Tag: real estate
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Where Americans Moved in 2025
You may have seen this pop-up in your feed recently. Though many will jump to political conclusions or shout we’re being overrun by newcomers, neither is entirely true. The graphic shows net domestic migration in 2025 per 10,000 inhabitants. That means the numbers are not percentages and not total headcounts. They show whether a state…
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Population Is More Than a Scoreboard
Tennessee’s 2026 certified population figures offer more than another round of “who is bigger?” comparisons. They reveal how Northeast Tennessee is organized—and point to one of the most consequential challenges facing the region’s future growth. Kingsport’s certified population includes 54,660 residents in Sullivan County and 2,870 in Hawkins County, for a combined total of 57,530.…
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Two Corners of America: Northeast Tennessee and Northwest Arkansas
Every other week during dental school, I meet students rotating through the Kingsport Dental Clinic, a partnership with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Most people associate UT with Knoxville, but its health sciences programs—including dentistry—are based in Memphis. Arkansas has a private dental school but no public one, so the state provides 23…
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A Steadier Season for Newcomers
Move To Kingsport Quarterly Report April-June, 2026 Kingsport continues to welcome new families from across the country, though at a slower pace than last year. From April to June, 90 families moved to Kingsport from outside the region, representing 22 states. That works out to about 1.47 new families per workday. This report does not…
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Special Edition Tennessee Housing Report
This special edition of Kingsport Spirit is offered as a gift to the public and municipal officials gathering in Kingsport for the 86th Annual Meeting of the Tennessee Municipal League later this week. It takes a robust dive into Tennessee’s single-family housing market across 120 communities—from Memphis to Mountain City—using per-capita comparisons to help level…
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Roots and Renewal: Why Kingsport Needs Both Locals and Newcomers
In retirement, I’ve spent a lot of time working on the landscaping around my 55-year-old house. The house sits beneath towering oaks that were there long before the first footing was poured. They give the place shade, structure, and character. The foundation plantings came later, when the house was built. Over time, some of them…
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Kingsport: High Quality at a Lower Cost
Many people instinctively equate higher tax revenue with higher quality. They assume that if a state collects more per person, it must provide better schools, better services, better infrastructure, and better local government. Sometimes that may be true. But it is not automatic. Higher collections can also reflect higher costs, greater service demands, larger bureaucracies,…
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Kingsport’s Housing Market Is Punching Above Its Weight
People vote with their feet, but they also invest where they see value. The latest housing numbers give us a useful look at the first four months of 2026. Taken together, they show that home sales remain healthy across the Tri-Cities and the Northeast Tennessee-Southwest Virginia market. They also show something worth noting for Kingsport:…
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Kingsport Is Not Just a Place to Work. It Is a Place to Live.
For generations, Kingsport has been known as an industrial city. This is a place built by blue-collar workers, managers, supervisors, engineers, executives, and working families — people who changed clothes before and after work, carried lunch boxes, worked rotating shifts, parked at plant gates, punched time clocks, and helped make products that reached far beyond…
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Kingsport and Maryville: Two Strong Tennessee Communities
Recently, I was asked to compare Maryville and Kingsport. I gave what I believed was a fair answer, but it was worth checking the facts. Make no mistake: my job is to advocate for Kingsport. But I also want to preserve a reputation for candor, accuracy, and truth. Maryville (population 32,553) has earned its place…
Kingsport Spirit 