Chattanooga housing market heats up in Tennessee

By Finance News On Mar 9, 2025

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A city in southeastern Tennessee is drawing in homebuyers.

That city is Chattanooga and, according to The Agency Chattanooga Managing Partner Becky Cope English, its real estate market is gradually getting hotter.

Chattanooga sits not far from the Tennessee-Georgia border and is home to some 187,000 residents, per the U.S. Census Bureau.

Drone view of Chattanooga and the Tennessee River, Tennessee . (Photo by: Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) (Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images / Getty Images)

There were over 10,300 home sales closed in the area in 2024, according to Greater Chattanooga Realtors.

English noted Chattanooga saw a “little bit of a dip” last year but added that the market was “right in line with what I would call a more normal market” after previous years during COVID being “so much greater than the others.”

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She attributed that to the impact of interest rates on buyers. The rate for 30-year fixed mortgages averaged 6.9% in 2024, according to Bankrate.

“I feel like the election is behind us. I believe that consumer confidence is increasing,” English told FOX Business. “This is not meant to be a political statement at all, but when we have businesses and with less regulation, we tend to have an uptick in confidence. Businesses tend to start becoming more profitable, they’re doing more business so to speak and they’re hiring, and with hiring, you have more people moving from one job to the next. So I do think that we expect 2025 and 2026 to be strong years, especially in our market, but that’s probably going to affect the rest of the country as well.”

The Agency Chattanooga expects the area to see “some of our best years” in 2025 and especially 2026, according to English.

There is a lot of interest in Chattanooga and Tennessee overall thanks to multiple factors, she said.

“From the standpoint of where we are climate-wise, we have the seasons. We’ve got the scenery where we can get to the Gulf in six, six-and-a-half hours … and that makes us a very popular destination as well, not to mention close to Atlanta, Nashville, Knoxville and Asheville, North Carolina,” English told FOX Business.

Chattanooga and the state of Tennessee have “worked very hard to be the state where industry and businesses and entrepreneurs want to live and work and play,” according to The Agency Chattanooga managing partner.

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The state has “done very well to make this very tax-friendly,” she said, noting Tennessee “only has sales tax.” It does not levy a state…