Knoxville Housing Market Sluggish

Times are good if you’re buying a house in Knoxville, Tennessee … unless you have to sell one first, of course.

That’s the impression one gets after crunching numbers and talking to local real estate gurus regarding the Knoxville housing market.

While East Tennessee has largely avoided the slump of markets like Florida and Michigan, there’s no doubt the national slow-down is starting to pinch sellers in Big Orange Country.

“What I’m finding is there’s a lot of houses on the market right now, so it’s a buyer’s paradise,” said Brenda Albert, of Rocky Top Realty. “And they’re being more deliberate and more selective because they do have so much to choose from.”

For evidence of this Tennessee mortgage trend, look no further than the Knoxville Area Association of Realtors second-quarter report, which found home and condo sales in a 32-county region were down nearly 14 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

And that’s not the only harbinger. The average market time for homes sold in June was 90 days, the largest June number in the nine years of data on the association’s Web site.

Existing homes aren’t the only ones being hit. Victor Jernigan, president of Blue Ribbon Homes, said his company saw traffic drop “precipitously” in the last 60 days because people are afraid the market is still going down, although he said that fear is misplaced.

“We are seeing slower sales in every price range,” said Jernigan. “It’s not just bigger homes or smaller homes. It’s in every price range because of credit standards.”

Fortunately, not all the news is of the gloom-and-doom variety. For one thing, the KAAR data show the median sale price of a local three-bedroom home was $159,000 in the second quarter, up from $149,200 a year ago.

For readers who take comfort in knowing that others are worse off, consider the numbers out of Florida, where home sales were down 30 percent and South Florida home prices were down 5 percent in June.

That’s not necessarily good news for Tennessee mortgage lenders, since many of the “half-backs” looking to skedaddle out of Florida may first have to sell their Sunshine State home. But overall, the Volunteer State’s market in comparison to many other regions is good news.

Lee Mrazek, director of agent operations at ERA Top Producers and president of the KAAR, said that while it’s a buyer’s market, she’s “busier than I can almost stand to be.”

“I think we’re alive and well in Knoxville,” said Mrazek, who emphasized that she’s speaking for herself, rather than the association.

“And one of the reasons for that, I think, is because we never experienced that huge, 200, 300 percent increase in prices — or even 100 percent increase in prices — here.”

And when times are tough in the real estate and home mortgage loan industries, there’s nothing like a little optimism to get you through. Dave Santi, of Re/Max Preferred Properties, said the market may be off but it’s making a comeback.

Besides that, Santi said, “I haven’t seen any property I really couldn’t sell if we could get all the marketing ingredients lined up.”

SOURCE: Knoxville News