Prospective buyers of Knoxville homes for sale have been pressured to do so by the looming deadline of the $8,000 federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers, said Jim Matheny of WBIR Knoxville.  “The impending deadline has provided agents with a rush of business,” the report states.  “The first-time homebuyer credit has had a significant impact. We consider first-time homes in the price range below $200,000. If you look at the transactions, homes in that price range are dominating the market right now.”  In fact, most of Knoxville’s home sales were in conjunction with the tax credit offered by Washington, D.C.  Don Fenley of the Kingsport Times News claimed that about 36,000 people in the state of Tennessee had filed for the federally sponsored home purchase credit by the middle of September.  The fear amongst analysts is that the end of the financial benefits granted by the credit will slow the market’s sales rate to a tortoise pace going into the lull of winter.

According to CNNMoney.com and Money Magazine’s 2009 Real Estate Market Forecast, real estate in Knoxville will suffer a home price decrease of just two percent, dropping to $147,000.  This is just a moderate change as the recent estimates only estimate a total peak to bottom change of about 5.3 percent; the bottom being estimated as the second quarter of 2010.  Foreclosures also improved, according to Yahoo! Real Estate that reported a 5.6 percent increase in foreclosed property prices.  Through the period ending October 12, 2009, the median price of a foreclosed home increased to just under $97,000.  This comes as good news to current homeowners in Knoxville who have been able to retain the majority of their properties’ values while people in various other cities across the Midwestern and the Southern United States have suffered tremendous cuts in house values.