After looking at our latests available sales sales statistics, the 3rd quarter, it appears as if the greater Knoxville, Tennessee area is not experiencing any sort of bubble or price declines.
- 3rd Qtr. 2004 3 BR Solds 2,390 Avg. Price $145,000 Days to Sold 80
- 3rd Qtr. 2005 3 BR Solds 2,747 Avg. Price $157,400 Days to Sold 65
- 3rd Qtr. 2006 3 BR Solds 2,491 Avg. Price $169,300 Days to Sold 78
For about 6 months in 2005 I believe we were in a fairly brief seller's market which accounts for the spike in units sold; that tide has since turned and we're back into a buyer's market with a good supply of inventory but no fire sales in sight.
The new home market in the area is off right now; I got an e mail from one builder last week offering a $5,000 cash bonus to any selling agent who brought a buyer that would close before the end of this year.
Generally 2 conditions are necessary for home prices to soften or decline.
- An oversupply of homes for sale
- and/or a weak local economy
I think we currently have a modest oversupply of new homes but resale homes inventory is not up that much.
Knoxville has always enjoyed a good economy because of our diverse economy; Oak Ridge National Labs, Tennessee Valley Authority, ALCOA Aluminum, and the University of Tennessee are 4 of the area's larger employers.
Oak Ridge is bringing a 5 billion dollar, ultra high tech particle accelerator online this year in addition to completing their superfast supercomputer code named Jaguar. Jaguar now runs at 100 Teraflops per second and they're speeding it up to 250 teraflops in 2007. One teraflop is 1,000 trillion calculations per second! Faster than your average Dell. ;-)
The University of Tennessee is planning to up its Knoxville campus student population from 28,000 to 35,000 which is a big shot in the arm of our local economy.
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