This is the first time since April 2010 that contract activity was above year-ago levels, and the monthly gain was the strongest increase since last November when the index rose 10.6%. 

Improved home sales have trended up unevenly since bottoming last June, rising in seven of the past 11 months. But it is lack of lending that is holding sales back, according to Yun. ‘Home sales still could be 15 to 20% if banks would simply return to normal sound underwriting standards and begin lending to more creditworthy borrowers and we’d get a much faster recovery in the housing sector,’ he said.

The Pending Home Sales Index, is that forward looking indicator based on contract signings, increased 8.2% to 88.8 in May from an upwardly revised 82.1 in April and is 13.4% higher than the 78.3 reading in May 2010. The data reflects contracts but not closings, which normally occur with a lag time of one or two months.

NAR chief economist, said the improvement bodes well for home prices. ‘Absorption of inventory is the key to price improvement, and this solid gain in contract signings implies that home values in many localities are or will soon be stabilizing as inventories get absorbed at a faster pace,’ he explained.

‘Some markets have made a rapid turnaround, going from soft activity to contract signings rising by more than 30% from a year ago, including areas such as Hartford, Connecticut, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Houston and Seattle are improving their home sales.

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Once the foreclosure process is stopped Atlanta Home owners can get back on their financial feet to keep their home. Professionals can help by assisting homeowners in a number of ways to improve their financial position such as eliminating a second mortgage, eliminating credit card debt, dealing with consumer creditors and reducing their car loan payments.

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The children of Atlanta’s own Martin Luther King, Jr are entering into a court battle. Dexter King has asked a judge to force Bernice King to turn over their mother’s personal papers, including love letters central to a now-defunct $1.4 million book deal.

Martin Luther King, III and Bernice King complained that their brother Dexter King was derelict in not holding a shareholders meeting, which they said was another example of his lack of openness in handling their father’s Atlanta Homes estate.

There had been no shareholders’ meeting of the corporation since 2004, something that Dexter King blamed on the distraction caused by the deaths of his mother and sister. Judge Ural D. Glanville ordered a meeting, which was held sometime last week in the Atlanta homes of the siblings..

There was a September court hearing, Judge Glanville, who will preside over the trial in Fulton County Superior Court, also expressed some concern about Dexter’s management of Dr. King’s estate.

The Atlanta judge issued an order saying “the court is extremely troubled” in regards to what he was seeing in the initial filing by the siblings.

Dexter is the majority shareholder, and carries significant power in the corporation because he holds 80 percent of  all its shares. The judge warned all three of the siblings that any failure to comply with the Georgia Corporation Code could result in the dissolution of the corporation and that would cause some serious problems in Atlanta for the King siblings. More Atlanta homes news in each of the weekly blog posts.

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They offer you the ability to customize your new home and choose a floor plan from hundreds of modular home specs and manufactured homes. These Clayton homes and manufactured homes that are precision built in state of the art facilities throughout the U.S. This allows for on time delivery of your Atlanta Home and eliminates weather delays and construction costs due to wastefulness. Clayton Homes has a highly engineered building system that is almost a science and certainly the future of home building. As the nation’s largest home builder, the modular home and manufactured home industry offer a very unique value for every pricepoint imaginable.

Seeking to domino the success of this trend Clayton homes just announced a partnership with a big homes contractor to create a new green, multi-family housing design. This concept will be tested and applied to the construction of six housing building at Raintree Apartments in Knoxville near the U.T. campus.  The construction estimate for completion is set for December 2009. I’m hoping to see this green concept take off and be apart of the Atlanta homes community.

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Ashley “A.J.” Jewell, who was engaged to Kandi Burruss until last August, died of massive head injuries he suffered in a “one-on-one” fight in the parking lot of an Atlanta club.

Richardson was also hospitalized due to injuries sustained in the fight and is at Grady Memorial Hospital, but will be jailed once released by this Atlanta hospital.

Atlanta police spokesman James Polite said detectives were still “trying to figure out [what happened].But felt like they had a pretty good number of witnesses that are being cooperative.”

Detective Polite said Jewell worked at the club but he did not know in what capacity.It appears that Jewell had bought an interest in an Atlanta club but she did not identify the business.

Kandi Burruss thanked friends for their condolences and asked for prayers for Jewell’s six children.

She also asked to be left alone. “im just in one of those moods where i dont wanna talk, i dont wanna b held & told its gonna b ok. Burruss is an award-winning singer-songwriter and was a member of the now-disbanded R&B group Xscape.

According to an interview last month with the entertainment Web site Essence.com, Burruss and Jewell had taken a “hiatus” from their relationship but remained friends while they worked on their issues.

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“A worldwide recovery is materializing, led by the developing economies of East Asia and India,” According to Lockhart The FED RESERVE BANK CEO from Atlanta. “Data released last week indicate that global trade increased at its fastest pace in five years. Foreign demand is expected to add about 1.3 percentage points to the U.S. gross domestic product once the final numbers are calculated.” Global trade is a “surprisingly positive factor” in the U.S. economy, Dennis Lockhart, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Mr. Lockhart did caution, however, that the uptick in global economies may not be a solid as U.S. trading partners cut back on government economic stimulus spending. He spoke  to a packed room big crowd, the Fed executive painted a mixed picture of the U.S. economy. “Unquestionably, the economy is improving,” Mr. Lockhart said. “But the vital signs – as captured in macroeconomic data – are mixed. There are pluses and minuses, positives and negatives. It’s not a uniform picture. Optimism is warranted but should be tempered by awareness that this an economy temporarily buttressed by a large number of temporary government support programs.”

The housing market is the key to an economic recovery in Atlanta and nationally. We’ve got to see this respond in order to have any sustained long term economic recover. He noted that housing has been helped by government programs, including a first-time homebuyer’s tax credit, which expires Dec. 1. Mr. Lockhart expressed concern about commercial real estate, saying the downturn in that sector could cause a setback in banking. “I see as uncertain the time required for the housing market to return to health, the potential commercial real estate drag on the financial system, the sustainability of recovery in the absence of government supports and the resurgence of private demand,” he said. “I see all those as uncertain.”  There are so many great opportunities to find your dream Atlanta home in this market.

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“We decided to be pro-active in reminding the wider business community that there are now great deals to be had here in Buckhead,” said former Atlanta Mayor Sam Massell, who is the president of the Buckhead coalition.

The Buckhead community is among the country’s most affluent, but that hasn’t kept it from a decline in demand that has left over Two million square feet of available office space unleased.

Mr. Sprouse said his organization targets its promotions more narrowly to site-selection consultants in New York, New Jersey, Dallas, Phoenix and Atlanta. Plus, he and his team travel often to Dallas and Phoenix to meet prospects face to face.

There are so many properties and deals available in the whole Metro Atlanta area for those who know how to do value investing in Real Estate.

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