Here's what happened in June for the Knoxville Tennessee real estate market. Sales Report Beginning 06/01/2007, Ending 06/30/2007 Single-Family Unit Sales - Residential Other Statistics BedroomsPrice Class2 orLess34 orMoreCondoSoldResidentialActiveCondoActive$0 - $19,9993200220$20,000 - $29,9999200550$30,000 - $39,9991412101260$40,000 - $49,9991111201781$50,000 - $59,999176101814$60,000 - $69,9999180229115$70,000 - $79,99916242228426$80,000 - $89,99924330736223$90,000 - $99,999124451431548$100,000 - $119,9991573519540122$120,000 - $139,999201002229864173$140,000 - $159,9996991721833138$160,000 - $179,999101052317848183$180,000 - $199,9991642413822144$200,000 - $249,99971034371354339$250,000 - $299,9994544461253167$300,000 - $399,99934758111289193$400,000 - $499,99931730760784$500,000 or... 07/18/2007

 Oh, say, can you see anyone flying their American Flag this July 4th?In our new neighborhood, on our street, I can count one other American Flag flying today besides ours, and no others in sight. Sad.We plan to begin attending our homeowner's association meetings starting with the next one and you can bet this is a topic I intend to bring up.231 years ago on this day 56 American patriots signed the Declararation of Independence officially breaking their ties with England and formed the United States of America.In signing the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776, these 56 brave men pledged "to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."Pretty heady stuff pledging your life, your fortunes, and your honor for something you believe in. Here's what happened to some of... 07/04/2007

Your home is more than just a place for you to live, it also represents one of the most important and major financial decisions/investments that you will ever make.  Most folks will buy and sell several homes over the course of our lifetimes, so it is important to consider the resale potential of each home you purchase, before you ever purchase it.  Below are some basic fundamental principles you should follow when you first begin shopping for a home that can affect re-sale value:What is your intention in buying a new home?  Is it a place to hang your hat for a long time, are you looking for a place to retire, looking for something with lower maintenance or do you see great potential for buying now because the market is hot and reselling years later to turn a profit?  Examine your motiv... 07/01/2007

Sales Report Beginning 05/01/2007, Ending 05/31/2007 Single-Family Unit Sales - Residential Other Statistics BedroomsPrice Class2 orLess34 orMoreCondoSoldResidentialActiveCondoActive$0 - $19,9995200280$20,000 - $29,9996600580$30,000 - $39,9991510101240$40,000 - $49,9991611601781$50,000 - $59,9991317102012$60,000 - $69,99928172726613$70,000 - $79,99931253828727$80,000 - $89,999242801037827$90,000 - $99,999183371331852$100,000 - $119,9992083831552105$120,000 - $139,999151211622817173$140,000 - $159,99971191928786129$160,000 - $179,9993912214849169$180,000 - $199,9995771519748144$200,000 - $249,999119749191302313$250,000 - $299,99976444141173140$300,000 - $399,99914059131243187$400,000 - $499,99902021359085$500,000 or Over19362104441Totals226870309203109421608Average Price(in Thousands $)9... 06/21/2007

Playing right now in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park's Elkmont Campground area is one of nature's great light shows. Synchronized fireflies blink their captivating lights in perfect unison during this annual event.Biologists theorize it's a way for the females to attract males but whatever the reason it's a rare treat as well as a fascinating sight to gaze into the dark woods and see thousands of firefly lights blinking on and off in perfect unison. The Great Smoky Mountains Park and Elkmont are less than an hours drive from Knoxville so load the kids up, bring your flashlight (with some red cellophane taped over the lens to preserve your night vision) and head out to enjoy this annual light show.Read all about it here. 06/16/2007

 So you're driving along this quiet, country lane and all of a sudden you pass a cute little white frame house with a funny eared dragon's head sticking through the roof smiling at you.  Whoa....................it's 11 AM, I haven't had anything to drink since that glass of Chianti Friday night......I'm not asleep I don't think, so what the heck is going on here. I turned around and went back.........sure enough the funny eared dragon is still there along with this guy and a whole menagerie of whimsical characters. It seems David the owner has a great sense of humor and creates these characters and objects around his house for the enjoyment of passers by. Nothing for sale, just a hobby for him although he's a pretty talented artist to create some of the stuff setting around his yard. Th... 06/10/2007

Below is an note from KAAR requesting aid for a food collection campaign~please help spread the word to help    YOUR HELP IS NEEDED IN YOUR COMMUNITYThe Community Involvement Committee will be conducting a food collection campaign for the Second Harvest Food Bank from June 4-15, 2007. Non-perishable food items will be collected to help build the Food Bank's supplies during a time of year when the supply is greatly depleted and few are making contributions. Non-perishable items are needed, and some of the suggestions are: canned meats (tuna, spam, deviled ham, etc.), macaroni and cheese, dried beans, soups, canned vegetables, baby food, formula, etc.. They will also accept gift cards from the area grocery stores and discount houses. If you would like to participate, set out a box and cal... 06/07/2007

Sales Report Beginning 04/01/2007, Ending 04/30/2007 Single-Family Unit Sales - Residential Other Statistics BedroomsPrice Class2 orLess34 orMoreCondoSoldResidentialActiveCondoActive$0 - $19,9994300250$20,000 - $29,9996100620$30,000 - $39,9991214001160$40,000 - $49,999711101783$50,000 - $59,9991021312202$60,000 - $69,99917232326416$70,000 - $79,99913163225932$80,000 - $89,999233361133723$90,000 - $99,99973571730957$100,000 - $119,999968727552107$120,000 - $139,99981201318767134$140,000 - $159,9994731421734149$160,000 - $179,999595219801131$180,000 - $199,999375138696151$200,000 - $249,99969333201274301$250,000 - $299,99974540101109137$300,000 - $399,9993355641230192$400,000 - $499,99902121157182$500,000 or Over07300100342Totals144789270152105071559Average Price(in Thousands $)102.7173.8... 06/05/2007

And its lightning bugs...........(fireflies to some of you) but a very special kind of lightning bug. Each year in the Smoky Mountains park, especially around the Elkmont Campground and Little River Trail area, the lightning bugs put on a special and spectacular light show for visitors. Large groups of them combine to flash in unison. Now if you've never been out in woods at night and seen literally thousands of these little lights flashing in synronization let me tell you it's truly a sight to behold.Scientists speculate the syncornized flashing is related to mating. The've observed females lighting on or under a bush and starting to flash their light on and off. Soon male firelies start gathing and in just a few minutes the whole group of fireflies are flashing in almost perfect synro... 06/04/2007

" In an interview with USA TODAY, however, the former Tennessee senator not only makes it clear that he plans to run, he describes how he aims to do it. He's planning a campaign that will use blogs, video posts and other Internet innovations to reach voters repelled by politics-as-usual in both parties.""A second national poll shows former Sen. Fred Thompson in third place among Republican voters in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. The poll of 590 likely GOP primary voters was conducted by Rasmussen March 26-29 and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points. Among voters who identify themselves as very conservative, Thompson with 19 percent ranks a close second to Giuliani at 20 percent"I know that in Tennessee the buzz for Thompson is building daily; I'm expecting to see... 05/31/2007

While I believe we can all agree that living next door to a convicted (or even an unconvicted) sex offender is not a desirable state of affairs, some studies are now showing that ever tightening restrictions about where they are allowed to live and even work, could drive some to re-offend by creating more mental and financial pressures on them.Besides the obvious intent of protecting our children from these vermin the economic motive also creeps in. A study in Mecklenburg County NC (Charlotte) showed that the mere presence of a convicted sex offender in a neighborhood lowered property values anywhere from $4,500 to $5,500 per home and the presence of sex offenders just in Mecklenburg County has shrunk property values up to 58 million dollars!On the other side of the coin, some sex offen... 05/31/2007

We've had lots of articles about what makes a successful real estate website and I think most of us can agree that there are 3 key ingredients that must be present to ensure success. Has to be easily findable by buyers and sellersHas to have compelling content to cause visitors to want to stay and return another dayHas to have compelling reasons to cause visitors to contact you and do business with you. Items 2 & 3 can often be combined with a feature that raises the comfort level of your visitors and also gives them a reason to want to contact you and do business with you. In my case I've recently added some audio testimonials to my site from some audio business cards I had made several years ago. I had the 4 testimonials re-recorded in an MP-3 format and places in a couple of highly v... 05/24/2007

And just think, you almost missed it. ;-)As a avid hiker and backpacker in the nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park I run across the occasional black bear in the backcountry. However black bears in their native enviroment are shy and will usually run at first contact with humans. They do however like to eat and if you're packing food, cables are provided to hang the food at night and keep the bears and other critters away. It's a regulationin the Smokies that you hang your food at night while camping in a backcountry campground or trail shelter.Black bears like to visit frontcountry campgrounds because of the plentiful, easy to get, food supply.Of course our local Knoxville Zoo is participating with Bear Awareness Day.The stated purpose of National Bear Awareness Week is to educat... 05/18/2007

AR CEO Matt wrote a blog about "trigger leads" and what an unwarranted invasion of privacy they are. For those who may have never heard of a "trigger lead" (like me before now), Matt describes them thusly:"What is a trigger lead?After a lender receives a loan app for a potential borrower, the first things they do is to pull a credit report, that includes information from the three major credit bureaus.  This request for a credit report triggers an alert to these credit bureaus that the borrower they are running the check for is in the market for a loan.  These alerts packaged along with the persons private information and anything gathered via the lender pulling the report is packaged up into a "hot lead" to be resold."I agree with Matt that this practice is distasteful and I would not ... 05/14/2007

A recent blog pretty soundly condemned interest only loans as a bad deal straight across the board. However, depending on your client's financial acumen and risk tolerance, an interest only loan might be just what they need to achieve a particular goal at the lowest costs.I understand if you have an interest only loan and you perhaps live in southern California or south Florida right now and have a house you barely qualified for to start with financed with an interest only ARM and it starts adjusting upward, you might get financially uncomfortable or in serious trouble pretty easily. After all, who really believes a 3-4% interest rate on an ARM is going to last very long.But if you're a well capitalized, savvy investor and you used an interest only loan to buy a house you're going to fi... 05/11/2007

Here's the 1st Quarter Sales Report for the Greater Knoxville Area Association of REALTORS®See a comparison to the same time periods in 2006 and 2005 on my Knoxville Tennessee Real Estate Blog.Sales Report Beginning 01/01/2007, Ending 03/31/2007 Single-Family Unit Sales - Residential Other Statistics BedroomsPrice Class2 orLess34 orMoreCondoSoldResidentialActiveCondoActive$0 - $19,99911920230$20,000 - $29,999181710540$30,000 - $39,999302450970$40,000 - $49,9994627501783$50,000 - $59,9993255612153$60,000 - $69,99939497625718$70,000 - $79,99952738823132$80,000 - $89,999448281533032$90,000 - $99,9993196102930858$100,000 - $119,99947181275251194$120,000 - $139,999302732945732119$140,000 - $159,999122294361680133$160,000 - $179,999172105034757126$180,000 - $199,999111414738649183$200,000 - $... 05/06/2007

Because of higher growth in the west Knoxville area compared to the rest of Knox County the west Knoxville school system is not surprisingly becoming overcrowded. A few years ago two new elementary schools were built and 2 years ago a new middle school. Now we have under construction a new high school scheduled to open for the fall term in 2008. On site webcams lets you watch the new school being built. Again not surprisingly, a vocal minority of arents and students are up in arms because they're being rezoned to the new school.The Knox County School has held public hearings to solicit input from concerned parties and most have been standing room only with the vocal minority making lots of noise in opposition to the proposed rezoning plan. The plan passed last week by a vote of 5 to 4 b... 05/06/2007

The Knoxville Area Association of REALTORS® has been working on a huge portal website recently titled View Homes.com to display all of our listings with lots of user friendly features such as maps with a "rubber band" search of listings, links to area information, and my favorite, about 70 clips of area information, things to so, local figures, sports, lakes, and tons of other stuff. Member can put this neutral link  into their personal or company website which also links to all the clips or you can choose your favorite and post them individually. Here's a sample of the individual sites; the Knoxville ZooSome of the cool things View Homes does is automatically notify you when someone clicks on one of your listings, let's you register your clients on the site, give some consumer real est... 04/19/2007

According to a survey Forbes Magazine conducts annually, Knoxville ranked 5th for the second consecutive year out of 179 major cities surveyed. The 179 cities were ranked for job and income growth, business and living costs, education of the work force, migration trends and quality of life issues such as crime rates and cultural opportunities.No surprise there for the local folks; we've known for years that the greater Knoxville area is a great place to live. We have a very business friendly climate, low cost of living, talented work force, access to great research facilities at nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, and lots of stuff to do as well as very affordable housing. Raleigh, North Carolina was the number 1 city followed by Provo, Utah, Boise, Ida... 04/06/2007

Last night in Cleveland Ohio, The University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team won their 7th national championship defeating Rutger's by a score of 59 to 46.Superstar Sophmore Candace Parker was the Vol's leading scorer with 17 points including 6 consecutive free throws in the game's final two minutes. Small in height, but a giant in playmaking, guard Shannon Bobbitt only stands 5 foot 2 inches tall but she played like she was 9 foot 9, scoring 13 points including 4 three point shots and causing several turnovers.Kia Vaughn scored 20 points for the Rutgers team; no one else broke into double scoring figures.  04/04/2007