About Margie Sorrell, Lake Oconee REALTOR®

I’m a REALTOR® who was actually born here, and I have been selling Lake Oconee real estate since 2010. I was born right down the road at Minnie G. Boswell Hospital, the precursor to St. Mary’s Good Samaritan, and my house today looks out on the water off the Burch x Boathouse restaurant, where I swam as a little girl back when it was called Granite Shoals. You won’t find another lake agent with as much homegrown history. I have more than $100 million in career sales with Coldwell Banker. I’m a five-time Readers’ Choice Best Realtor with the Lake Oconee Breeze, a member of Coldwell Banker’s International President’s Elite for the top two percent of agents worldwide, a Certified Residential Specialist and a Certified Global Luxury Property Specialist. I hold the records for both the highest-priced waterfront home and the highest-priced waterfront lot sold outside the gated communities of Lake Oconee.

Both, and in close to equal measure. About half my closings are inside Reynolds Lake Oconee, The Landing, Harbor Club and Del Webb, and the other half are on the non-gated shoreline and in smaller neighborhoods most people have never heard of.

The things that don’t show up in a listing. Whether the dock is legal under Georgia Power’s current rules, and what it costs if it isn’t. How much the boat lifts are worth. How deep the water is at the end of the dock, and how steep the walk down to it is. Whether reaching the house by boat means going under a bridge, and what kind of boat fits under it. I also know where the proper comps are, because two houses with the same square footage, beds and baths on different parts of the lake rarely compare. I’ve had out-of-area buyer’s agents try to comp my listing to a house in a completely different Lake Oconee neighborhood district. I’d rather teach you about the lake than teach your realtor.

Yes. A good share of what I close is land, though raw land is getting more and more scarce around Lake Oconee. A lot’s value depends on what you can actually build and where, whether it’s lakefront, inland, farmland or on the golf course. Two parcels side by side can be worth very different money for reasons you cannot see standing on them. If you’re looking at land, walk it with someone who has sold it here before.

They run from record-setting waterfront to a $5,000 piece of dirt. I represented the highest-priced waterfront home sold at Lake Oconee outside the gated golf communities: $3,738,000 in the Sandy Creek neighborhood on the Richland side of the lake. I also sold the highest-priced homesite ever sold outside the gates, $1,400,000 for six tenths of an acre in Beaverdam with no house on it. I’ve sold raw land inside the gates of Reynolds Lake Oconee for $2,450,000, and I’ve sold it for less than $15,000. I handled both sides of a sale of more than 100 acres of development land next to Harbor Club. I have worked all sides of the lake, from Buckhead to deep Putnam to White Plains, at every price point: homes, lots, farms and acreage.

I work from recent closed sales in the neighborhoods that actually compare to your house, and I don’t price by the square foot. On this lake, square footage explains almost none of what a house is worth. What separates two houses that look identical on paper is what the records don’t capture: the floor plan, which tee box or part of the lake the house looks out on, how the place has been kept, and what it feels like standing in the living room. I research those on every comparable house before I compare it to yours. The number I bring you is built to sell in a defined window and to survive the appraisal, not to win the listing.

Yes, and most of my sellers are in exactly that position. This is a second-home lake, and a lot of owners are hours away or more. I can handle showings, coordinate whatever needs doing before we go on the market, and keep you posted without you driving down for every step. I’ve watered plants and blown off driveways. I want to sell your house just as much as you do, and it will be handled with care the whole way.