I love keeping up with the developments in Atlanta, especially the progress of the condo towers as they rise into the Atlanta skyline. Unfortunately, it's tough to do that from your car as you drive by them.

Thanks to some area developers you can watch the construction from your computer screen, as they have set up webcams for viewers to keep tabs on progress. The picture below is 1010 Midtown, a part of the new mixed use development called 12th & Midtown. I have also put together a larger list of Atlanta condos with webcams.

 

One of the new big kicks that I am on lately is learning about New Urbanism. And boy am I in the right place for that as Atlantic Station has burst onto the Atlanta scene in the past years. I've been looking at the new urbanism term Traditional Neighborhood Development (or TND) and wanted to share some of the ideas around this idea.

The Traditional Neighborhood Development is a planned community with the human in mind. That being said, the TND's are designed with the buildings being closer together so a pedestrian will have no trouble wallking the neighborhood. The exteriors of the buildings are designed to be safe and attractive to pedestrians. The idea of a walkable city is exactly what developers are going for when they plan a TND.

Public and private buildings within a TND are given somewhat of an equal value. And they are connected with paths, streets and alleys that are shared by both pedestrians and vehicles. The commercial portion of a TND is easily accessed from the residential portion, and the distance is near enough to be easily and safely walked. The mix of inhabitants are also planned with great care. Allowing a comfortable and enjoyable flow from retail to residential to civic and office space.

Another main feature of the TND is the public space made available by developers. Whether it's a town center, a park, a plaza or a town square, this public area will flow with the rest of the community, will be near the center of the development and will be close enough to be utilized by both residential and commercial aspects with the TND.

You can find a list of Traditional Neighborhood Developments The Town Paper, sorted by state. 

The report on U.S. foreclosures for September 2006 shows that Georgia ranks 7th for the highest number of foreclosures in the country. RealtyTrac just released the stats for September and an alarming 5,167 properties were in some stage of foreclosure in Georgia. That figure is up 31% from September of 2005, but down 13.4% from August of 2006. That's mixed results as our L365 looks bad for the rising number of foreclosures, but the L30 looks better.

Nationwide, some 112,210 properties entered into foreclosure in September. Here's the top 6 with number of foreclosures for the month:

1. California - 14,806
2. Florida - 12,946
3. Texas - 11,988
4. Michigan - 7,846
   
5. Illinois - 7,431
   
6. Ohio - 6,794

Does anyone have any doubt that these numbers are just going to rise when all the interest only loans and ARM's become due?

Here in Atlanta, I spend a lot of time explaining that all of the talk about a real estate bubble really isn's effecting us too much, or  more properly said, as much as in other places around the country. But thanks to the mainstream media's gloom and doom approach to news reporting, sometimes that task is hard.

What I did find today, and the results are pretty much right along line with where I have been telling people, is a Forbes.com article about which U.S. metro areas are being hit hardest by the real estate slowdown. Here's the top 10:

1. San Diego
2. Santa Barbara
3. Sacramento
4. Yuba City, CA
5. Barnstable Town, Mass
6. Providence, RI
7. Reno
8. Carson City, NV
9. Boston
10. Sandusky, Ohio 

 

Most likely, everyone has heard of, or at least seen a sign for what is called an EarthCraft house. This is a building program that promotes "green" home building that both helps the environment and the homeowners pocketbook by lowering energy costs. 

However, one of the new EarthCraft programs I just learned about was EarthCraft Communities. This program helps developers create communities that will not harm the environment. While this program is in its infancy, I did find 4 metro Atlanta projects that follow the EarthCraft Communities standards:

• Vickery, Hedgewood Properties (Forsyth County)
• Glenwood Park, Green Street Properties (City of Atlanta)
• Clark’s Grove, Clarks’s Grove LLC (City of Covington)
• Serenbe, Chattahoochee Hill Country (Fulton County)
  

This past weekend was the Castleberry HillTour of Lofts. If that event got your blood pumping for home tours, you won't have to wait long for the next one. The Morningside Lenox Park Association  is putting on their 2006 Tour of Homes on October 14th and 15th. Tickets are $18 in advance and $23 on the day of the event, and the event will feature stops at 7 homes.

Vinings might be the most noticeable city, that's not actually a city. Vinings, arguably the second most notable community in Cobb County, has never actually been a city. Well, that may change soon. Some of the residents of Vinings aren't terribly  happy with the decisions being made for them by the Cobb County powers that be. So on October 16th, at a public meeting, theyare going to decide whether or not the road towards cityhood is a road they want to travel down. If you want to bone up on some of the questions and answers to topics that may be discussed, you can find that info here.

Cherokee County, GA had better get ready. Already in the works are future developments that will consist of approximately 16,000 single family homes, apartment units, condos and townhomes. Also, on the commercial side Cherokee County will see an additional 500,000 square feet of retail and 200,000 square feet of office space developed. The total price tag should be in excess of $500 million. 

Some of the more notable projects are:

•  A Village In The Forest - This project will consist of apartments, townhomes, senior living and single family homes, all surrounded by ... wait for it...the forest. This project could take 10 to 20 years to complete.
• Canton West - A mixed use development with 4,000 residential units, 400,000+ square feet of retail and 100,000+ square feet of office space.
• Park Village - 600 homes in Canton near I-575.

Well, there is no official ranking system of real estate blogs. Blog Top Sites ranks some, and you can always see what's popular at Technorati, but it wasn't until yesterday when someone said, here's the top 500 real estate blogs to watch.

I was very happy to see two of my real estate blogs listed, Atlanta Intown Lofts and my Cobb Real Estate Blog. This is just going to force me to work harder to get my other blogs this kind of recognition and for these two to stay amongst the best.