Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Typical home $314,999 (-1.3% in a year), asking rent $1,498 (+2.3%). Chattanooga, TN-GA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$892 (+117%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $4,115 -1%
- $319,114$314,999 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $52,518 +20%
- $262,481$314,999 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Chattanooga$1,653
- Tennessee$1,737
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 19 years.
Typical home values in Chattanooga, TN fell 1.3% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Chattanooga, TN rose 2.3% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Chattanooga runs $654/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $789 in Jan 2025.
That is $2,152 a month against $1,498 rent: a $1,653 mortgage payment, plus $162 property tax and $337 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Chattanooga
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$2,152
- Renting$1,498
- Mortgage only$1,653
Property tax · $162/mo 0.62% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Hamilton County, TN
Insurance & upkeep · $337/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Chattanooga, Hamilton County, Tennessee
Chattanooga is a city of 181,099 people in Hamilton County. Half its households earn more than $64,523 a year and half less, against $76,183 across Hamilton County; 19% of its people live below the poverty line. 52% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 48% are rented. Unemployment in Chattanooga was 3.8% in August 2026, and Hamilton County had 0.7% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 24 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Chattanooga is a city whose people are somewhat younger than in much of the country, and owners and renters are fairly evenly balanced among the homes, so renting is common. Incomes in the city run below the county's as a whole, and a good number of residents live below the poverty line. Winters are cool and short, with highs near freezing at night and only a dusting of snow most years, while summers are hot and the year is wet.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with many others in manufacturing, professional and business services, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Among the largest workplaces in Chattanooga are Hamilton County Schools, USXpress and Erlanger Medical Center. Most people have a short drive to work, and the county had slightly fewer jobs last year than the year before.
Things to do. The Tennessee Aquarium and the Hunter Museum of American Art are both a short drive away, and Ruby Falls, a waterfall, is reached by a short drive as well. For something outdoors and close by, Chickamauga Lake, a reservoir, lies in or beside town.
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- 79,084households
- 36%of adults have a degree
- 19%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 14%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Hamilton County had 219,580 jobs in 2025, 0.7% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 51° and lows near 32°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 71°. About 4 inches of snow and 55 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Chattanooga Lovell Airport weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Chattanooga
- Hamilton County SchoolsSchool district6,512FTE
- USXpressContainer trucking services, long-distance6,267
- Erlanger Medical CenterGeneral hospital5,590FTE
- Volkswagen Group of America, Chattanooga OperationsChassis, automobile, manufacturing3,981
- City of ChattanoogaExecutive offices, federal, state, and local2,618
- Memorial Health Care SystemGeneral hospital2,420FTE
- Hamilton County GovernmentGeneral services departments, government2,141
- The University of Tennessee-ChattanoogaUniversity or college2,009
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 351 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 55,607 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- TornadoesRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively moderate
- Strong windrelatively high in parts of ChattanoogaRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherrelatively high in parts of ChattanoogaRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingrelatively high in parts of ChattanoogaRelatively moderate
- Lightningrelatively high in parts of ChattanoogaRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Chattanooga’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Hamilton County and the Chattanooga, TN-GA metro.
Chattanooga home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Chattanooga$314,999
- Tennessee$330,844
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Chattanooga listings, and the typical home goes pending in 32 days — the market is roughly in balance.
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Chattanooga33.25%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Chattanooga32
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Chattanooga1,120
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Chattanooga242
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Chattanooga$326,906
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Chattanooga97.48%
Zip codes with a Chattanooga address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Chattanooga — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Chattanooga
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 37421 | Chattanooga | 52,985 | $1,514 | $357,190 |
| 37411 | Chattanooga | 18,997 | $1,491 | $228,912 |
| 37404 | Chattanooga | 14,737 | $1,546 | $252,767 |
| 37416 | Chattanooga | 13,919 | $1,335 | $286,273 |
| 37406 | Chattanooga | 13,364 | $1,579 | $178,108 |
| 37407 | Chattanooga | 9,156 | $1,322 | $121,740 |
| 37403 | Chattanooga | 6,413 | $1,563 | $381,673 |
| 37419 | Chattanooga | 5,980 | $1,532 | $368,807 |
| 37410 | Chattanooga | 4,129 | $1,508 | $160,262 |
| 37402 | Chattanooga | 3,953 | $1,514 | $442,590 |
| 37408 | Chattanooga | 3,502 | $1,388 | $399,717 |
| 37409 | Chattanooga | 3,357 | $1,809 | $383,793 |
| 37340 | Guild | 288 | — | $174,919 |
| 37351 | Lupton City | 281 | — | $229,735 |