The Chattanooga Times Free Press tracks new building projects and has an interactive map showing where they are. A new article includes commentary from CRER director and chief economist Howard Wall about his recent white paper on housing affordability:
“People are still moving in,” Wall said by phone. “Not as rapidly as before, because that was a little crazy.”
Younger, educated people moving to Chattanooga are raising the area’s median income, and they’re also driving trends toward smaller homes or townhomes, Wall said. The average square footage of homes on the market has decreased 12%, from around 2,200 in 2019 to around 1,970 now, a paper published by Wall this week shows.
High mortgage rates, and uncertainty about when those will fall, is still the biggest obstacle for homebuyers, Wall said. Those costs can’t really be offset by construction, he said.