Kentucky LLC buys part of the mothballed ‘Orange Route’

Welcome to July! I hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday weekend. Since our office was closed on Friday, July 3, it is no surprise that last week’s numbers were slightly less than the week prior. In the first week of July, we recorded 282 warranty deeds valued at $82.64 million. This reflects a 38 document and a $20.4 million value decrease from the prior week. On the financing side of things, 455 deeds of trust were recorded worth $115.5 million. In comparison to the previous week, this represents 84 fewer trust deeds at $30 million less in value.

Nick McBride

The largest conveyance recorded last week pertains to a large property in the Hardin Valley area. A tract greater than 100 acres was acquired by K&S Exchange XIX LLC, a Kentucky limited liability company. It bought the property from Linda Seal Byrd at a value of $5.05 million. This land was originally supposed to be part of the “orange route” beltway around Knoxville. The orange route (see below) was an interstate plan that would bypass downtown Knoxville by cutting from the I-40/ I-75 split to I-75 North below the Norris/ Clinton exit.

The second-largest conveyance involved what some may know as the Eugenia F. Williams property. This approximate 21 +/- acre property is near the Cherokee Country Club and runs from Lyons View Pike down to the Tennessee River. It was sold to Aslan Foundation by the state of Tennessee on behalf of the University of Tennessee for $4.025 million.

 Orange Route

To summarize the financing side of real estate for the week, we again highlight the largest lenders. Loans over a million were issued by:

Bank of Tennessee                              $8.4 million

First People’s Bank of Tennessee     $2.13 million

Truist Bank                                           $2.1 million

Home Federal Bank of Tennessee   $1.9 million

Regions Bank                                      $1.9 million

Pinnacle Bank                                     $1.57 million

Citizens National Bank                      $1.5 million

First Horizon Bank                             $1.15 million

BayVanguard Bank                            $1.14 million.

Check out our top lender page at https://knoxcounty.org/apps/top_lender/

Although the last week of June did not outperform the previous week, the month as a whole showed greater numbers than June a year ago. This June we recorded 1,311 warranty deeds valued at $362.9 million. This is 46 documents and $2.2 million more than June a year ago. This June also surpassed last year’s financing numbers with 2,310 trust deeds recorded valuing $600.1 million. This reflects 753 additional documents recorded with a total value of $72 million more than June of 2019.

Though things still seem a bit uncertain, the real estate market continues to stay active. The register of deeds office will continue to be open to serve Knox County and to report our activity with you. May your July be off to a grand start!

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Nick McBride is the Knox County register of deeds.