An appraiser friend of mine who mainly works in the commercial part of our real estate industry asked me a week ago what the price trends have recently been for our residential market here in Sevier County. I had a few minutes (please bear with me – with more time I could have done proper tables and had much better formatting) in between appointments this afternoon and ran the numbers for residential sales over the past 3 years:

Year Average Price – # of Sales

2006 – $215,854 – 376

2007 – $206,370 – 329

2008 – $191,233 – 213 (Jan-Oct only)

Interestingly, prices have dropped 11.4% from 2006 to 2008 but the drop is not as dramatic for smaller homes. When I limited the search to 1200-1400 finished square feet 3 bedroom, 2 bath homes the results were:

Year – Average Price – # of Sales
2006 – $133,531 – 40
2007 – $126,430 – 55
2008 – $124,887 – 27 (Jan-Oct only)

In the starter home category, the drop was still present, but was only 6.4%. After thinking about this for a bit the reason for the smaller drop in price among starter homes is I think pretty easy to explain. These homes are suitable for use as full time lease properties and their value is largely supported by the fact that a Sevierville residence can lease for between 700 and $1000 monthly, depending upon the size, condition, and neighborhood of the home. In fact, our starter home market has been the least impacted by the poor real estate market and sub-prime lending situation.

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