Knoxville Tennessee Real Estate Blog

Knox County air monitors now show that the greater Knoxville area has reached attainment of the Enviromental Protection Agency’s (EPA) federal smog regulations.

Our area’s Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has long been a leader in pollution control efforts; all 59 of the agencies coal fired power generating plants have some form of emmissions controls.

About 60 percent of those plants have state of the art Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) systems which they started installing in 1999, before the EPA began requiring them.

Additionally TVA is a leader in safe nuclear power generation with 30% of its power generating output coming from just 3 nuclear plants.

Being in compliance with EPA air quality standards has economic benefits to the area as well as the obvious health advantages.

Lots of industries consider quality of life in an area as a factor in making their decision to locate a facility in an area.

Our quality of life in the beautiful Tennessee valley has always been great and the latest news that we meet the EPA’s clear air standards helps to ensure it stays that way.

From the nearby Great Smoky Mountains to the Cumberland Plateau, the Knoxville, Tennessee area is indeed a great place to work, live, and raise a family.

If you’re considering relocating to a new home visit my website, KnoxvilleMLS.com to see our many beautiful homes for sale; lots of great area information too.

Lately is seems the news has been full of ‘doom & gloom’ stories about the bursting housing bubble and how real estate prices have fallen; dramatically in some areas.

The major flaws in so called “Housing Bubble” stories is that

1. There is no such thing as a “national housing market”; all real estate sales are local and dependent to a great deal on local conditions.
2. Generally two conditions are necessary in an area for prices to soften or decline; 1. an oversupply of homes for sale, and 2. weak local economic conditions sometimes against an overall economic weakness, recession or high interest rates.

Here’s the third quarter sales statistics for the greater Knoxville, Tennessee area for the past 3 years.
 

3rd quarter average sale prices for 3 bedrooms homes

• 2004  $145,000……….Average days on market…..80
• 2005  $157,400……….Average days on market…..65 
• 2006  $169,300……….Average days on market…..78 

Steadily increasing prices and no significant increase in days on market (time to sell).

 Historically Tennessee has average 3-5% housing appreciation for as long as I can remember.

Latest unemployment figures for the area are 4.4% unemployed; not too shabby.

And, according to Southeast Home Mortgage, our in-house mortgage bankers firm’s manager Zan Wyatt, interest rates remain very attractive too.

Zan says their 30 year, fixed rate product has a current 6% interest rate, FHA 30 year fixed is 6.125 and the product she recommended if you’re not going to be in the house too long is their 5 year fixed, interest only mortgage with a current 5.875 rate.

If you’re going to be in the house long term obviously the 30 year fixed is the way to go.

But if you’re going to be transferred or moving in the next 5 years or less, then the 5.875 percent, fixed for 5 years, interest only mortgage would be worth letting Zan crunch some numbers for you.

Moving to the great Knoxville, Tennessee area or already live here and thinking of buying a new home?

If so now is a great time; no housing bubbles, burst or otherwise and very, very attractive interest rates to keep your monthly payments affordable.

Call or e mail Zan or me today and let’s talk about what we can do for you.

Jim Lee, Knoxville REALTOR®

Toll free: 1-800-662-2488, extension 163

PS & BTW, there are a few areas that, unfortunately have a genuine bursting real estate bubble, California and South Floirda are two prime examples.

That used to be one of my mother’s favorite phrases when I was a a kid growing up in nearby Chattanooga.

One of the things she always stressed to me was the importance of having good manners (and using them).

That was brought home recently by a story in our Knoxville newspaper titled “No thanks to ‘thank you’?” and about the lack of simple gratitiude and manners in our everyday lives.

The writer opined that the upcoming holiday season would be a good time to remind everyone to mind their manners.

“With Thanksgiving a mere five days away, some etiquette experts say the holiday for giving thanks - albeit in most cases to the Creator - is a good reminder for everyone to mind their manners every day.

“In a fast-paced society, we do tend to lose the little things,” said Mindy Coulter, chapter director of Knoxville’s National League of Junior Cotillions.”

The League’s mission statement: “To act and learn to treat others with honor, dignity and respect for better relationships with family, friends and associates and to learn and practice ballroom dance.”

Personally as a teenaged boy I could have skipped the ballroom dancing part ;-) but all their other programs for youngsters are great.

If you’re unsure or feel you need a refresher course Knoxville has the Flora Mainord School of Etiquette for all ages and all social situations and the Knoxville Chapter of the National League of Junior Cotillions has great programs for young people

This holiday season is a great time to renew your efforts to be more grateful and to remember to be more civil to your fellow man.

A few more “please” and “thank yous” would also go a long way.

Some of the lessons learned in manners and how to properly interact with others go far beyond just “please” and “thank you”; teaching children to care about people and appreciate their gifts could also amount to huge lessons in life.

Here are some great tips for raising polite children.

• Be a great role model for your children.
• Point out the nice things they do.
• Don’t make fun of others in front of your children (or any other time)

We all have a lot to be grateful and thankful for; I’m going to make a special effort to say “please” and “thank you” more, not only for the holidays but for the upcoming years.

Thank you for reading this; please pass it on to others, especially those with children.  

Good news from the Knox County School System, they scored high marks in the recently released Tennessee school report cards.

“The state of Tennessee released its annual school report cards today, and the Knox County School System received an exceptional overall report.”

“In the extremely important area of value added performance, the school system posted an A in each of the four subject areas; math, reading, social studies, and science.”

Tennessee has also been able to reduce it’s high school dropout rate to 9.8%. That’s still too high in my opinion but at least the dropout rates are going down.

Although this is clearly an accomplishment to be proud of there’s still work to do.

In other good news for Knox County School System the International Association for Truancy and Dropout Prevention honored Project GRAD (Graduation Really Achieves Dreams) Knoxville as “Program of the Year” at its 96th Annual Conference held in Baltimore on October 8 – 12, 2006.

Project GRAD’s mission statement: “To help ensure a quality public school education for Heart of Knoxville students that equips and encourages youth to graduate from high school and to succeed in college or post-secondary vocational education.”

Kudos to both the Knox County School System & Project GRAD.

This week I’m down in New Orleans for the National Association of Realtor’s (NAR) annual convention.

Nothin says “New Orleans” quite a well as Jackson Square and the St. Louis Cathedral in the heart of the Famed French Quarter. The mounted rider is General Andrew Jackson; the statue commerates his victory over the French during the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812.

There was some doubts early on about holding it in New Orleans because of the horrible damage done to this are by Hurricane Katrina.

I’m delighted to report the Big Easy is well on its way to recovery and was able to very graciously accomodate close to 30,000 of my fellow Realtors for our convention and trade show.

Here’s a video NAR President Tom Stevens made in April of 2006 to show where New Orleans was then. It was doing well then; its doing GREAT now!

It was touching to have my cabdriver from the airport and several other local employees say “Thank you” for taking a chance and having your convention here.

This is the biggest event to take place in New Orleans post Katrina.

Great gathering; our keynote speakers were former Presidents Bush and Clinton; an odd couple who oddly enough work very well together.

For those of you that may be concerned about water quality, air, etc., the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has sampled most everything that could be sampled around New Orleans and pronounced it safe.

“We basically sampled the entire Lake Pontchartrain, and we never found anything that would cause any concern,” he said.The same holds true for air quality and other supposed threats to normal life and health, DEQ toxicologist Tom Harris said.“There really are not environmental conditions that would keep people from coming back and moving back to New Orleans, coming here and raising a family, but I talk to people every day that haven’t gotten that message,” Harris said. “If you hear once that it’s not safe, you have to hear it three times that it’s safe before it finally sinks in.”

NAR dubbed their New Orleans convention “NARdi Gras” and it was a show. Friday night we had a huge street parade through the French Quarter with floats and all. Each state had supplies of NARdi Gras beads made up with a state theme on each one. Georgia’s beads were judged best of show with their two peaches dangling.

Saturday night Harry Connick Jr. entertained with a concert attened by around 6,000 fans.

But it wasn’t all play and no work. We left 55 Habitat for Humanity homes either built or framed up for New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents. In addition, we helped clean up City Park, sorted books at the public library, worked on De La Salle High School, and much more.

Monday we had our Board of Directors meeting to finish up the convention business, so today & tomorrow its back home and back to work for a bunch of tired and happy Realtors; NARdi Gras was a smash success and so is New Orleans.

The world famous Cafe du Monde is still serving those same wonderful Beignets & Chicory cafe au lait you remember from your last visit.

Thank you New Orleans for having us and showing us such a great time.

 Every time a new home is built its essentially about 2 years before a local government sees any ongoing tax revenues from that home.

However most of the new residents start using local public facilities, i.e. schools, roads, etc., immediately.

By state law any sort of adequate facilities taxes can only be used for capital improvements for education, i.e. building new schools or renovating existing schools.

 Some say an immediate tax on new residential construction, typically based on either the home price or size, is only fair to ensure everyone pays their share and spreads the tax burden equally.

The obvious flaw in that theory is that resale homes escape the tax and a high percentage of the time they too bring in new area residents.

A tax targeted just at new construction homes is unfair to new residents on several levels and doesn’t really generate significant tax revenues compared to alternative such as a local wheel tax on vehicle registrations or a higher property tax across the board.

Recently Loudon County, the county located just south of Knox County passed an adequate facilities tax of $1.00 per square foot on all new residential construction.

This tax unfortunately impacts those new homeowners and current local landowners most of all. An “empty nester” buying a high end retirement home is not going to be deterred by an extra 2-4,000 dollars in fees for his home purchase. Sadly though a typical first time buyer family who has been saving for years to afford to buy a home could be priced out of the market by this tax.

“Mike Stevens, president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Knoxville and chairman of governmental affairs for the state organization, noted that much of Loudon County’s growth has resulted from retirees moving to lakeside communities such as Tellico Village. Those developments provide increased tax revenue to the county, without adding greatly to the burden on municipal services such as schools, he said.

“Most of what I build is for empty nesters. Why should they pay impact fees?” Stevens asked. “It’s a very selfish tax.”

Also a local land owner who wants to sell his land for development or give some to his children to build a house on would also be negatively impacted by this tax.

Not surprisingly the Tennessee Association of Realtors along with the Home Builders Association of Greater Knoxville and the Knoxville Area Association of Realtors strongly oppose this tax and are committed to stopping it.

As a practicing Realtor I’m with them; there are several alternatives Loudon County could have explored rather than targeting those least able to afford it. This tax is not even a finger in the proverbial leaking dike; its only projected to raise about 1 million dollars a year and is a one time tax.

A wheel tax of around $25.00 on vehicle registrations in Loudon County would raise much more money and be a continuing source of revenue for Loudon County.

A huge part of the perceived school overcrowding issue in Loudon County is the fact that school zoning is not currently enforced. If you live in Loudon County you can now take your children to any school you choose. A large group of parents that work in nearby counties choose to drop their children off at a convenient school rather than the one they should be attending.

Enforcing school zoning would immediately eliminate the overcrowding issue at the few schools that have too many pupils and help fill up the underused schools in other parts of the county.

I hope the Loudon County Commission will be fair and open minded enough to consider alternative to their new adequate facilities tax.

Blog Directory

I moderate an Internet real estate forum called “Ask An Expert”. This is a compilation of some of the most interesting questions.

Have a real estate or Knoxville area question you need answered?? If I don’t know the answer there’s a very good chance I know someone who does and can get the information for you. Just e mail me

QUESTION:  Made a huge mistake and bought a house with an ex-boyfriend who left me with a huge house payment, insurance, taxes, upkeep, etc. He has agreed to sign a quit claims deed. My question is, do I need a realtor or a lawyer present when he signs the paper work, does a notary work? Where is the best place to get the paper work and is there any other advice you can give…

ANSWER:  Is your ex-boyfriend also on the loan with you?? If he is, then simply signing a quit claim deed will not remove him from the mortgage obligation although it will remove his ownership rights to the house.The best person to do this for you would be an attorney.The second best (and probably more economical) would be a title or escrow company depending on what state your’re in.

QUESTION:  I bought a house in Tennessee recently and all the information provided (ie, MLS listing and home inspection) stated that the house was on public sewer. Subsequently, a flooded leach field revealed that the house was on septic. I have spent over $7,200 in out-of-pocket expenses to correct the problem. I am suing the realtor and seller, the latter is non-responsive. My lawyer has just advised me that the realtor has made an offer of settlement for $4,000, and states that we should take it and avoid court fees. ANSWER: The only truly reliable way to determine whether or not a house is physically connected to a sanitary sewer system is for the utility company to flush a colored dye down the commode and watch for it to appear at the closest sewer manhole.

Have a real estate question?? Send me an e mail and I’ll give you an answer. I do not give legal or tax advice; you should seek a qualified professional for that information.

email me @ Jim Lee or call 865-539-3163. If I’m not in just leave your question on my voice mail and I’ll get your answer as soon as possible.

Buying or selling a home in Knoxville, Tennessee?? Visit my website, KnoxvilleMLS.com for lots of buying & selling tips, search all Knoxville area Realtor listings, and much more.

Jim Lee, Knoxville REALTOR®