One of the tough things about making predictions of any sort is that it’s pretty easy to be wrong. I seem to have been wrong once again on my prediction in total 2010 Knoxville, TN area home sales.

If you will recall on November 15, 2010 I predicted a year end total of 9,500 total homes and condos sold in the greater Knoxville area but the final total turned out to be 10,133 for the year. That’s about 600 more than I thought would sell making my guess off by about 6%; not too bad for a guess. It appears the 4th quarter sales of 2010 were far stronger than I thought they would be.

Here’s how 2010 ended up in Knoxville compared to the past 9 years:

2010 sales

You’ll notice that 2010 ended up about 400 homes below 2009. In analyzing the sales data for the past few years I believe the 2009 and some of the 2010 data was artificially inflated by the $8,000 tax credit that expired on April 30th of 2010.

That tax credit may have been driving Knoxville area sales by as much as 20% or more. In addition to driving sales it also seems to have encouraged the sale of more lower priced homes (first time buyers) driving the average sales prices down along with the median prices.

average & median

So now we’re in January of 2011 and what’s the Knoxville housing market like so far?

We’re only 2 weeks into the year so very little hard data is available but I’m hearing a lot of anecdotal positive stories from my fellow Realtors about increased traffic at open houses, more inquiries on listings for sale, and lenders fielding questions about interest rate and mortgage loans.

If all that positive activity continues, then 2011 should be a good year for Knoxville sellers and buyers with both increased numbers of sales and higher average prices since the market will be more balanced with the demise of the tax credit.

Interest rates remain at historic lows and inventory of homes in all prices ranges is plentiful.

Head on over to KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com to see all the Knoxville, TN area homes for sale and please email or call me with any homebuying or selling questions.

knoxville tn real estate word cloud

knoxville tn real estate word cloud