps Real Estate (use google maps, click on "my maps" then use the real estate search tool)

Between these five tools you can almost always find the street address. No need to contact a realtor.

Also, another powerful tool is the Madison County Emaps tool at the tax assessor's web page:

Madison County, Alabama Map (you can find out what the guy paid;nice to know when negotiating, right?)

Another quick and dirty but not always successful method is to query google with the mls, the subdivision name and the word "address".

For example I found this on valleymls

ValleyMLS.com

So I google "253081 hampton address" (don't use quotes) and I get

For Alabama, Huntsville, and Somerville

with the address.

[Mariafromny]

Charles keep us/me informed of your visit---it sounds as though we are in the same boat. I too am wondering about heritage plantation etc. We should be going down in a couple of weeks as well & will let you know how we make out.
Thanks,
Maria

[NicoleC]

Dreamlinks: Or, just sign up for the automatic emails and the system will send you the complete listing with the address and other info not on the web site.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Mariafromny

Charles keep us/me informed of your visit---it sounds as though we are in the same boat. I too am wondering about heritage plantation etc. We should be going down in a couple of weeks as well & will let you know how we make out.
Thanks,
Maria

We are looking at far west Madison County (Heritage Plantation, Clifts Cove, Highland Lakes) and also Hampton Cove. There are a lot of other places we want to check out too, like Jones Valley. I think Heritage Plantation is comprised of several subdivisions.

We're still trying to get subjective differences on the two community areas we plan to check out. Maybe there are none.

What I like about about western Madison County is the message I am hearing/reading about all the new (potential) development going up around there: high school, billion dollar development, hospital, and YMCA - serious stuff, big positive changes.

I don't see that kind of stuff happening at Hampton Cove other than a new elementary school to take the pressure of HCES and a new Hampton Inn with whatever type of businesses that would surround it. YMCA, hospitals, year round swim league pool, most medical facilities and high school are all quite a drive away.

If the two are similar in amenities and conveniences now, might Madison take a big lead in a few years? Do you evaluate on the present or the future?

[dreamlinks]

Charles and Nicole, Thanks so much!!

[AnotherBravesFan]

Looks as if I am in the minority here, but I've nixed E. Limestone after looking at several homes & sub's around Southern Breeze, Newby Plantation, Greystone, etc. I just was not comfortable with the (lack of) county gov't and how much difficulty we had finding info online re: assessor, etc. Tax & assessment data was 2 years old or more, for instance. When I was looking in late '07, all they had was 2005 numbers, so newer construction was not listed. Also found it cumbersome trying to track down the water dept. (Couldn't find it in the phone book or online. My RE agent luckily had a contact somewhere who was able to give us the address & phone #.) Agent also mentioned she thought "something was going on" at Southern Breeze, not necessarily negative but she seemed puzzled... So, ask questions to whomever you can. I did not ask her to elaborate because we were no longer considering anything in there.

A short P.S. on Charles' or ? question on plane flyovers/noise. We did see a passenger jet go over a house off Mooresville Rd. we had just put an offer on It was fairly quiet due to the altitude, but something to consider. (Thankfully, we ended up canceling the purchase.)

In contrast, I could find up-to-the-minute data for Madison and Morgan counties. Plus, we got a wonderful publication from Madison County with names, addresses, phone #s, websites, etc. for just about everything a newcomer would need. Even the names/contact info for the district rep's like Dale Strong. (I can't recall just now what their titles are there... Here it's the county board of supervisors.) Very impressive. Madison county and Huntsville city just seem to have their act together more as far as being accessible and accountable, and that counts for a lot in my book.

question for Charles: how are you finding the prior sales price info on emaps? I can sometimes pull up the deed, but only once have I found a purchase price. Will you please share your expertise? You've been much more successful than I at digging up important data. Thanks.

The best advice I have is to keep asking questions and talking to as many people as you can. This forum is WONDERFUL for that. I've been house-hunting in HSV for the better part of 2 years... never thought it would be this hard to find something we like under $250k... but I'm glad we didn't jump into the wrong property. I've learned there's still a lot we don't know about the Huntsville area housing market.