Tennessee Housing Market Drop: It Could Be Worse

It’s never a good sign when the number of Tennessee mortgage defaults are almost equivalent to the number of home sales in the state.

It’s also a less than ideal sign when the 2,289 home closings reported locally in January represent a 3.4 percent drop from the same period last year within the Tennessee housing market, according to data from the Greater Nashville Association of Realtors.

(Of those closings, 1,779 were single-family houses, 287 were condominiums, 40 were multi-family units and 183 were residential properties.)

Despite these figures, however, Middle Tennessee fared better than most states. According to the National Association of Relators, home sales and home purchase loan activity nationwide were down a little more than 10 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006, compared to the same period last year.

The national median home price was $219,300 in the fourth quarter, down 2.7 percent from the previous year, when the median price was $225,300.

Total existing-home sales in the South were at an annual rate of 2.49 million units in the fourth quarter, down 8.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005, GNAR reports. Therefore, while Tennessee mortgage loans were not as popular as years past, demand is actually stronger here than in many parts of the country.