The quest for the perfect comp

fr compsSome weeks Tommey Allen spends more time behind the wheel than a long-haul trucker.

It’s not all driving time though. Most of it is just idling along the curb, parked on the roadside and sitting in driveways. Over the past two years, Allen and the rest of the Macon County appraisal team have scouted every inch of road — paved, gravel, dirt or otherwise — to size up all 44,000 parcels of property and ultimately make a prognostication of what they’re worth.

Back from rock bottom: Macon Realtors reflect on the past, present and future

coverJune Tassillo loves real estate, but she never knew how exciting it could be until she worked her first all-or-nothing, one-day-only sales blitz for a comeback development.

SEE ALSO:
The quest for the perfect comp
Macon’s reval: unplugged and uncensored
What you really want to know when new property values arrive in the mail
Meet Richard Lightner, the eagle eye of Macon’s reval

When the gates swung open the morning of the big day, in rushed a line of prospective buyers with every intention of snagging their dream lot before the day was out.

Signs of the pending bust were overlooked

A Main Street law office without windows is an odd place for a such a good view.

But Waynesville attorney Frank Queen has had a front-row seat to the mountains from here, witnessing thousands of acres trade hands — land with scenic vistas, along creeks, in forests, behind gates, on farms, hugging cliffs and tucked in coves — during the real estate boom of the 2000s.

Development done right: Failed projects open door for those taking the long view

fr avalonRandy Best was a rare bird in the development heyday of the 2000s. Where others just saw dollar signs, Best actually saw land.

“I would spend a month walking a piece of property after we bought it. I walked every inch and when I was done, I knew where every house site was going to be, where every septic was going to be, how the roads would lay,” said Best, a Haywood County native.

Picking up the pieces proves costly, time-consuming for local governments

coverIn a region still reeling from damaged land and dented lives in the wake of the real estate boom and bust, signs of salvation are few and far between. But here’s one for the history books.  

Twice in the past year, Haywood County has used a little-known clause of financial legalese to hold developers’ feet to the fire after they walked away mid-stream. It’s a minuscule but unprecedented victory in a rocky world of marred up mountains and abandoned developments.

Jackson and Macon poised to lose their cash cow in wake of second-home real estate crash

cover2When inflated real estate values in the second-home market came back down to earth, the touchdown wasn’t gentle. 

It was more of a crash-landing, and five years later two mountains counties are still sifting through the wreckage.

A real estate phoenix: Foreclosed second-home lots transformed into low-income housing

fr bethelvillageThe story is all too familiar.

A property developer buys a large swath of land with grand plans to build high-end homes and sell them for a substantial profit. But the housing bubble bursts. The lots don’t move. The property sits empty, and eventually, the developer can’t repay the bank loan used to purchase the land. It falls into foreclosure and becomes an artifact of the U.S. real estate market crash.

Low values prompt reval delay

Real estate prices have taken such a drastic plunge in Macon and Jackson counties — which once boasted the highest concentration of mega-developments catering to the high-end second home market — that county commissioners there keep postponing the countywide property revaluation.

Going once, going twice … Local banks still feeling hangover from unprecedented boom and bust

fr bankswildflowerAs Macon Bank scurried to get in on the ground floor of the real estate heyday in the mountains, it unwittingly stumbled into a house of cards, and found itself caught up in a scheme akin to insider trading that artificially inflated high-end lot prices and duped the bank into making risky loans.

Some banks still struggling to pick up the pieces

coverThe view from Roger Plemens office is hard to beat.

Bay windows serve up a bird’s eye view of the Nantahala mountain range, a vantage point that must have been a factor when Macon Bank chose this hilltop for its prestigious corporate headquarters that tower above Franklin.

Smokey Mountain News Logo
SUPPORT THE SMOKY MOUNTAIN NEWS AND
INDEPENDENT, AWARD-WINNING JOURNALISM
Go to top
Payment Information

/

At our inception 20 years ago, we chose to be different. Unlike other news organizations, we made the decision to provide in-depth, regional reporting free to anyone who wanted access to it. We don’t plan to change that model. Support from our readers will help us maintain and strengthen the editorial independence that is crucial to our mission to help make Western North Carolina a better place to call home. If you are able, please support The Smoky Mountain News.

The Smoky Mountain News is a wholly private corporation. Reader contributions support the journalistic mission of SMN to remain independent. Your support of SMN does not constitute a charitable donation. If you have a question about contributing to SMN, please contact us.