It’s Labor Day weekend in Knoxville.

The University of Tennessee won it’s home football season opener yesterday, today is Boomsday, the huge street fair/party climaxed by a spectacular fireworks display, and we have some real estate news for the 1st week in September.

The Knoxville County Register of Deeds reports 156 closed real estate transactions in today’s Knoxville News-Sentinel. That number has been about the average for most every week to date for 2009. We keep hearing talk about “Pending sales up”, “real estate activity increasing”, and so forth but it doesn’t seem to be translating into closed transactions and those are the only ones that really count.

Here’s Knox County’s numbers for last week; total closed transactions from the Register of Deed’s office: 156

As usual the mid to lower price points dominate the volume of sales with the hot ticket for the year remaining the $100,000 to $150,000 range.

The clock is running down fast on the $8,000 federal tax credit that lots of new homebuyers have been taking advantage of. It expires November 3oth, 2009 and that’s for a closed transaction, not just being in the process. With lenders taking from 30 to 45 days to process a loan these days you need to plan on having your target house under contract not later than October 15th to ensure you don’t come up short of time.

www.KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com is the place to begin your home search. As a 30 year veteran of the Knoxville area real estate market I will be glad to answer any questions you may have about the tax credit, the market in your neighborhood, or any other real estate related question.

Jim Lee, 865-693-3232 or email me; Jim@JimLee.com