With Chattanooga home sales on pace to set another record high in 2021, local home prices last month jumped by 13.6% from a year ago to also reach a record high, according to new figures compiled by the Greater Chattanooga Realtors association.
The median price of homes sold by Chattanooga real estate agents in November rose to $280,000, or $33,600 more than the median price of homes sold a year earlier. Home prices, on average, have doubled in Chattanooga over the past eight years as a combination of lower mortgage rates, higher building costs and rents and more homebuyers have pushed up the value of residential properties.
“The economy is improving, unemployment is falling and the real estate market remains very strong,” said Robert Backer, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Pryor Real Estate who is president of the Greater Chattanooga Realtors. “Although the market is not as frenetic as we saw earlier this year, buyer demand is still high and bolstered by attractive mortgage rates and a low supply of inventory.”
Backer said “Chattanooga’s secret is being discovered,” especially during the coronavirus pandemic, as more people are relocating to Chattanooga to retire, work remotely or take advantage of the region’s above-average job growth.
But even with double-digit price increases over the past two years during the pandemic, the typical home in Chattanooga is still priced more than 20% below the U.S. median, according to the National Association of Realtors.