Kellams: And let's get the learning started right now with Michael Tilley from Talk Business & Politics, who almost every Friday delivers information about news from the previous week. Michael, thanks for being here today.
Tilley: Well, thank... No pressure. I've got to learn. I have to learn people stuff. Oh, I hope I can do that.
Kellams: I bet you can. And for learning purposes, this is great because we've got some numbers to talk about this week, including home sales in the Fort Smith metro. The arrow is up, I believe.
Tilley: Yeah. And I apologize in advance. This is going to be a numbers-heavy report for the whole segment. But so yeah, let's quickly look at some key numbers for the home sales.
There were 1,658 homes sold in the Fort Smith metro between January and June, up a little over 5%. And that gain is up against an entire 2025 in which home sales were down 8.2%. So it's up against a soft comparison.
And by the way, we get these numbers from Ashlee Milton. She's a principal broker with HomeSweet Realty. Has operations in Fort Smith, Northwest Arkansas. So she's kind enough to provide those.
But the combined value of the homes in that first six months was $419 million. That's up 8.4%. The average home sales price was up 3%.
Sebastian County and Crawford County obviously are the two largest counties in the metro. Sebastian County home sales were up 6.6%. Crawford County home sales were up 6.5%. And when I say they're the largest, they represent about 60. You're not about they in this report, they represented 64% of all home sales in the metro.
Now I kind of talked to Milton about what the numbers mean. On the face, a 5.5, 5.3% increase in numbers and an 8.2% increase in value. That's pretty good. And she said it is. Now she called it a "modest recovery from a soft year." She said home buyers, what their realtors are still seeing are home buyers still have concerns around interest rates.
Kellams: Yeah.
Tilley: For example, the 30-year fixed rate was 6.5, little over almost 6, or was 6.6% as of Aug. 13. That was up from 6.5% same time in 2025. So those rates are still ticking a little bit higher.
She says, no surprise, home buyers are still facing broader inflation. Her take was that the metro is not back to the level of activity that it was before the higher rates and affordability became a problem.
She said that buyers are, the interesting quote she gave us was that buyers haven't disappeared, but the higher borrowing costs and other higher costs have, quote, "changed the math for a lot of them."
Just one last thing. One of the primary reasons we watch home sales is because of the add-on effects to a local economy. So when folks buy homes, they often buy new furniture, they hire painters, they need plumbers, they install new windows. There's a lot of that. So that's just a note on why we like to cover those numbers.
Kellams: Well, you also like to cover building permit numbers. I think for many of the same reasons. The building permit numbers on paper are down. But as you kind of touched on last week, that's not the full story.
Tilley: No, it's not. And we may have to put a caveat on building permit numbers in 2026, this year, next year and maybe even 2028.
So again, a quick look at the numbers. The permit values. And we look at Fort Smith, Greenwood and Van Buren. The permit numbers in July was a little over $23 million. That was down almost 13% compared to July 2025.
The first seven months of the year, the region had $168 million activity. That's down almost 18%. When you look at Fort Smith, which is obviously the largest in the group, the city had $138, almost $138.5 million. That's down 23%.
But as we talked last week, we have a little bit of a reporting dilemma here at Talk Business & Politics because the Fort Smith building permits do not include. There are a couple of big things that it does not include. It's all of the new investment ongoing at this foreign military pilot training center at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith.
For example, earlier this year, they broke ground on a $74 million project. We reported last week another $81 million in work that's going to get started. There could be another $35 million to $100 million next year. That's not permitted. But that is still construction activity. There's still workers out there. They're still spending money at local stores. Construction supply stores are still selling those folks supplies.
And then the other big thing is we have to remember the permit numbers don't include that $200 million-plus project to build the I-49 River bridge. We have two huge, unique and ongoing projects in the region that aren't permitted. So are the numbers up or down? I don't know.
And one last thing. Some may argue that permit numbers are somewhat returned to pre-pandemic growth level. For example, in 2019, permit numbers were at $241.7 million in the region. But between 2020 and 2023, the permit values more than doubled. It jumped up to $520 million in 2023. So that was clearly not sustainable.
So I'm not an economist, but I would not be surprised if one argued that, hey, you're just getting back to a normal growth trend these last few years. But again, I just can't stress enough how it's not every day that a metro sets up a completely new military base in its backyard. Just what's going on in Fort Smith. So how do we account for that? Maybe it's incumbent upon us reporters to talk to some economists and economic analysts and figure out how we can put some context to that.
Kellams: Well, I heard audio proof of some of those planes on Tuesday. I was at Chaffee Crossing for a bit. I interviewed, I visited the Chaffee Barbershop and Military Museum, one of the stops I had in Fort Smith this week. And I bring that up because that's a great place for tourists to go. It's a really well done museum. And tourism jobs in June in Fort Smith for the first time topped 10,000.
Tilley: Yep, they hit 10,000. And of course the numbers could be revised. And sometimes those local numbers do have a little bit of volatility to them in terms of revisions, but the tourism numbers, which have been on a pretty good trend, they were up 5.3% in June. And they're up 8, almost 9% since June 2021. So that's a good number for the region. It's a good sector.
I think the only possible downside is those aren't the highest paying jobs, but they're starter jobs, but it's good to see that ticking up.
Now, the manufacturing jobs are nowhere near their peak employment back in June 1999. But the manufacturing numbers in June were an estimated 17,900. That's up almost 13% in the past five years. And so those are typically jobs that pay better than the average. So that's good for the metro.
Maybe the only downside is we're still seeing a decline in the professional business services sector. Those numbers are down almost 5% compared to June 2025. That hurts a little bit because those jobs are typically, they pay much better than the average. So we'd like to see that downward trend either moderate or reverse itself.
And then overall, the metro economy is still struggling to have a growth trend. We're around 102,000 nonfarm jobs in June. And that's well off the peak of almost 109,000 in September 2007. So some growth still needs to come in in terms of jobs.
Kellams: Exactly. Finally, a little helpful hint here. If you're at a party late summer or early autumn and you can't get a conversation started, bring up either Flock cameras or data centers and you're going to get some opinions. And data centers might be not coming to Fort Smith.
Tilley: Yeah. So who knows. And now I should say there are none there. There's none been announced, right? No one thinks there are. The chamber says we're not working on me. So that the board of directors, as have many communities around the country. I think CNBC reported recently there are more than 500 local governments nationwide have enacted some type of ban or moratorium or restriction on data centers.
But the Fort Smith board discussed this Tuesday with city staff, data center policies. And so we had several directors, and it was primarily Director Christina and Kevin Settle, who were the most aggressive in their anti-data center feelings. Director Catsavis, her quote was, "We want to make it as difficult as possible for data centers to be built."
And just a few quick points. Maggie Rice, who's the deputy city administrator, she outlined kind of some low-hanging fruit that the city can do. Have some more regulations around public utility certifications, water usage reports, setback rules, noise limitations, stuff like that.
Kevin Settle, though, he wants to use water as a leverage. The Fort Smith water, the Fort Smith area is different in some areas because it owns kind of the region. Well, not kind of. It does own the regional water system.
So it provides not only water to around 36,000, 37,000 water users, Fort Smith, but more than 150,000 in the region. It sells to a lot of wholesale water users.
So a couple of the ideas here, and they're looking into the legality of them. But one is that would require board approval. And this is outside the city of Fort Smith for a water line drop that's 2 inches or larger. This would essentially allow the Fort Smith board to have veto power on large water line drops outside the city limits.
And they would also, they're also talking about, this was Settle's push, to create a data center class, a data center customer class, and put a surcharge on their water rate. And he proposed a surcharge that's four times the rate.
So we'll see how those shake out legally. But look, the board, and there's no pushback from any other board members about what Settle, Director Settle, wanted. So look, I wouldn't be surprised to see the board enact some new measures, anti-data center measures, by the end of the year, if not sooner.
Kellams: It's interesting to watch this happen around cities. Do you get the feeling that there are members of the general population who would rather see data centers?
Tilley: Well, so some of the feedback. Yes, there are, but I think it's a minority, right? But some of the feedback I'm getting from folks is that, hey, hopefully, let's look at what's really going on. Let's not just look at assumptions. Let's not look at base decisions on fears. Let's look at what data centers, because data centers aren't monolithic. They come in different forms.
So, and then there's the law of unintended consequences. If you get too far out. So I think there's some, I don't want to say there's some voices saying, hey, yeah, let's look at it, but let's try to be responsible and make sure we're addressing policy around real-world issues and not just fears and knee-jerk reactions.
Kellams: You can read more about this, everything we've talked about and much more, at talkbusiness.net. Michael, stay cool. Let's meet up again next Friday.
Tilley: Well, anytime you invite us back, we're happy to be here.
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