BY DON FENLEY

Home sales in the Tri-Cities region rose 6.2% in March, driven by a sharp 25.0% jump in the move-up market. At the same time, luxury market sales continued to decline, according the the Northeast Tennessee Association of Realtors (NETAR) Home Sales Report.

The affordable market posted a 3.9% gain for the month while the luxury market fell 5.6%, extending what has become a persistent soft spot in higher-end residential sales. New listings edged up 0.8% in March, and overall inventory expanded 5.3%.

First-Quarter Trend

The March data caps a strong first quarter for the region’s mid-tier housing sector. Q1 2026 sales rose 9.3% overall, with the move-up market gaining 18.3% and the affordable segment up 13.6% over the three-month period.

New listings for the quarter were up 3.9%, while inventory expanded 9.2%, offering some relief to a market that has been constrained by limited supply.

Luxury Market: Price Cuts and Concessions Both Deepened in Q1

The luxury segment, which posted a 6.6% sales decline in Q1 2026, showed widening seller accommodation compared to the same period a year ago, with both pre-listing price reductions and post-listing concessions trending higher.

Sellers reduced their original asking price by an average of $24,260 in Q1 2026, up from $23,681 in Q1 2025. As a share of the original list price, the average reduction widened to 3.2% from 2.7% a year earlier.

Concessions averaged $22,969 in Q1 2026, up $3,376 from the $19,593 average recorded in Q1 2025. The average concession rate rose to 3.1% from 2.6% over the same period.

Combined, luxury sellers absorbed an average of roughly $47,200 in total price erosion from original ask to close in Q1 2026, compared to approximately $43,300 a year earlier.

Notably, the Q1 2026 concession rate of 3.14% marginally exceeded the pre-listing price reduction rate of 3.12%. That means buyers extracted more at the negotiating table than sellers had already conceded before listing. In Q1 2025, the relationship ran the other direction, with pre-listing reductions averaging 2.7% against a concession rate of 2.6%. The shift is a early signal of changing negotiating dynamics in the upper price tier that will be examined in a separate CoreData price analysis.

The share of luxury closing at or above listing price edged down to 25.8% in Q1 2026 from 27.4% in Q1 2025, a further indicator of softening negotiating leverage at the upper end of the market.

This report is a combination of AI and human analysis.

Categories: REAL ESTATE