Housing $ solid a good economic sign: Smoak
As Farragut Board of Mayor and Alderman prepare for the 2024-25 fiscal year budget, it received some economic background from Town administrator David Smoak during its workshop Thursday, Feb. 22.
“Whenever I look at the budget process, I really try to pay attention to the economic outlook,” Smoak said. “What are we seeing in the market; what are we seeing locally, nationally; what’s upcoming in the future?
“One of the things we look at, from our perspective locally here, is our existing single-family home sales, and also new home starts that are occurring (and) commercial starts that are occurring as well,” he added. “(With) our overall residential permits, we had 84 new home starts last year.
“The year before that, we had 104, and the year before that we had 138; so it’s been pretty decent the last three years. But, what you’ve seen is, the value of those have been roughly the same.”
Smoak explained that means the average price of the home in Farragut is going up pretty substantially.
“We had a 60 percent increase in new home starts,” he said, noting the price per square foot last year was $223 for existing home sales. New homes’ per square foot value averaged $296.
“Those are up 4 or 5 percent from a year ago,” he said.
Commercially, Smoak said the last couple years have been good, as well, in regard to commercial permits and renovation permits.
