The colder winter weather last month didn’t do much to cool Chattanooga’s red hot housing market with the new year starting better than the record sales year in 2021 and median home prices in Chattanooga reaching an all-time high in January.
Home sales by Chattanooga Realtors were up 4.3% in January compared with a year earlier, even with 35% fewer homes on the market. As a result, the median sales price of homes sold in Chattanooga jumped to a record high of $290,000, or 23.4% more than a year ago.
Real estate agents closed on 783 home sales in January with another 961 sales pending at the end of the month, according to the January activity report by the Greater Chattanooga Realtors. The inventory of Chattanooga area homes for sale dropped to 775, which is about a third as many homes as there are licensed real estate agents in the Chattanooga area.
The typical home sold in 21 days, which is about half the sales time it took a year ago to sell the average home and far quicker than normal for January, which is traditionally a slower selling month for real estate.
“Competition in the real estate market remains fierce, and it’s a challenging market with more buyers than sellers right now,” said Derek English, president of the Greater Chattanooga Realtors, in a phone interview. “But I’m still optimistic about the market. Spring is just around the corner, and like its namesake, we hope to see a bounce of increased homes coming onto the market in the coming months.”