Category: Move To Kingsport
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If You Can’t Sell There, You Can’t Move Here: August 2025 in Context
Move To Kingsport Monthly Report Month-to-month. August 2025 ran cooler than last August. We recorded 49 new families from 19 states, down from 63 families and 26 states in August 2024. The daily pace eased from 2.9 to 2.3 families per workday. Prices also cooled: $305,000 median and $149/SF this August versus $317,005 and $155/SF…
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Why Tennessee—and Kingsport—Make Saving Money Possible
Bankrate’s new 2025 study on the best and worst states for saving money confirms what many of us already sense: where you live can make or break your ability to build a cushion. Tennessee ranked #1 in the nation, thanks to low taxes and a cost of living that still beats the national average. That…
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Why Are Homes & Apartments So Expensive?
I’m a lifelong student of city management, planning, history, demographics, and socioeconomics. Honestly, sometimes I wish I wasn’t—it can be exhausting. I can’t just “turn it off.” I still have a folder filled with maps of fictitious cities that I drew in middle school. I spent more time naming streets, designing parks, and placing schools…
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Different by Design: Why Downtown Kingsport Streets Feel Safer
Second in a Series Safety isn’t just about statistics. It’s also about how a place feels when you walk its downtown streets, drive its roads, or raise your family there. Kingsport’s long history of thoughtful planning has created a city that feels safe by design, not just by numbers. When Kingsport was incorporated in 1917,…
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Safer by Design, Not by Statistics
First in a Series When you search for crime rates in Tennessee, the numbers can seem surprising. Cities like Kingsport often appear “less safe” on paper than they feel in real life. But here’s the truth: Tennessee has been holding itself to a higher standard of honesty for decades, which makes the numbers look inflated…
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From the Tristar to the Tri-Cities: Discovering Tennessee
Tennessee is a wonderful state with many positive tax and quality-of-life advantages. The state constitution divides it into three grand divisions–East, Middle, and West from the Mighty Mississippi to the Great Smoky Mountains. That’s what our rare, bold, and elegantly simple red Tristar flag stands for. The blue circle symbolizes the eternal bond and unity…
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Kingsport, Johnson City named Best Places to Live 2025-2026
Kingsport and Johnson City are two of six Tennessee cities named to U.S. News’ Top 250 “Best Places to Live” list for 2025-2026. Tennessee cities making the Top 250 are (in order): Hendersonville, Franklin, Kingsport, Murfreesboro, Johnson City, and Nashville. Notable Tennessee cities and their suburbs not on the Top 250 list are Knoxville (Maryville,…
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Kingsport offers the best value proposition within 300 miles
We started by mapping every city with more than 25,000 residents inside a 300-mile radius of Kingsport, then ranked them by July 2025 median sale price (Realtor.com). The result—downloadable at the end of this post—sweeps across the eastern heartland, from Indiana and Ohio through Kentucky and West Virginia, on to Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and…
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From Sprint to Cruise: Kingsport’s Steady Housing Migration
MoveToKingsport.com Monthly Report, July 2025 Kingsport’s relocation story this July is one of moderation—a gentle easing after two break-neck years of growth. Compare the present to last summer and three plotlines emerge: a slight taper in the raw number of newcomers, a persistent upward drift in long-run home prices, and a subtle reshaping of where…
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Don’t Blame Newcomers
As we watch home prices and property values increase, it’s tempting to pin the blame on newcomers. After all, the narrative is simple: more people equal more demand, which drives prices up. But that’s not the full story—and it’s not the real problem. Only about 2% of Kingsport’s population consists of recent transplants. Over the…
Kingsport Spirit 