Comments

• On the article 3 Car Accident on North Avenue Injures Up To 8 People

  

  JustinK

  2:47 pm on Saturday, March 23, 2013

  Technically white people are the minority in the city of Atlanta. Not saying we should tolerate this type of crime/lawlessness but criminals tend to follow demographic/income trends. I don't exactly say we need to stop all white people b/c the hobos/aggressive panhandlers who also do all the car break-ins in Seattle are white.

• On the article 999 Peachtree Building Sold for $158 Million

  

  JustinK

  12:02 pm on Saturday, March 16, 2013

  Singapore/HK/NYC all have a significant commonality which is they are constrained by water. That tends to make real estate a good bit more expensive than that in the largest state east of the Mississippi. Atlanta will never be a port city and there's no city in the US w/ the types of taxation/laws like those of HK or Singapore which drive their development.

  Jamestown is obviously still long on Atlanta given their investment in Ponce City Market so I wouldn't put too much into the price other than they need to shuffle their investments.

• On the article Shuttered Midtown Gas Station Prepares For Reopening

  

  JustinK

  12:54 pm on Sunday, February 24, 2013

  That spot has been a gas station since the 50's so getting upgraded to a bank seems unlikely. Bank branches were way overbuilt prior to online banking so most banks are killing branches these days. Wouldn't mind something else but a fenced in deteriorating lot is about as bad as it could get.

• On the article How Does Rent in Midtown Stack Up?

  

  JustinK

  1:45 pm on Thursday, February 21, 2013

  How many people in 1bdr apts paying ~1.5-2k/mon are cooking enough that a gas stove is a hard requirement? I cook a fair amount but don't consider myself enough of a chef to need more than a galley kitchen in an 800sf home.

  When I looked at Post Biltmore in mid '08 (squarely in the recession), they wanted over $1,200/mon for their beat up 1bdr on the 1st floor where trains would shake the room. The units were carpeted, formica countertops, and the $400 super saver black GE appliances from an HH Gregg scratch & dent sale.

  Checking their site now, they still charge at least that much. I'm not saying oversupply won't drive prices down but it'll hit the overpriced Post stuff just as hard since most people would rather live in a shiny new highrise vs. a rundown stick built lowrise.

  As to buying in SFHs for 1500-2k/mon. There aren't any SFHs in decent areas at anything near these rents inside the perimeter. My dog would love a big yard but I just can't imagine chaining myself to a 2-3k/mon home cost for 30 yrs. For now, my 3 figure(15yr) mortgage payment will have to do inside my Novare box which seems to hold up better than most stick built homes in the burbs I've seen.

• On the article 100 6th Street Breaks Ground Thursday

  

  JustinK

  5:19 pm on Wednesday, February 6, 2013

  Except you can't...they don't sell 1/2 of the product line. If your iPhone camera dies, iPad cracks, or your Mac goes on the fritz(have dealt w/ all of these) they'll take it and mail it to an Apple repair depot at best and you'll see it in a few weeks. Yes, you can buy Apple anywhere (I prefer online) but you can't get it serviced just anywhere esp while under warranty. They carry only a subset of items and can't do on the spot replacement like Apple can. The differentiator isn't the pile of expensive Apple stuff or the prices but the fact that Apple will pull something off the shelf when your first two iPads won't hold a wifi connection (I've had this happen). The Dell folks will show up next business day and fix my laptop in my condo but good luck getting a warranty repair from the B&N.

  I don't work for Lenox but I've wasted enough time dealing w/ mall traffic and the Genius bar queue to know the benefits of having an actual store nearby. I'm not a fan of Apple products for the most part but if you have an Apple store nearby, the service aspect is vastly improved.

• On the article 100 6th Street Breaks Ground Thursday

  

  JustinK

  8:44 pm on Tuesday, February 5, 2013

  They sell Dells & Lenovos there too...it's not an Apple Store nor has it ever been. It's a GT owned/licensed reseller. Try finding it on the Apple site as a store listing.

  Or visit:
  techstuff.gatech.edu/

• On the article One dead, one critically injured in overnight shooting off North Ave

  

  JustinK

  10:22 am on Tuesday, January 15, 2013

  So you know that Section 8 is precisely what you're describing right? The gov't cuts the checks but relies on private entities to offer the housing. They aren't drawing circles on a map and telling people they can only live in these parts of town.

  Given the higher administrative costs (dealing w/ gov't regulations including being more difficult to evict), not a ton of landlords want to deal w/ Section 8 at the FMR especially in this relatively hot rental market. Most landlords would rather take on people w/ marginal credit than heavily gov't subsidized tenants.

  What you wind up w/ is predatory firms (google Continental Wingate and Boulevard) that are able to get extremely profitable rents by creating slums w/ the gov't paying the bills b/c they can group enough together to minimize admin/maintenance costs. I'm sure the Section 8 tenants would love a beautiful SFH w/ a great school district (wouldn't we all) but many don't have access to transportation. You then wind up w/ a vicious cycle where the only landlords accepting Section 8 have housing in terrible areas of town where it's most profitable (already slums).

• On the article Mayor Reed Joins Mayors Against Illegal Guns

  

  JustinK

  9:40 am on Thursday, December 20, 2012

  ^Murders in Chicago spiked in the 1970's (which was the impetus for a handgun ban) when Emanuel was a child.

• On the article Midtown Building Coming Down

  

  JustinK

  2:11 pm on Wednesday, December 19, 2012

  Best laid plans of mice and men....

  Donald Trump also promised us the classiest, highest end, most exclusive condos our city's ever seen. Streets of Buckhead was supposed to be done in Nov '09 vs. a $600M hole in the ground more than 6 yrs after they started. We'd also have a Mandarin Oriental tower in the middle of the Midtown Mile but instead it's still a surface lot. Skyline at Lindbergh wouldn't just be a multi-story landmark to pick up day laborers.

  Developers win/lose every day and taking a press release from six years ago as a broken promise kind of ignores how insane the real estate bubble was at the time. If every proposed development got built, we'd have nothing but 700ft towers from here to Doraville as well as hundreds of perfectly preserved 1920's low-rise buildings mixed in.

  I would have liked to see the Reid building saved but given its small size and age, it was a gamble even during the housing boom. Just as I'm saddened to hear about the fate of the Pei building getting turned into a pool deck for a hideous stick built apartment, this is a little piece of history disappearing. In the end a building's name cachet/history has to exceed its cost of renovation and here there just wasn't enough left.

• On the article Midtown Building Coming Down

  JustinK

  1:16 pm on Wednesday, December 19, 2012

  Tim,
  Not to exonerate Novare of fault for letting the Reid building decay but that press release was from '06...so in development terms it was a lifetime ago. Novare's taken such a massive hit, everyone down to the copywriter who penned that release is probably gone. It also predates the credit crisis when condos could command close to $400/sf. Prices like that justified renovating the Reid building as well as two more mixed development towers on that block. It's now almost 2013 and mortgages in condos take material downpayments, great credit, and only command $250/sf if they're lucky. There's an apartment boom now but the Reid building was probably impossible to get financing to renovate compared to clean sheet build.

  Novare's certainly not the best developer our city's had but I don't know if anyone could have redeveloped that building profitably. Plenty of other developers took even bigger/stupider gambles (SOB anyone?) and razed far more of our city's character.

  Reply