If the Atlanta housing market is indeed springing back to life, potential buyers will have some serious decisions to make in the not-so-distant future.
Yeah, things are looking remarkably better. According to Eugene James at Metrostudy, housing starts during the last three months of 2012 were up 91.2 percent over the last three months of 2011.
Yet, author Marianne Cusato says to remember it’s not 2005 anymore.
Cusato, who co-wrote the book “The Just Right Home: Buying, Renting, Moving — Or Just Dreaming — Find Your Perfect Match,” will be appearing at 1 p.m. March 24 at the Atlanta Home Show to pass on her knowledge, and to hopefully make that decision-making easier and more beneficial in the long run.
Q: It seems the Atlanta housing market may be coming back. If so, what should buyers be looking for?
A: Houses they want to live in rather than resell. When the market was booming we had this sort of invincibility about deciding where to live. So it wasn't really so much about what's going to work in the long run or what's going to meet my needs. It was more about what's the best investment to get for resale and keep my options open. … Because of that a lot of people ended up in homes that maybe weren't quite meeting their needs. When the music stopped they ended up losing a lot and not actually living in a place that was working for them. As things dial back up, it's really important to take a moment and think about where you want to live. What would actually work best? Does the long commute really work? Is there a way you could maybe live closer to where you work or closer to your kid's school? Even though the market's coming back, the biggest danger we could have is assuming that a better market is the 2005. … When you purchase a home, you're actually going to have to live in it for a while.
Q: Your book is about figuring out where to live. For buyers who are trying to determine where to live in Atlanta, how could your book be their guide?
A: It helps them understand what their options are. Because a lot of times we just go through the motions without thinking about it. We have a section in the book about neighborhoods, which lists all of the elements you might find in a neighborhood to then explore what really matters most to you. Maybe it's a school for the kids, maybe it's a hiking trail, maybe it's things within walking distance. There's no one-size-fits-all. Everyone's going to have their own preferences, their own needs, their own wants and their own realities. So the book lays out the options and lays out the questions you can ask yourself about how you want to live in a neighborhood, how you want to live in a home.
Q: What are you scheduled to do at the Atlanta Home Show on March 24?
A: I'm going to have a big section on perception and reality, what we think we're getting, what we actually get and how we can actually meet our needs in other packages. … We'll talk about the elements of the home that matter most and how the different pieces of the home work. Little things like you need a furnishable floor plan, but also the arrangement of rooms and the sequence of spaces that work for you. So we'll go through some of the principles of how to get and identify when you're walking through what a really livable home would be. And we'll talk about the elements of a neighborhood that matter. … Hopefully it will be eye-opening for people and they can pull different pieces from it and say, "Wow, I didn't think about home in that way."
Atlanta Home Show. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. March 22; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. March 23; noon-6 p.m. March 24. $10 daily. Free for ages 65 and older, and children 12 and younger. Cobb Galleria Centre, Two Galleria Parkway, Atlanta. 770-798-1997, www.atlantahomeshow.com.
