March home sales in Tri-Cities down 8.4 percent

Published 3:21 pm Friday, April 17, 2020

Tri-Cities home sales were down 8.4% from March last year and up 1.1% from the first quarter of 2019, according to the Northeast Tennessee Association of Realtors.

There were 568 single-family, townhome, and condominium resale closing, down from 620 last year. During the first three months of this year, 1,514 sales closed, up from 1,497 last year. March’s average resale price of $189,087 was a 7.6% improvement ($13,343) over last year, according to NETAR’s Trends Report.

In Elizabethton, home sales for the year are down 54.5 percent from last year with 10 home closings in March, which is down by 12 compared to last March. Also, home prices were down compared to last year.

In Carter County, 39 homes were closed on last month, down from 31.6 percent from this time last year. Thus far, the data shows 107 home closings to date the first three months of the year in the county, which is up by 7 percent over the same period last year.

“There’s no way around the fact that COVID-19 will deter sales during this year’s prime buying and selling season. But most activity is expected to return later in the year,” NETAR President Kristi Bailey said. “So far, the impact has been minimal. Traffic is down, but prices are stable. Local activity began softening in mid-March, but considering the circumstances, market performance was pretty good. Local sellers had accepted 798 new contracts by the end of the month. That’s 21 more than February. All but three of the region’s primary city markets saw a first-quarter sales increase. And five had higher quarterly price averages. At the end of March, the region had 3.7 months of inventory. Balanced market conditions are five to six months of inventory. That’s something we haven’t seen for over a year.”

The average number of days a single-family detached resale was on the market last month was 121, up from 105 in February. It was 101 days for a townhome/condo resale – up from 88 days in February.

There were 521 single-family resales in March, down 8.3% (47 sales) from last year. The average sales price of $191,514 was up 6% ($10,851). Quarterly sales up 2.3% better than last year.

March’s 47 townhome/condo closings were down five sales from March last year, while the average resale price of $162,423 was up 29.4% ($36,393). Quarterly sales were up 6.1% from the first three months of last year.

NETAR’s Trends Report reflects housing market conditions in Carter, Greene, Hawkins, Johnson, Sullivan, Unicoi, and Washington counties in NE Tennessee, and Scott, Lee, Wise, and Washington counties in SW Virginia. It also includes market data from the region’s primary city markets. City and county market share, year-over-year and year-to-date closings and average sales prices are available on the NETAR website’s market analytics page at https://netar.us/market-analytics.