Tom Tveidt at the Asheville Chamber of Commerce knows his stuff, and he was interviewed recently for a story on November home sales that ran in the Asheville Citizen Times.   It’s worth reading alongside Don Davies November Asheville market reports.  The two sources, taken together, show that the Asheville real estate market is holding up better than some expected, particularly at the lower end ($285,000 and below).  They also show that the market slowdown has reached painful levels of inventory at the high end.

An excerpt from the Citizen Times: “The 50.4 percent decline in sales over November 2007 is the steepest since at least 1995, according to records kept by Tom Tveidt, head of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce’s research arm.”

Here’s the link to the original Citizen Times story, and here’s the link to the future proof version.

The last paragraph is the most interesting to me, “In the Asheville metropolitan area — Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Transylvania counties — values fell 0.65 percent in the third quarter but were up 2.1 percent for the 12-month period, the agency said. The annual increase ranked the Asheville area 43rd among 292 metros around the country.” Is this because we were slow to feel the full effects of the recession or because our market is protected by mitigating factors?  It’s probably some of both.

I also note that Don Davies’ recent reports show some strength at homes around $285,000 and considerable weakness at homes above $400,000.  The upper end of Asheville residential real estate is unlikely to fix itself until the larger economy gets on track, as those sales depend heavily on money from out of state.  The recent bankruptcy filing by Versant (link to article on the Ashevgas blog), a luxury residential community, is further evidence of problems at the high end.

– Clark Mackey, Sparkdog

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