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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 might have been named Peltier or Horace
Today, we tend to skip the first 156 years and focus on Kingsport as the 1917 Model City with landmarks like Church Circle, Broad Street, and the Train Station. But early developers only repurposed the name of a previously incorporated town, an actual port on the river that had lost its charter after the Civil…
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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…
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Kingsport-On-The-Holston
Rarely do we hear of Kingsport referred to as ‘ancient’. Instead, our Centennial Park downtown celebrates the city’s 100th anniversary in 2017; however, this article from a Knoxville newspaper was published in 1889. Kingsport was settled in 1761 and was first officially incorporated in 1822 as a riverport. The ‘model city’ we know today was…
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Kingsport Leads Region in Sales and Affordability
The mid-year home sales report for Northeast Tennessee highlights a region experiencing steady demand, with Kingsport and Johnson City leading the way. Kingsport recorded 608 home sales year-to-date—just over 10% more than Johnson City’s 548—positioning it as the region’s most active housing market. Yet what makes Kingsport particularly notable is its combination of volume and…
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