Although our Gatlinburg area real estate market (like most areas around the country) continues to struggle, there are occasional signs of life returning. One of these is the fact that in my average sized (138 lots total) residential subdivision in Sevierville, there are currently 4 brand new construction starts. These are all being built by different entities and are all unrelated owners so this is not just one person’s enthusiasm. While I’m not sure yet just how many of these are spec homes versus custom construction this is without a doubt a good sign.
A second positive indicator is that our supply of homes currently on the market continues to decline. As of today, there have been a total of 1189 residential sales in Sevier County during the past 12 months versus the 2905 residential properties currently offered for sale. This combination equals a 2.44 year supply which although still high is significantly down from the numbers we were seeing a year ago. The supply of log and log look homes currently for sale is equal to a little higher 2.76 times what has sold in the past 12 months. This is again an improvement as our numbers were much higher a year ago. Although there is no way to be sure how much of this improvement is from homes being removed from the market there HAS been an increase in sales over 2009 with the exception of July’s results. August numbers will be in soon and we will have a better idea of what the balance of 2010 looks like.
The third bit of positive news is my own sales results for August. August looks pretty good from my point of view (9 sales during the month if everything closes by tomorrow) and with nearly 20 pending sales currently on the books September/October should be strong too. I’ll report on the preliminary August sales for our entire board on Wednesday…