Athalas Real Estate Advisory 
No. Program minimums run far below that, and several require nothing down at all for buyers who qualify. The twenty percent figure is real, but it was never a requirement to buy a house. It is the threshold at which a conventional loan stops requiring mortgage insurance. Two different things got collapsed into one number, … Read more
It depends on what your written agreement says and on what gets negotiated in the contract. There is no default anymore. On August 19, 2026, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the settlement that ended the Sitzer/Burnett commission litigation, which makes the practice changes that took effect in 2024 permanent and no longer under appeal. The part … Read more
Yes. A pre-approval can be withdrawn, and loans do fall apart between the accepted offer and the closing table. It is not common, and in most cases the cause is not something that was wrong at pre-approval. It is something that changed afterward. The part almost no buyer knows: your lender pulls your credit again … Read more
Twenty homes closed above $1,000,000 in Cherokee County in July 2026. On every measure of seller leverage, that segment underperformed the rest of the county. Only one in five luxury sellers got their asking price. Countywide it was closer to one in two. The luxury market here is not weak. It is unforgiving, which is … Read more
Almost everyone treats this as a money question. It’s a negotiating question, and that’s why so many people get the answer wrong. The financing usually has a solution. What you can’t buy back later is the strength of your position, on either the sale or the purchase. Whichever side you weaken is the side that … Read more
Fifty-six percent of Acworth-area homes sold at or above asking price in July 2026. Countywide it was 42.6%. Woodstock, the fastest market in Cherokee County, managed 50.4%. So the western edge of the county beat everywhere else on the metric sellers care about most. Then it gave a chunk of it back, and the reason … Read more
The standard homestead exemption in Cherokee County saves about $59 a year. The senior school tax exemption saves roughly $2,600. Same house, same owner, one birthday and one waiting period apart. That gap is the entire story, and most homeowners don’t find out about it until they’re already past the moment when it mattered. What … Read more
No, you’re not required to have one. And walking into a model home without one is the most expensive free decision in real estate. Here’s what most buyers don’t realize until later. The friendly person who greets you at the model home is a licensed agent, and they work for the builder. They’re not being … Read more
Ball Ground sells the most expensive square footage in Cherokee County. It also has a median sale price well below the county’s. Both of those are true, and the reason they’re both true is the most useful thing a north Cherokee homeowner can understand about their own market. First, the caveat. North Cherokee closed 38 … Read more
You have a legal right to cancel private mortgage insurance, and most homeowners pay it longer than they have to because they’re waiting for the wrong number. Here is the part that costs people money. Under federal law, the threshold is based on what your home was worth when you bought it, not what it’s … Read more