Strong performance in December and continued market resilience in East Tennessee are good indicators for an improvement in the housing inventory crunch.

In reversal of the typical seasonal decline, East Tennessee home sales picked up 3.4% at the end of the year. This reflected the national market, with a strong jobs report and slight increase in inventory helping to bolster housing consumer optimism; nationally, both new home sales and existing home sales saw their best performance since 2021.

Apartment rent growth continued to slow in our region thanks to inventory improvements, with the Knoxville metropolitan statistical area landing at -0.9% YOY price growth at the end of the year.