The local housing market didn’t have the most single-family existing home sales in the East TN metro markets in May, but its growth rate was better than the other metros. And the median sales price performance wasn’t a standout. But it leads the other three metro markets in the year-to-date median price performance.

Benchmarking current local housing market information is becoming more and more important in this era of attracting and appealing to relocation buyers. And although the new residents from far-away states gets the most public attention, most new residents come for states closer to home and from those who are already Tennessee residents. In fact, the largest number of new residents in the Sullivan, Washington counties are from the neighboring counties. That makes sense for those and surrounding counties because every primary city in the region is within the sweetheart commute time. That means distance is not a major factor in an individual’s or family’s decision to relocate locally.  

If it weren’t for the number of new residents, the local region’s population picture would go stagnant and possibly negative in short order. It would happen because our region is in a negative natural growth situation and has been for a decade. That simply means the number of people who die and leave the area outnumbers the number of live births.  

During May, all the regional metro areas had fewer existing home sales than last year. A market throttled by low inventory and higher mortgage rates were the main reasons. At the same time, comparing this year’s moderating market to the first half of last year when the market was still roaring has to be considered.  

Here’s how single-family existing home sales for the first five months of 2023 looked in the primary East Tenn. markets: 

• NETAR (Tri-Cities + Greeneville) – down 8.8% 
• Chattanooga – down 14.3% 
• Knoxville – down 17.7% 
• Morristown – down 17.7% 

The medium price performance for the first five months of the year also shows the NETAR region performing better than the rest of the region. Its median price isn’t the highest, but it has the best growth rate performance. 

• NETAR (Tri-Cities + Greeneville) $242,500, up 9.7% 
• Knoxville – $325,000, up 3.2% 
• Morristown – $262,500, up 0.9% 
• Chattanooga – $301,000, up 0.33%