15-05-2025
Ribbon cut on new 264-home neighborhood in North Knoxville
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — A new neighborhood is coming to Knox County, bringing 264 single-family homes to the area.
The Harvest Meadow neighborhood is located in northeast part of the county along Babelay Road and already has 12 homes completed. Local leaders and the companies behind the development celebrated the neighborhood on Thursday and how they are bringing more attainable housing to the market.
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'Homeownership's the American dream. It's where wealth is created. So these homes, people who maybe not would have pulled the trigger now will be able to get into a home and start generating wealth,' said Clayton Homes CEO Kevin Clayton.
With the new houses priced in the low-$300,000s, Clayton said they are nearly $100,000 less than the median listing price in Knoxville.
Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs spoke about the need for more housing like this during Thursday's event.
'We're not talking about very poor people who can't afford a place to live,' Jacobs said. 'We're talking about middle class folks who are just priced out of the market, and that has some serious implications.'
By partnering with Cook Bros. Homes, Clayton said this is the problem they are trying to fix.
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'You can produce a home at a lower cost, which means you can sell it at a lower cost and make it more attainable to people that are looking to buy homes,' said Cook Bros. Homes CEO John Cook.
Cook said they are also building these houses to be as energy efficient as possible, building parts of the home in a factory.
'These homes are built to DOE's Zero Energy Ready Program, so they come from the factory as energy efficient as you can build a home in today's market,' he said.
By doing this, they estimate new homeowners to save around $900 a year on electric utilities, and they say this kind of manufacturing may be the future of housing construction.
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'The best automobiles, rocket ships, everything that's super high quality, energy efficient, is built indoors, and so it just makes sense,' said Clayton. 'The future does mean that components of the home will be built indoors where you can do it more efficiently and effectively.'
While 12 homes have been built in the neighborhood so far, the additional homes are expected to be completed in phases throughout this year into the beginning of 2026.
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