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February’s housing market perked up with wide price and sales swings as buyers and sellers jockeyed for position in the early prime buying and selling season.

Regional single-family existing home sales were up 17%. The median sales price was up 4.2%. But Sullivan County’s 17.3% price drop was the attention-getter.

Sullivan’s prices were more of a distribution of a sales shift than a market decline. Overall sales were up, but spikes in the $100K to $250K price ranges pushed the county’s median price lower. Those sales were up 88.5 percent in Kingsport, up 100 percent in Bristol, Tenn., and up 50 percent in Bristol, Va. While there is no precise supporting data, there’s speculation that some of last month’s unusual market movement is increased investor activity as the Hard Rock Casino moves toward a summer opening.

Last month’s 537 home sales in the counties monitored by the Northeast Tennessee Association of Realtors (NETAR) were 31.3 percent higher than January and 17 percent higher than last year. The $250,000 median sales price was 4.6 percent higher than January and up 4.2 percent from last year. Sales increased in 13 of the region’s 21 community markets. Prices were up in 11. Some smaller market big increases and decreases were skewed by the lack of sales or high-end sales.

Although inventory remains tight, it has and continues to slowly improve. Last month there were 209 more active listings than this time last year. That gave the region 2.3 months of inventory. Another 1,500 listings were needed to restore balanced market conditions across the region.

Almost 30 percent of last month’s inventory was in the prime affordable housing price range. New affordable property listings were up 16.3 percent from last year. New listings in the move-up market – $250K-$499,999K – were up 25 percent.

The typical home that sold last month was on the market for 73 days. That’s 20 days more than last year. The more time a property sits on the market before selling is a prime demand indicator. An increase signals less consumer demand.

Sellers reduced the price by an average of $27,000 on a little over a third of the homes that sold last month’s sales. And over half (57 percent) of sales also saw a price reduction during negotiations. The average was $18,603, while the typical was $5,000.

There were 29 sales in Carter County, which was down 23.7 percent from last year. The median sales price was $265,000, up 50.6 percent over last year’s prices. Sales to date this year total 60, which is up 29.4 percent from last year.

To date, there have been 21 sales in Elizabethton this year with a median sales price of $265,000. While sales are down 8.7 percent this year in the city, the sales price is up 47.2 percent.