A recurring item in monthly regional home sales reports for the last two and a half years has been declining home sales. It’s typically referred to as a retreat toward a pre-pandemic market level. The regional trend description is accurate, but in the hyper local world of real estate, other stories develop in community markets that contradict the regional trend.

May’s numbers are a prime example.

Bristol VA has a lot going for it. The Hard Rock Casino has injected a growing vitality into its business and tourism economies. But home sales growth has been another issue. It has consistently been at the back of the pack until recently.

May’s home sales in Bristol, VA, led the region in growth. The year-to-date sales were up 95% from last year. It’s five-month median price trend wasn’t that high, but it was above the regional average.

Another community market showing strong sales growth trend this year is Erwin. It’s five-month sales trend is up 44%.

The third strongest trend in May was Kingsport. Model City sales were up 24.7% from the first five months of last year.

Rounding out the eight community markets that outperformed the five-month regional growth level were:

• Mountain City, up 24.2%
• Jonesborough, up 21.7%
• Bulls Gap, up 14.3%
• Greeneville, up 11.8%
• Blountville, up 10.4%

May’s regional median sales price was up 5.1% from the first five months of last year.

Twelve and the region’s 22 community markets did better than that.

Price growth In community market can be dicey since a high or rock-bottom sales in a market with a smaller number of sales can create a big skew. But with that said, here are the markets that had a better five-month growth than the regional prices for the first five months of this year.

• Bulls Gap, up 38.6%
• Roan Mountain, up 24.8%
• Elizabethton, up 22.6%
• Bristol TN, up 22.2%
• Telford, up 22%
• Morrisburg, up 18%
• Mount Carmel, up 16.8%
• Greeneville, up 14.4%
• Rogersville, up 11.6%
• Jonesborough, up 10.3%
• Johnson City, up 8.1%
• Bristol VA, up 5.8%