After a record year for home sales in 2019, Chattanooga Realtors are starting 2020 with even stronger residential sales.
Realtor-assisted home sales closed in January jumped 26.7% from a year ago, while pending home sales for local Realtors were up 19.5% last month.
"The weather might be cool (depending on Tennessee weather), but the housing market certainly is not," Brandi Pearl Thompson, president of the Greater Chattanooga Realtors said in a report today.
Chattanooga Realtors closed on 703 homes in January, traditionally a slower month for home sales. That was 148 more houses sold than in January 2019.
The sales gain came even as the median price of homes sold in Chattanooga last month rose 13.9% from a year earlier to $205,000. Home prices are being elevated by quicker sales with the average number of days a home is on the market down 8.1% from a year earlier to 57 days.
"We started off the year with continued low interest rates, low unemployment, and rising rents across the country," Thompson said. "These factors should encourage healthy buyer demand and sets us up for a strong start to the 2020 housing market and a lot of optimism for the coming spring market."
Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said he expects the market and home prices to continue to rise in 2020.
"National median home price growth is in no danger of falling due to inventory shortages and will rise by 4%," Yun predicts.
Yun forecasts that new-home construction sales to increase 10%.
