Amid all the market mayhem, Nicki Baxley is in a unique position. After living in Knoxville for 17 years, Baxley and her family moved to Iowa just before the pandemic. The relocation didn t last long. In 2021, the Baxleys sold their Iowa home, bought a Knoxville house and left the Midwest.
How she got here
Baxley and her husband, Doug, moved to Knoxville together after they got married. Fast forward 17 years and their family grew by two. The family had strong ties in the city – Baxley s relatives live nearby and her sons loved their school. But in December 2019, they relocated for Doug s career . They sold the house and headed west.
That added competition for homes, combined with low inventory and an increase in home prices, is making it more difficult and expensive to buy a house in the Knoxville area.
According to the Freddie Mac Housing Price Index, Knoxville s May home prices increased by 21.4% since May 2020 – a higher rate of increase than Chattanooga, Nashville, Tennessee and the United States.
While it s true that many new Knoxvillians are coming from outside the city and state, real estate experts say what makes the market challenging isn t out-of-town buyers it s a lack of available homes and other problems causing prices to go up.
On top of increasing costs, the lack of available land in East Tennessee is a concern.
Developers buy land and prepare it for housing by putting in the necessary infrastructure, including roads, utilities, sewer lines, electricity and more. Then, they sell the empty land to a building company to construct homes.
Instead of selling individual plots to builders, many developers are pushing to sell whole subdivisions as infrastructure prices rise. Cook said buying that much property isn t financially feasible for his business and other locally owned operations. The result is fewer developable lots for local home builders. The developable land inventory is down, and it s shrinking fairly rapidly, Brooks told Knox News. We live in an area of the country that has a lot of topography. We have a lot of water. So the land that is still available to be developed is more challenging pieces of property. I think that that will prove to be more of a challenge for the developm
Knoxville s most recognizable and largest home, Villa Collina, is one of those pending sales. The mansion and 8-acre property located on Lyons View Pike is listed for $7.9 million.
The 36,000-square-foot residence includes 50 rooms with highlights like the grotto wine cellar, home spa, three-story library and six-car garage.
It was initially listed by owner Resolution Systems LLC in October for $9.75 million. The mega mansion was built in 2000 by Mike and Deane Conley, former owners of heavy equipment company Regal Corp.
Contract signings, considered a barometer of purchases that will take place in the next one to two months, are 13.1% ahead of where they were one year ago with the country in the throes of the coronavirus outbreak. It’s just the second month-over-month increase so far in 2021 but potentially foretells a strong finish to the summer season.
Knoxville real estate agents on paying over budget to buy a home 2021 knoxnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from knoxnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.