As a builder in South Georgia and licensed real estate agent, I would like to start by saying that some Realtors are not very competent on their line of work or maybe they just are looking out for a fast sale. I have noticed by experience in dealing with a few of them and hearing about them and how they work that the only way they know how to list or sell a property is by using square footage without taking anything else about the home into consideration.
Unfortunately for Thomasville, Realtors are using the worst newly built homes as comparison to every single home on the market today. I really feel for the sellers, and I pity the buyers for being mislead by these Realtors. Realtors are using the square footage of homes being built to bare and below minimum code and by an unlicensed person. These cheaply built homes being sold for $80/per square foot can not be compared to a home built above minimum code and with new innovative building practices. It wouldn’t be a problem of these homes being built were built to AT LEAST minimum code and without cutting corners if they were they would not cost $80/ sq.ft. These cheaply built homes being built around Thomasville, GA should NOT be used as a standard for comparison.
A true experienced Realtor which means a licensed salesperson would compare the amenities of a home while listing or selling a home and not just tell any buyer or seller that the home is overpriced or even worse taking a foreclosed price per square footage in to consideration when listing or selling a home. These Realtors do not compare the features of each home or the circumstance under a home was sold in order to justify the pricing. This brings me to the next issue about this practice. These Realtors, and they know who they are, do not understand license law or blatantly violate them because they have been in the business for decades and fear no consequences. For a Realtor to categorically state that a property is worth X amount and not Y they are acting as a licensed appraiser and this puts these Realtors in License Law violation. It is a matter of time before these actions will put these Realtors in hot water.
This is the reason why home prices in Thomasville, GA are not at par with the rest of the country. The Realtors are responsible for manipulating the market and keeping prices the way they are by practicing outside their expertise.
Realtors may not be aware that a professional, ethical and competent appraiser collects, analyze and VERIFY all data available to them about a property in the normal course of business. Appraisers spend an enormous amount of time soliciting information from the parties involved and take into consideration the features of the properties they are comparing in order to make their report so much more accurate and reliable.
In Thomasville, GA. you have people building cheaply built homes for $85/per Sq. Ft. that have no knowledge of construction background and working under someone else's licenses and in Georgia this is illegal. One of these people building in Thomasville, GA. was kicked out of Augusta GA. for building cheap homes. Most of the homes built by these people have had roof leaks the first few weeks of moving into these new homes. We are 100% on the jobsite to make sure the subcontractors are doing their work right and above minimum code. These other people with no licenses and no building knowledge are not 100% on the jobsite and it would not matter because they could not tell if the subcontractors are doing the work right or wrong. "(No Construction Knowledge)" You be swift to run
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( I find it most interesting when most of all realtors in Thomasville, GA. Claim to be top agents and the most ethical, and claim to sell the most listings, but they have no reviews. Before taking any word from a realtor in Thomasville, GA. That they are the best, please take a few minutes and go on the internet and read and educate yourslef and see who has the most reviews, because if you were a top agent and a professional you would show it off by reviews. A real estate agent that has been in business for a long time would have a good share of satisfied clients, unless they were not satisfied! )
Below am providing food for knowledge for the industry and for consumers to become aware.
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Over the years working as a Realtor I have seen numerous home buyers as well as other Realtors try to use dollars per square foot as a good measuring stick for market values. Sorry folks but that is a very poor way to analyze value.
There are a number of reasons why this is the case but lets just start with individual homes themselves. If you look carefully at housing characteristics you can basically break down a home into one of four categories.
Economy (Cheaply Buit Homes in Thomasville, GA)(unlicensed person.)~ ~ Economy would be characterized as building a home in the most cost efficient manner. The materials used in constructing a home in this category more often than not will be cheaper than other categories of homes. The goal is to deliver a home that would be affordable to those buyers on a lower income. If you looked in a catalog of materials such as cabinets, flooring, lighting and plumbing fixtures you would see the lowest grade used in this category.
Standard – A home built under this category would be a step up from an economy home. A large percentage of homes would come under this category. You would expect to see the quality of the home jump from an economically built home. With a standard built home you may see some construction items that could also be found in both economy and custom categories.
Custom – In a custom built home you are bound to see things that you will not find in either an economy or standard home. The quality of the materials used to construct the home as well as the amenities inside are going to be different. As an example you may see a higher level of finish woodworking, cabinetry, flooring selections and hot buttons like granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances. Custom homes are more unique and may have other architectural characteristics that make them more expensive to build such as intricate roof lines and higher end materials used on the facade such as stone or brick.
Luxury – A luxury home is the creme de la creme. These are the homes that are built with the highest grade construction materials. There is no expense spared on anything and the amenities seen inside the home are sometimes enough to make your mouth drop! It is not unusual to see such things as home theaters that rival going to the movies, indoor swimming pools, wine rooms and other such amenities.
Of course it is possible for a home to fall somewhere between each of these categories but the four categories are enough to show you why using price per square foot to determine a homes value is a very poor measuring stick.
Lets look at a quick example of two homes that are both 3000 square feet. They are both a year old.
House “A” has the following amenities:
- Granite counters and stainless appliances
- A custom tile shower
- Hardwood floors throughout the 1st floor
- Raised paneling and crown moldings
- A brick walk way
House “B” has the following amenities:
- Formica counters and white appliances
- A standard shower
- Carpets through out the 1st floor
- Plastered door openings with no molding
- A dropped flagstone walkway
How about a quick guess of which home is going to be worth more on a dollars per square foot basis?
This example clearly shows that you can not take the average price per-square-foot and multiply it times the square footage of the home you are thinking about buying. There are far too many variables involved with the characteristics of a home to make a generalization like that. It just doesn’t work that way. The pricing per-square-foot simply gives you average or median ranges; it shows you trends in the market. It does not compute value!
The comparison above only touches on one reason why cost per square foot is a poor indicator. There are others including the fact that prices per-square-foot can vary based on the homes location, improvements, condition, age and updates, including lot sizes, and whether it’s a one-story, two story or split-level home, among other things.
I think it is easy to see that if home “A” was also located in the best part of town and home “B” was not, the disparity of the selling price is going to be even greater which would change the price per square foot between the two homes.
One of the best reasons for even looking at the price per square foot of a home is to see what the trends are in an area. You can look at the average price per square foot over a given time period and see whether overall market are values going up or down.
In Massachusetts one of the other factors that can really skew the averages on the price per square foot of a home is how the square footage is actually calculated. In the Greater Boston MLS there is a big disparity on what agents include in the gross living area of a home. You will see that some homes include finished basement space and others do not. This can cause quite a fluctuation in how these figures appear when doing an analysis on square footage value.
As you may realize, finished space below grade is far less valuable than above grade living area. When these figures are mixed together it makes a straight line comparison much more difficult.
