ecohome guy

One sure sign of spring is more people out walking. With the near-perfect weather we've had this past week you just want to get out in it.

Recent polls show that home buyers rank proximity to daily conveniences as one of the two most important factors in choosing a neighborhood—more important than schools and property taxes! If you can walk to those conveniences, all the better.

Atlanta has some neighborhoods like that. It's easy to pinpoint them because of a great mapping tool called Walk Score. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. and assigns it points on a scale from 0 - 100. 0 is on a deserted island somewhere and 100 is walker's paradise.

For example, LEEDing Edge, my ecohome listing at 546 Edgewood Ave., has a walk score of 88 and is defined as "Very Walkable". If you take a peek at the map below, you can see what makes it so, with all the walkable destinations displayed on the map.

Using this tool we can now identify Atlanta's top ten most walkable neighborhoods with their corresponding walk scores. They are:

1. Five Points:  95
2. Poncey-Highland:  93
3. Sweet Auburn: 88
4. Midtown:  87
5. Atlanta-Inman Park:  86
6. Old Fourth Ward:  84
7. Downtown:  81
8. Virginia-Highland:  80
9. Home Park:  76
10. Cabbage Town:  74

These are some pretty desirable places to live with high quality-of-life. And there are homes for sale in these areas at record low prices. Imagine targeting one of these neighborhoods for the purchase of a green-certified home or greenovating a fixer-upper foreclosure, enjoying the stimulus plan rebates in the process. You could save gas + energy while living a healthier lifestyle.

And now I'm adding to the savings with my very own up front ecohome guy stimulus.

Do you have a goal to move to a more walkable neighborhood in 2009? For the privilege of working as Buyer's Agent with your deep green self I am offering you a cash rebate after closing of up to 1% of the sales price, depending on the walk score of your new home. A score of 100 would qualify for the full 1%. Cash rebates apply to the purchase of Atlanta homes inside the perimeter with walk scores of 75 or greater. So any homes in Atlanta's top ten most walkable neighborhoods should qualify.

Let's say you bought LEEDing Edge. It has a walk score of 88. I would rebate you 88% of the 1% of the sales price at closing. The home is priced at $489K, so you would get back $4303.20 at closing! To calculate the rebate on the home of your choice, just type in the address at WalkScore.com. Take the walk score and put a decimal point and two zeros in front of it.  Multiply this by the sales price and you've got your rebate. So in our example 489,000 X .0088 = 4303.20.

Call me at 404.421.9968 or email me to get started on your walkable neighborhood home purchase.