Lying Real Estate Sites/Agents

[FreedomBelle]

Originally Posted by IntownHomes247

FYI, you can figure out school zoning using these resources:

For APS: Atlanta Public Schools

For DeKalb: School Locator :: Transportation :: DeKalb County Schools

Bookmarked these links! Thanks!

[researchnerd]

Originally Posted by testa50

In the real estate word, Ralph McGill is the "heart of Midtown"

This irritates the !@#$%^&* outta me. I can't tell you how many listings I've read claiming that something is "just steps from Piedmont Park" (OK, may be true, it's 49,836 steps) or "minutes away from downtown" (only if you travel by private jet).

And let's not forget the necessary translations:
* Cozy means tiny, with no closet space. See also: cute and charming.
* Developing neighborhood means it's borderline ghetto. Variations include gentrifying or up-and-coming.
* Renovated can mean anything from the latest upgrades to someone repainting kitchen cabinets in 1982.
* Pets Negotiable means that you can have a 6-pound dog if you fork over an additional $500 deposit.

I'm sure there are more...

[testa50]

Originally Posted by researchnerd

This irritates the !@#$%^&* outta me. I can't tell you how many listings I've read claiming that something is "just steps from Piedmont Park" (OK, may be true, it's 49,836 steps) or "minutes away from downtown" (only if you travel by private jet).

And let's not forget the necessary translations:
* Cozy means tiny, with no closet space. See also: cute and charming.
* Developing neighborhood means it's borderline ghetto. Variations include gentrifying or up-and-coming.
* Renovated can mean anything from the latest upgrades to someone repainting kitchen cabinets in 1982.
* Pets Negotiable means that you can have a 6-pound dog if you fork over an additional $500 deposit.

I'm sure there are more...

Freakonomics actually discussed this in depth: certain keywords that are associated with higher sale prices and others with lower sale prices. Things like "quaint" and "big" and the words you mention are correlated with lower sale prices, while words like "granite" and "hardwood" and "marble" and "stainless" are correlated with a higher sale price.

Basically, the only words that actually matter are objective facts, such as building materials and features, while subjective descriptions pretty much always underwhelm. Pushing the envelope on location is related: people put "Just minutes from Buckhead, Midtown, Virginia Highland, and Inman Park" in order to catch those search terms, when they are in fact talking about an apartment in East Point. If you want to find an apartment in Midtown, you have to search by street (type "Myrtle", "Penn", "Juniper", etc) or building. If you want to find a house, you search by zip code.

[researchnerd]

Originally Posted by testa50

Pushing the envelope on location is related: people put "Just minutes from Buckhead, Midtown, Virginia Highland, and Inman Park" in order to catch those search terms, when they are in fact talking about an apartment in East Point. If you want to find an apartment in Midtown, you have to search by street (type "Myrtle", "Penn", "Juniper", etc) or building. If you want to find a house, you search by zip code.

Exactly. I know why they do it (I've done search engine optimization and marketing for >10 years) and that's part of why it bugs me so much...they are gaming the system. I wonder if RE advertisers actually get good results from doing this - do they rent a lot of East Point apartments to people who searched for Inman Park? If not, they are creating a crappy user experience just to get more unqualified traffic to their ad - which is a waste of everyone's time. If I'm looking for something in a specific neighborhood, I don't want to have to dig through a lot of listings for completely different neighborhoods that are a 20-minute drive away. Zipcode does help sometimes, but is often too broad.

[cityrover]

Estate agents are sometimes assigned properties by their brokers or take listings for friends. I've had stone mountain agents cover properties in paulding. You can imagine how well that worked out. I didnt buy that property since he couldn't even figure out which company to call to turn the power on for the inspection

[equinox63]

Originally Posted by IntownHomes247

Carter Avenue cuts across the boundary between 30317 and 30032 -- so some addresses on the street are one zip code (and inside the city limits) and others are in the other (and outside the city limits). There are pluses and minuses to each. Depending on whether you more highly value APS or DeKalb schools (bit of a toss-up at the moment with all the scandals and mismanagement), that can be a significant factor. Of course, if you're in unincorporated DeKalb, you'll also pay lower property taxes than the neighbors across the line in City of Atlanta.

The East Lake neighborhood is one of the oldest in the Atlanta area and was originally located well outside the city limits. East Lake was even incorporated as a town in 1908. So whether a street is inside the city limits or not isn't really that relevant at least relative to neighborhood identity Here are a couple of links to neighborhood history resources:

ELNCA | East Lake History | East Lake's Birth: 1890 to 1895
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Lake_(Atlanta)

While I believe Glenwood is technically the southern edge of the neighborhood, the Olmsted East Lake project is generally classified as East Lake (primarily because it was a very nice development adjacent to the golf course and also because the developers put "East Lake" in the name even though the Olmsted web site says that it's in "East Atlanta" -- which, of course, would make people think it's in the "East Atlanta" neighborhood near East Atlanta Village -- which it's not). This is definitely one of those instances where homes are going to be classified in the most well-known neighborhood by real estate agents (in this case East Lake) regardless of whether it officially lies within the boundaries or not -- the sellers would fire them if they even attempted to call it anything else. There is no other neighborhood name that would appropriately convey either the location or type of development.

Olmsted at East Lake, Upscale Craftsman Neighborhood in East Atlanta

Okay. So just to be clear, would you consider The Preserve at East Atlanta really in East Atlanta?

Atlanta New Homes – The Preserve East Atlanta

1767 Streamview Drive SE, Atlanta, GA 30316-3668 - Google Maps

Like Olmstead (the sign for the subdivision no longer says "at East Lake"), The Preserve at East Atlanta is not in the City of Atlanta at all but in unincorporated Dekalb County, and it is farther from East Atlanta Village than Olmstead is from East Lake. Like Olmstread, it is also zoned for McNair. The only difference is that Olmstead has a Decatur (30032) address and The Preserve has an Atlanta (30316) address, but neither are in the city of Atlanta proper... like East Lake and East Atlanta are.

Do you consider the residents of The Preserve as bonafide East Atlanta residents? I'm not trying to be facetious or anything. I'm genuinely curious how one would rationalize these discrepancies?

Regardless of how nice the homes are, would residents of East Lake and/or East Atlanta proper genuinely consider these communities as part of their respective neighborhoods? I sort of doubt it. But I could be wrong...

https://www.city-data.com/forum/atlan...-i-75-a-2.html

[oakhurstlauren]

Originally Posted by equinox63

Okay. So just to be clear, would you consider The Preserve at East Atlanta really in East Atlanta?

Atlanta New Homes – The Preserve East Atlanta

1767 Streamview Drive SE, Atlanta, GA 30316-3668 - Google Maps

Like Olmstead (the sign for the subdivision no longer says "at East Lake"), The Preserve at East Atlanta is not in the City of Atlanta at all but in unincorporated Dekalb County, and it is farther from East Atlanta Village than Olmstead is from East Lake. Like Olmstread, it is also zoned for McNair. The only difference is that Olmstead has a Decatur (30032) address and The Preserve has an Atlanta (30316) address, but neither are in the city of Atlanta proper... like East Lake and East Atlanta are.

Do you consider the residents of The Preserve as bonafide East Atlanta residents? I'm not trying to be facetious or anything. I'm genuinely curious how one would rationalize these discrepancies?

Regardless of how nice the homes are, would residents of East Lake and/or East Atlanta proper genuinely consider these communities as part of their respective neighborhoods? I sort of doubt it. But I could be wrong...

https://www.city-data.com/forum/atlan...-i-75-a-2.html

East Atlanta self describes as being partially in the city proper and in Atlanta, Dekalb as well. The boundaries can be found here

[IntownHomes247]

East Atlanta is a much bigger problem than East Lake because you can really call anything on the east side of Atlanta "East Atlanta." For the actual "East Atlanta" neighborhood many agents will call it East Atlanta Village even though that's actually the business district, just to distinguish it from the generic East Atlanta name.

There was really so much new construction in the area of these historic neighborhoods during the 00s that "marketing creep" occurred. The thing is, it annoys you -- as a buyer -- because you feel like you're being misled. At the same time, if you were the seller of these properties, you would have a different point of view. Sellers want their properties seen by potential buyers. Buyers frequently are looking for a particular area. So if your home is one or 2 blocks (or half a block in the case of Olmsted) away from the official boundary line of that neighborhood, it's not unreasonable to assume that they might want to know about your listing too.

Now, what I'm talking about is completely different, in my opinion, from what a number of the people replying to this thread have been talking about -- saying East Point is close to Midtown or whatever. A listing that is legitimately in the area of a well-known neighborhood (and by in the area I mean within a few blocks) it's not generally unreasonable to market as being in that area (and I always use that term, i.e., East Lake area, when marketing a property that's not in the neighborhood proper but just very nearby), particularly when the official subdivision it's in is some anonymous name that no one has ever heard of.

Marketing properties is challenging in the best of times and right now it's incredibly complicated because there's so much inventory. You need to stress every possible "plus" and do as much as you can to get as many valid potential buyers to consider a listing as possible.

Now if your primary goal in buying a property is to be technically within the official boundaries of a particular historic neighborhood, then yes, you will have an extra layer of due diligence to perform during your search in order to make sure. However, if your goal is to be in a certain "part of town" then all you need to do is look at a map and see if the house is actually in that area. The listing should have the correct schools (although this is something I always double check because agents frequently get this wrong by relying on a previous listing or the seller for the information).

Originally Posted by equinox63

Okay. So just to be clear, would you consider The Preserve at East Atlanta really in East Atlanta?

Atlanta New Homes – The Preserve East Atlanta

1767 Streamview Drive SE, Atlanta, GA 30316-3668 - Google Maps

Like Olmstead (the sign for the subdivision no longer says "at East Lake"), The Preserve at East Atlanta is not in the City of Atlanta at all but in unincorporated Dekalb County, and it is farther from East Atlanta Village than Olmstead is from East Lake. Like Olmstread, it is also zoned for McNair. The only difference is that Olmstead has a Decatur (30032) address and The Preserve has an Atlanta (30316) address, but neither are in the city of Atlanta proper... like East Lake and East Atlanta are.

Do you consider the residents of The Preserve as bonafide East Atlanta residents? I'm not trying to be facetious or anything. I'm genuinely curious how one would rationalize these discrepancies?

Regardless of how nice the homes are, would residents of East Lake and/or East Atlanta proper genuinely consider these communities as part of their respective neighborhoods? I sort of doubt it. But I could be wrong...

https://www.city-data.com/forum/atlan...-i-75-a-2.html

[equinox63]

Originally Posted by oakhurstlauren

East Atlanta self describes as being partially in the city proper and in Atlanta, Dekalb as well. The boundaries can be found here

Notice that "The Preserve at East Atlanta" is well outside of these self described boundaries.