The Tri-Cities housing market is not broken. Some people still worry it might be. But waiting on the sidelines for a crash comes with a real cost. Every month you wait is a month someone else builds equity. It’s a month the market keeps outperforming the rest of the country, even as some local economic conditions cool. 

That’s true whether you want to buy or sell. A local Realtor® can help you read what this market means for you and figure out your next move. 

Start with the national picture. Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), recently updated his outlook. He now expects home sales to rise by about 4% this year. He expects prices to rise about 4% as well. 

Now look at how the Tri-Cities actually performed. In the first half of the year, home sales here rose 8.4%, according to the Northeast Tennessee Association of Realtors® (NETAR). The median sales price rose 3.64%. Our market beat the national forecast on sales and held its own on prices. 

It’s easy for those who want to be sellers to miss the “unicorn” years of 2020 and 2021. Mortgage rates were at historic lows. There were bidding wars on almost everything. Homes sold in days, and prices were sky rocking. But that was a once-in-a-generation event. Compared with almost any other time in the region’s modern history, today’s market is doing remarkably well. 

Local homeowners are also sitting on a mountain of equity. The latest data show 56.3% of them are equity rich. That means they owe 50% or less of what their home is worth. On top of that, close to half of the region’s homes carry no mortgage at all. 

That is not a fragile market. These are homeowners who can sell, stay, or make their next move from a position of strength rather than pressure. 

Here is one more sign of a steady market. NETAR data show home prices are still rising, but the pace has slowed. The six-month trend is now close to what Yun expects prices to average for the rest of the year. NETAR’s monthly chart that compares the Tri-Cities with the Knoxville, Morristown, and Chattanooga metro markets. It shows that the Tri-Cities is the most affordable of the group. 

Buyers have room to work, too. Sellers trimmed their asking price on close to half of the homes that sold in June. They also offered concessions on 60.4% of June sales. That pattern should hold into the fall. 

So the message runs both ways. It’s a good time to buy, thanks to solid sales, steady prices, price cuts, and seller concessions. And it’s a good time to sell, because buyer demand hasn’t gone away. This is still a seller’s market.