A Top Cookeville Real Estate Agent Perspective on Cookeville & Middle Tennessee Market and Life: Real Estate market in Cookeville, Putnam County and middle Tennessee shows signs of rebounding

Cookeville Tennessee Sounds Good to me, Why? Let us see...

"Cookeville, Tennessee sounds good to me" is a slogan that cannot be any truer for my family and me. We had the chance before moving to the land of the Smokies to move to California. A visit to San Jose California and a look at the real estate market was enough to scare us away. Our friends thought we were making a mistake, we just had a feeling it will be a good move. We were not sure, however, what to expect in the South, but soon we were happy we selected Cookeville as our new home. We were soon able to see the housing affordability and the ever increasing cultural and entertainment opportunities from professional football to ice hockey, from Country music to nature melodies in state and national parks. Discovering Dollywood in our backyard was as exciting to us as our three children.

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Saturday, October 3, 2009

Real Estate market in Cookeville, Putnam County and middle Tennessee shows signs of rebounding

Looking at reports of real estate sold in Cookeville, Putnam County and several counties and cities in the upper cumberland area in middle Tennessee show signs of rebounding. I have summarized some data in the following two tables. The first table shows a comparison of the number of homes sold in Putnam county and cookeville in 2008 & 2009 as well as those sold in a larger region in the upper cumberland during different comparative periods in the years 2008 & 2009. The first line shows the number of homes sold in September 2009 is up to 40 from 35. Examining the upper cumberland region in the same period show a similar increase. If the summer period from July to September is considered, it can be seen that the putnam county & cookeville region shows a robust increase that is not reflected in the larger upper Cumberland region. The year to date and one year statistics for both regions show a decline in the number of homes sold. These number show that the number of transactions are increasing compared to the same period last year. Looking at the 2007 period of course shows that the activity is still lower than the golden years for real estate.

	2008	2009
	#sold	#sold
Putnam County & Cookeville
Sep	35	40
Jul - Sep	108	130
Year to date	347	288
1 Year	459	382

Upper Cumberland Area, TN
Sep	101	110
Jul - Sep	367	349
Year to date	1088	899
1 Year	1461	1171

The second table that is included here shows the corresponding dollar amount corresponding to the purchases during the periods covered in the first table. The trends are similar with the total dollar amounts increasing in September and the summer period in general. The average home price is interesting as it shows a large increase of close to 10K in Putnam county in September and 32K for the larger area. This of course should not be falsly interpreted as an increase in the home prices itself, but more of an indication that consumers are getting better apetite for buying homes in the higher ranges of prices.

	2008	2009		chg in Avr. Price
	$	$	% change
Putnam County & Cookeville
Sep	5029961	6087900	21.03	8484
Jul - Sep	16427433	20232567	23.16	3529
Year to date	53775627	41614808	-22.61	-10477
1 Year	70974906	54326851	-23.46	-12413

Upper Cumberland Area, TN
Sep	10948411	14934480	36.41	27368
Jul - Sep	48155732	46398822	-3.65	1733
Year to date	145910790	113120661	-22.47	-8280
1 Year	196179703	146690474	-25.23	-9008

The first time home buyers $8000 credit may be responsible for the acceleration of home buying in September and hopefully October as well, but the numbers indicate that there are signs of rebounding in the middle tennessee region and Cookeville and putnam county in particular. This region has not been as negatively affected by the recision due to the stable employers including Tennessee tech university and Cookeville regional medical center, Averitt, Cummins in the region. If you were on the fence regarding buying or investing in real estate, maybe it is time to take positive steps before you discover that you have missed an opportunity that does not happen that often.