By DON FENLEY

TRI-CITIES, Tenn. – The typical profit on Tri-Cities area single-family existing home and condo sales is up $23,000 (10%) from the first three quarters of last year and trending toward the fourth best annual appreciation rate since 2005.

That’s based on the median sales price. So, since the median benchmarks the middle of the market, half of the sales were for more. The median sales price at the end of Sept. was $253,000, and the average was $298,839.

And that’s a regional number. When you look at how some of the community and city markets are performing, the hyper-local effects of real estate kick in. For example, here’s the sub markets with double-digit price performance for the first nine months of this year compared to the same period last year:

Roan Mountain – up 45%

Bulls Grap – up 19%

Mountain City – up 16%

Kingsport – up 16%

Greeneville – up 14%

Rogersville – up 13%

Jonesborough – up 10%

Some of those big percentage increases in the smaller markets are skewed. It only takes a couple of high-end sales in markets like Bulls Gaps’ 29 year-to-date sales or Roan Mountain’s 27 sales to do the trick.  But many of the region’s smaller markets have and continue to see structural growth in both population and home prices.

Hawkins and Johnson counties are two examples. They have the highest estimated year-over-year population growth rates in the region so far this year.

Categories: REAL ESTATE