Chattanooga Real Estate Blog

The only one who benefits from a rent check is the landlord. Renters never see that money again, while homeowners usually profit when they sell. In addition, renters can’t use any of their rent payment as a tax deduction, like homeowners can. If you or someone you know is renting, it’s time to put that rent check to better use!

The mortgage-interest deduction is probably the best financial argument for buying rather than renting. Consider this example:

If you can afford a mortgage payment of $1,000 (principal and interest only), you can buy a house for $151,426 if you put 10% down on a 30-year mortgage at 8% interest. If your payments started in January, you would pay $10,862 in interest for the first year in the home. That entire amount is deductible on your federal income tax return! Assuming you are in the 27.5% tax bracket, you would save $2,989 in taxes, or $249 per month. So your $1,000 payment is really only $751 when you factor in the homeowner’s tax advantage.

 January

 11 UTC Patten Performance: Swingin’ the Benny Goodman Songbook with Terry Blaine, Allen Vache and Mark Shane

11-14 Ralphie May at Comedy Catch

12 World-Famous Lipizzaner Stallions at UTC’s McKenzie Arena

12 Choo Choo Kids of Chattanooga High School Center for Creative Arts perform in Sunset Concert Series at North River Civic Center in Hixson

12 "Stitches in Time" quilt exhibit opens at Museum Center at Five Points

12 Confederate Railroad at Roadhouse, Crossville

13-14 Cheerleading competition at Chattanooga Convention Center

15-19 Missoula Children’s Theater presents "The Little Mermaid" at Athens Area Council for the Arts

17 Deadline to enter Arts & Education Council’s Youth Southern Student Writers Contest

18 "Civil Rights Play with Jackie, Vi and Lena" at Memorial Auditorium

19 Chattanooga Theatre Centre: "And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little" (Circle)

19-21 O’Reilly World of Wheels at Chattanooga Convention Center

19-21 Sesame Street Live presents "Elmo’s Coloring Book" at Memorial Auditorium

19-22 Grant Turner aka Ricky Mokel at Comedy Catch

Gary A. Warner, the Travel editor with the Orange County Register travels the world every year.  His has given his top picks of his 2006 travels.

My travels in 2006 took me to Hawaii, where I have been dozens of times, and to Barbados, where I have never been before.

What a year it has been. I was 200 feet below sea level at the Salton Sea and 9,000 feet above in Mammoth. I slept on the side of a Hawaiian volcano and hiked through the San Andreas Fault

I sped around a tiny Caribbean island on rickety handmade powerboat and rumbled across the Eastern Sierra in a steel-jacketed Hummer H2 with a GPS system. I stayed in Adolf Hitler’s former playground in Germany and toured an internment camp in California where the United States briefly forgot the Bill of Rights.

This is the best part:

Favorite city: Chattanooga, Tenn.The riverside city has a rebounding downtown, great cafes and shops, and a classic minor-league ballpark. Two famous Civil War battlefields, Chickamauga and Chattanooga, are nearby.

I love it here but this man has traveled the world and to name little ole Chattanooga as his favorite city of 2006 is an honor indeed!!

I don’t even know what to say about this mess.  Make sure your speakers are on.  It’s a news clip from Channel 9 about Crown Vista Estates in Hixson. 

The developer failed to get the proper approvals to build a subdivision.  Since he, David Sanders, declined to make a comment and has not cooperated with Chattanooga on getting the proper things in place for the subdivision a stop work order has been issued.  At least one family is living in a hotel and suing. 

 Environmental Magazine named Chattanooga the cleanest southern city this year. 

"The city can boast of a leaf-lined river walk along its redeveloped downtown, a freshwater aquarium where conservation is the byword, a free electric bus shuttle, the world’s longest pedestrian bridge, and plans for a zero-emissions eco-industrial park and a grass-roofed convention center. Vice President Al Gore said in 1995 that Chattanooga "has undergone the kind of transformation that needs to happen in our country as a whole."

Now that’s something to be proud of!

Chattanooga is a finalist for yet another automobile plant.  Toyota has narrowed their selection down to five areas.  A decision may come as early as later this month with operations to begin in 2009.  Production is expected to be the next generation Toyota HIghlander and possibly a new station wagon named the "Ace" that will be a replacement for the Solara.

Toyota currently has 8 plants in the US.  If we get the bid for the 9th plant it would be a boom for our job market.  Toyota employes about 7000 people at it’s largest plant in Georgetown KY.

Keep your fingers crossed that we aren’t getting our hopes up again for nothing and that this comes to fruition.

The holidays are over and I’ve been very busy the last few days.  I’ve been showing homes and am writing 2 possibly 3 offers for clients plus I have an appointment to list 2 homes.  One in North Chattanooga and one in Brainerd.  This is all good

Greg Swann has a great post about one very good example of who needs a REALTOR®.

"Now God loves the uninitiated in real estate transactions, and he graces them with the unshakeable faith that things always work perfectly. Especially with out-of-state buyers. Especially with delayed and incomplete communication with the lender. Especially with contingent sales. Most especially with simultaneous closings — in two states."

Unfortunately things like this happen more often than the the public realizes.  If an experienced REALTOR® had not been involved in this transaction and knew how to handle it when things started going south, the lives of three families would have been disrupted by much more than just a weeks delay in closing.

"Who needs Realtors? That’s easy."

"Anyone who doesn’t do this job every day."

Couldn’t have said it better myself.