Jennifer's News | Atlanta Real Estate

A deed can be recorded on your house without anyone calling you first. That is how deed fraud works. Someone forges an owner's signature on a deed, gets it notarized, and records it with the county. On paper, the house now belongs to them. The homes I worry about most are the ones nobody is watching closely: a vacant house, a rental, a parent's paid-off home. Georgia has a free way to hear about a filing early. It is called FANS, and most homeowners I talk to have never heard of it. What FANS is FANS stands for Filing Activity Notification System. It is run by the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority (GSCCCA). You tell it what to watch, and when a clerk's office records a document that matches, you get an email or a text. It is free. An alert tells you that something was filed and in which county. It does not include a copy of the document, and it does not block anything. It also only watches forward, from the day you sign up. Treat it as an early warnin...

If spring and summer had you losing bidding wars, September looks different. Fewer buyers are out shopping, but the homes that didn't sell over the summer are still sitting — and those sellers are starting to feel it. Is September a Good Time to Buy a House in Atlanta? What the Data Says Per FMLS, Atlanta's own MLS, detached homes had a 4.4-month supply of inventory in July, selling in a median of 38 days at 98.5% of list price. That's still technically seller-favored territory (6 months is the balanced-market line) — this isn't a crash. But price reductions are more common than they were earlier this year, and a home still listed after 30, 60, or 90 days is a seller who's already realizing their number was too high. That's your opening, even in a market that hasn't fully flipped. (If you read my June post on Atlanta's buyer leverage, this is the next chapter of that story.) Spotting a stale listing. Check the days-on-market and price history, not j...

  A buyer rebate means your agent gives part of their commission back to you at closing. It's legal in Georgia. I credit my buyers up to 1% of the purchase price. On a $650,000 home in Alpharetta, that's up to $6,500 at the closing table, subject to lender approval. That's the short answer. The rest of this post covers the questions buyers ask me once they hear it, including the limits most agents don't mention. Is a buyer rebate legal in Georgia? Yes. The Georgia Real Estate Commission allows it under Rule 520-1-.10, as long as the rebate is disclosed on the closing statement. It shows up on your Closing Disclosure, the official document that lists every dollar in your transaction, and your lender sees it and approves it. Georgia is an attorney-closing state, so the closing attorney applies the credit at the table along with everything else. Nothing about it is hidden. Where does the money come from? Since August 2024, buyers sign a written agreement with their agent b...