January sales in our Gatlinburg area real estate market are almost always slow, often the slowest of the year in fact. Because our area (like many second home markets nationally) has been riding a general uptrend in sales volumes, I had hoped that our Great Smoky Mountain Association of Realtors might have sold a total of around 110 homes during January, 2011. Instead, the number as of today is only 99. While this is still ahead of last year, it doesn’t help our upward trend line much. With a warning that anyone can draw lines based on historical data, here is the chart based on the latest numbers obtained today from the Great Smoky Mountain Association of Realtors MLS database: