Chattanooga housing market may be stabilizing

No one is saying that the Chattanooga-area housing market is "out of the woods" yet, but it is encouraging that August sales of homes in the area reached the highest monthly total in more than a year.

Nearly 600 residential units sold here in August, which was up almost 14 percent from July and 24 percent from the previous August. That puts Chattanooga well ahead of the nationwide 18.6 percent increase in home sales from August 2010 to August of this year.

Jay Bell, owner of Bell Development, pointed out that we're still below the stronger housing market of a few years ago. But he sounded a hopeful note nonetheless.

"It's going to be slow, steady growth from here on out," he told the Times Free Press.

Low interest rates -- and low prices resulting partly from unfortunately high rates of foreclosures -- appear to be driving the growth in local home sales.

There are still, sadly, many more foreclosures to come as millions of Americans remain unemployed and more and more of them become unable to pay their mortgages.

But we can take comfort from the fact that the Chattanooga housing market, at least, may be stabilizing somewhat.

Upcoming Events