Interesting video on Tennessee housing market. (Chattanooga, Monteagle: moving, trailer, parking)

[Igor Blevin]

Wartrace,

Interesting video. I am not seeing how a Tennessee home price crash occurs without a depression level of job layoffs. There is no housing inventory currently, and owners with mortgages mainly have sub-4%.

Home inventories are still in the sub-2 month range. We will see what it takes to get back to 6-months of inventory. I may be short-sighted on that, but it seems builders are pacing themselves and sellers are not motivated. I don't see where the inventory is going to come from come from to create a buyers market with motivated sellers competing against each other.

My understanding is that home sales are still strong for now, it is just limited inventory is keeping sales volumes down. Home sales well above median pricing are slowing down, but entry level houses are still seeing multiple offers. There aren't bidding wars, but starter homes are still selling.

It is not as if homes twice the median are not selling. Driving around Hardin Valley and Farragut, lots seem to be selling just fine on the mid-priced or lower luxury homes.

The stats from the video scream "housing crash" but it is possible Tennessee's structural changes actually support the rapid rise in home prices, with all of the money steadily pouring into Tennessee from people moving in from higher cost states, with ample equity in their prior homes.

I still think prices in Tennessee will generally be flat going forward, not down. There is no inventory. That could change on a dime, but it would take a very bad economy. Home owners are just in so much better shape than 2008, not only with lots of equity, but they have the means to service those really low mortgage rates, or own their homes free and clear.

I don't see a housing crisis coming for TN. Just my opinion.

[flamadiddle]

I think another factor is with covid, many people were given the ability to work remotely and since Tennesee has zero percent income tax and a decent climate, it became a ripe target.

[ReaperG1rl]

Originally Posted by flamadiddle

I think another factor is with covid, many people were given the ability to work remotely and since Tennesee has zero percent income tax and a decent climate, it became a ripe target.

You do have a point about that! My husband works from home. He started that a year and half ago though. But now working from home is slowly dying off where people are now venturing out to work. He is telling me this. I don't know much about his company but he works in the IT dept but they working temp companies etc.

We are looking to move to Tenn not because of no state tax at all but to get out of the flat boring Ohio. We both are born and raised from Pittsburgh Pa and we are true Mt people. We have grown up going up North Pa in the Mts etc. We miss our rolling hills. We do not want to move back to PA too expensive, not much there for us but family really. We visited Tenn last April and fell in love with the MTs. It is just beautiful. It is like our playground for us.

[Serious Conversation]

Originally Posted by Igor Blevin

Wartrace,

Interesting video. I am not seeing how a Tennessee home price crash occurs without a depression level of job layoffs. There is no housing inventory currently, and owners with mortgages mainly have sub-4%.

Home inventories are still in the sub-2 month range. We will see what it takes to get back to 6-months of inventory. I may be short-sighted on that, but it seems builders are pacing themselves and sellers are not motivated. I don't see where the inventory is going to come from come from to create a buyers market with motivated sellers competing against each other.

My understanding is that home sales are still strong for now, it is just limited inventory is keeping sales volumes down. Home sales well above median pricing are slowing down, but entry level houses are still seeing multiple offers. There aren't bidding wars, but starter homes are still selling.

It is not as if homes twice the median are not selling. Driving around Hardin Valley and Farragut, lots seem to be selling just fine on the mid-priced or lower luxury homes.

The stats from the video scream "housing crash" but it is possible Tennessee's structural changes actually support the rapid rise in home prices, with all of the money steadily pouring into Tennessee from people moving in from higher cost states, with ample equity in their prior homes.

I still think prices in Tennessee will generally be flat going forward, not down. There is no inventory. That could change on a dime, but it would take a very bad economy. Home owners are just in so much better shape than 2008, not only with lots of equity, but they have the means to service those really low mortgage rates, or own their homes free and clear.

I don't see a housing crisis coming for TN. Just my opinion.

At least around the Tri-Cities, a big problem has been a lack of building up until relatively recently. There was about a decade from around the financial crisis to 2018/2019 where building slowed to a crawl. What's ended up happening is a ton of older homes, many of which need updating, so anything newer and nicer goes at an additional premium. That's contributing to higher costs for anything nice.

[JRR]

I was reading my latest issue of Kiplinger's Finance magazine and they had an article on housing prices. One interesting thing was that Chattanooga was listed as a top 10 place for housing sales growth and price growth in 2023.

I don't see much of a slowdown around Cookeville even if it is not as crazy as the last couple of years. Everywhere I look new housing is going up especially around Baxter. People are moving here from other areas of the country for retirement and local leadership has done well in attracting businesses to bring jobs to keep young people here.

Now my cousin lives in Memphis and things are definitely no going well there. But overall I don't see the doom and gloom crash in Tennessee that others are predicting.

[Serious Conversation]

Originally Posted by JRR

I was reading my latest issue of Kiplinger's Finance magazine and they had an article on housing prices. One interesting thing was that Chattanooga was listed as a top 10 place for housing sales growth and price growth in 2023.

I don't see much of a slowdown around Cookeville even if it is not as crazy as the last couple of years. Everywhere I look new housing is going up especially around Baxter. People are moving here from other areas of the country for retirement and local leadership has done well in attracting businesses to bring jobs to keep young people here.

Now my cousin lives in Memphis and things are definitely no going well there. But overall I don't see the doom and gloom crash in Tennessee that others are predicting.

All of this is dependent on the local area.

Cookeville has a university to power it along, but more importantly, it's also centrally located. It's an easy drive to Nashville, Knoxville, or even other places, especially off-hours.

Upper east TN doesn't have most of that, except for JC with ETSU.

[Jumeby]

Originally Posted by JRR

I was reading my latest issue of Kiplinger's Finance magazine and they had an article on housing prices. One interesting thing was that Chattanooga was listed as a top 10 place for housing sales growth and price growth in 2023.

I don't see much of a slowdown around Cookeville even if it is not as crazy as the last couple of years. Everywhere I look new housing is going up especially around Baxter. People are moving here from other areas of the country for retirement and local leadership has done well in attracting businesses to bring jobs to keep young people here.

Now my cousin lives in Memphis and things are definitely no going well there. But overall I don't see the doom and gloom crash in Tennessee that others are predicting.

Redfin shows Putnam county homes sold up 20% YoY and median sale price up 8% YoY.

Knox county homes sold down -28.9% YoY and median sale price up 12.2% YoY.

Davidson county homes sold down -33.7% YoY and median sale price up 6.1% YoY.

Shelby county homes sold down -36.2% YoY and median sale price up 1.7% YoY.

I live in Putnam and not happy with the escalation of home values here but understand why it happened. With the current trajectory of the economy I'm pretty sure our homes values will come back down to reality. Long time home owners here saw their property tax and homeowners insurance skyrocket over the past few years and some can't afford it, especially when our economy is experiencing high inflation at the same time.

[dpmj]

Thanks! What a great video!

[JoeJunior]

Originally Posted by shinestx

This state has just gotten too crowded for the infrastructure. TDOT is miserably ineffective in addressing the growth.

The biggest problem is that Middle Tennessee is a big limestone cap. Every inch of every road and every water/gas line has to be drilled and blasted. The addition of new roads is deadly expensive.

There's just not enough money in the state to add the infrastructure needed for the anticipated population. And the population in Knoxville area is exploding--as Nashville Metro Area has exploded.

They were lucky to get the Interstate bypass built from Lebanon to Dickson, and that's about all you'll ever have in this lifetime to alleviate traffic in Nashville.

There are many nice communities 20-30 miles out. Next up is the next 10 miles outside of those cities.

[Shakeesha]

Originally Posted by GreggT

You must not have been to Chattanooga lately, continuous construction on the interstates to open up the flow of North/South/East/West traffic plus downtown and along the river are actually walkable, safely I might add!

Not quite. I-24 is still only 4 lanes in most of the city. Still no bypass and no light rail. Brainerd Rd. is still very dangerous with no sidewalks or bike lanes. Traffic can be to a crawl. There is still a lot of work to be done.