Interest rates continue to climb, hitting 6.453% on a 30-year, conforming, fixed-rate mortgage. This is the fifth increase in mortgage rates since the Federal Reserve dropped its rate by a half point.

This increase is 0.41% higher than the low of 6.04% when the rate drop was announced Sept. 24. It seems buyers have surrendered, realizing that the Federal Reserve policies have no effect – at least in a positive sense – on mortgage rates.

Anecdotally, there are signs of significant movement in the market with houses selling again at open houses. Houses that are in move-in condition are selling, while their competitors that need work are not faring as well.

While college football has its fans, Saturday open houses are now more popular than those held Sundays. Monday morning quarterbacks are better than many of those who perform Sundays.

Sale of the Week

High-rise condominiums continue to provide a landing spot for urban dwellers, some relocating from lands unknown and others hopping from one downtown high-rise to the next.

In the past, before the Age of Giarratana, real estate agents used price per square foot as a unit of measure to determine the value of homes. This process worked at the time, and there was modest, consistent growth – 5% to 7% annually – in the prices of homes in the Greater Nashville area.

When downtown condo development began in the early 2000s, developers began to include a surcharge in for each level of the building. In the early going, that charge normally was $2,000 per floor. A person on the 17th floor, for example, would pay $32,000 more than the purchaser of the exact floor plan on the first floor. These were pre-sales before construction of the buildings.

When the Icon opened pre-sales to a room full of buyers, developers added an additional $5,000 as each floor plan was sold out. They placed more than 130 units under contract in 24 hours, raising prices for $5,000 as the plans were devoured on each floor plus the $2,000 per floor.

In these high-rise developments, there are six to eight different designs for each unit, and they are stacked atop each other, usually some two-bedroom plans alongside some one-bedroom units.

When individual owners began to resell, appraisers were forced to appraise the units based on value. Whether that plan had sold out three years prior as many as three times – or the fact that one unit was three stories higher than the next – had little consequence. The purchase and sale agreement carried some weight, especially if there were others pending.

As time passed, the price per square foot of condos lapped single-family homes. This evolution was quite confounding to many, as living space was measured using the interior dimensions of the condo rather than the traditional means of measuring the exterior, thereby giving value to brick, insulation, studs and drywall. Those components added approximately 6 inches to the measurements.

In a dwelling in which the interior measurements were 30 feet by 40 feet, for example, condo square footage would be 1,200 square feet. A single-family, standalone structure would be 30.5 feet by 40.5 feet, or 1,235.5 square feet.

At $200 per square foot, the single-family home would hold a sales price advantage of $247,050 to $240,000. Single-family homes have yards.

Last week, a unit in the Giarratana’s 505 closed at $1,128 per square foot, selling for $1.525 million, which is not the highest price-per-square-foot sale in the building. That was $1,130,600, and there were two others that sold for more than $1,200 per square foot.

In the postal codes of 37215, 37205, 37212 and 37206, areas that include Belle Meade, Green Hills, East Nashville, Hillsboro West End, Richland and Whitland, there were no sales of more than $900 per square foot in the past year.

Christian Rasmussen and Stephen Miller listed the condo for $1.575 million and sold it in 68 days. Bill Swoner of Hillside Realty represented the buyer, who moved from a single-family home in Wilson County.

This home is two units combined, yielding 1,374 square feet with two bedrooms and two full bathrooms.

The owner, Rasmussen wrote, “spared no expense in combining the two to create an intelligent design complete with a custom office, white oak Japanese guest spa, infrared sauna and a private south facing balcony.”

Richard Courtney is a licensed real estate broker with Fridrich & Clark Realty, LLC and can be reached at [email protected].