Honors Program

[Honors-in-Discipline (Choose below)], Honors in Business

Date of Award

12-2021

Thesis Professor(s)

Gary L. Shelley

Thesis Professor Department

Economics and Finance

Thesis Reader(s)

Prasun Bhattacharjee, William J. Trainor Jr.

Abstract

We are seeing an influx of out-of-state buyers into Tennessee, and the Tri-Cities area specifically. As a major emerging housing market in the US, the Tri-Cities is being inundated by people from all states and walks of life seeking a better life in Appalachia. Although the reasons vary by person, many agree that political alignment, taxation levels, and the quietness of this area lends itself to population growth. While most members of the housing industry have noticed this uptick in out-of-state buyers, few have taken the time to analyze their own records or review the empirical evidence that is present from the past 24-36 months to see where opportunities lie.

Through cooperation with a local real estate attorney, I have obtained records that have been scrubbed of personal details for academic research. Using that information I have run some tests for proportions and changes from 2020 to 2021 to determine the major hot-spot states and regions from which people are moving to Tennessee. After analyzing this data, I have then compared it to input from two real estate agents in the Tri-Cities area regarding what they believe are the largest motivating factors for these out-of-state buyers.

I have concluded that the West Coast Region (and California in particular) are showing the most decisive and conclusive increases in Tennessee home buying. Overall out-of-state buyers are quickly becoming a large demographic of our market, with a statistically significant 7.56% difference in proportion from just last year to this year (2021).

Publisher

East Tennessee State University

Document Type

Honors Thesis - Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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