SUMMARY

The Tri-Cities luxury market is selling more homes than it did a year ago. It is also selling them slower, cheaper than asked, and to buyers who are in no hurry.

By DON FENLEY

Something changed at the top of the Tri-Cities housing market this year, and it did not show up in the sales count. The market is broader than it was a year ago. It reaches more towns, absorbs more homes and moves more money.

The count looks healthy. Forty-eight homes sold for $1 million or more in the first half of this year. Forty-two sold in the same stretch last year. On volume alone, the top end of the market is having a good year.

Look at how those sales happened, and a different picture develops. Sellers waited two months longer. Twice as many of them cut their asking price. Almost nine in 10 accepted less than they were asking on the day the offer came in. And not one sale closed above its asking price.

The story of the 2026 high-end market is not scarcity. It’s patience, and the buyers have more of it than the sellers do.

Volume up, prices flat

Mid-year $1 million-plus sales, Tri-Cities region

The average sale price is the tell-tale number of the mid-year market. It landed within $24 of last year. That’s a coincidence, but it points to something real. Growth came from more buyers, not from higher prices.

The top of the market thinned while the middle filled in. Fewer homes cleared $2 million this year, and the single largest sale was an outlier that never tested the open market. Strip it out and the ceiling looks lower than it did a year ago, not higher.

Time became the pressure valve

When a market cools, it usually gives up either price or time. The Tri-Cities market gave up time first.

Nearly 29% of this year’s million-dollar sales sat on the market at least six months. Last year 12% did. In the other direction, only three homes found a buyer within 30 days. Last year eight did.

The two-step concession

How sellers gave up ground

The map widened

Cities with the most $1 million-plus sales

Johnson City remains the region’s high-end anchor and extended its lead. Washington Co., Tennessee, and its immediate neighbors still carry close to 60% of the segment in both years.

The interesting movement is at the edges. Butler, Fall Branch, Chuckey, Telford and Mooresburg each recorded a million-dollar sale for the first time in this two-year window. High-end demand is finding rural addresses that had no comparable sales a year ago.

The Virginia side moved the other way and effectively went quiet.

Cash buys higher and waits longer

How the sales were financed

The financing mix is the most stable thing in this data. Conventional loans led both years by nearly identical margins, and cash held second place. Mortgage rates moved. The mix did not.  Cash sales averaged 79 days on market last year and 183 days this year. That is the clearest measure of who holds leverage

Categories: REAL ESTATE