Some seasons are quiet. This one isn't. The last few months have brought the kind of changes that mark a real before-and-after — a forever home, a family on the mend, and a new chapter at a brokerage I'm genuinely proud to call home.
I don't usually write personal letters here. The blog is mostly for the work — the buyers and sellers and neighborhoods and numbers. But some seasons earn their own paragraph, and this one has earned several. So before the summer market really takes off, I wanted to put a little of it down in plain words.
A forever home in Fox Den
We moved into Fox Den. It was a dream for a long time before it was real, and now we're here.
If you don't know Fox Den, it's a particular kind of place — the country-club community in the heart of Farragut, anchored by old hardwoods, golf-course views, and the kind of streets where families settle in for thirty years. It's a short drive to Concord Park's water and trails, an even shorter one to the Kingston Pike storefronts, and close enough to the lake that you can be out on it before dinner if you really want to.
For us, this is the porch we plan to grow old on. I tell sellers some version of this all the time, and now I'm living it: the home you actually settle into is rarely the one you imagined when you started looking. It's better in some ways, different in others, and you only really know it the first morning you wake up and realize you're not going anywhere.
Home. Spring on the front lawn, the beautiful Japanese maple out front in full color, and the porch we plan to sit on for a long while.
My people are healthy again
The biggest piece of news this year has nothing to do with real estate. My mom and my husband — the two people whose health I worry about more than my own — are both, finally, feeling like themselves again. It's been a long stretch.
Hilary's note
I won't say more than that here, but if you've ever spent a year holding your breath while someone you love is unwell, you know exactly the kind of relief that floods in when they're standing on the other side of it. Everything else gets easier when the people you love are well.
Coming home to a bigger team at Greater Impact Realty Knoxville
The brokerage news happened fast and felt right the whole way. I spent the last few years at Realty Executives, and I loved it there — the people, the culture, the way we worked alongside one another. The move to Greater Impact Realty Knoxville came down to doing what was best for my people and for me, and the team I built came with me. They're my people, and we landed at GIR together.
It is, in the best way, coming home to a bigger team. GIR has the depth — over 40 agents here in Knoxville and more than 200 company-wide, real marketing infrastructure, a culture that treats agents as partners rather than headcount. The people I get to work alongside now are some of the most generous, sharp, community-minded folks in Knoxville real estate. I won't try to name them all, but if you've sat across from Holli, Michelle, or Lori, you already know what I mean.
The move to Greater Impact Realty Knoxville came down to doing what was best for my people and for me. It is, in the best way, coming home to a bigger team.
— Hilary Kilgore
For my clients, the change is mostly invisible. Same phone number, same approach, same big-picture thinking. What's different is the bench behind me. When you call me on a Sunday morning about a tricky inspection finding, there are now more people to lean on, more transactions on file to learn from, and more shared brainpower behind every offer we write.
A new website to match the new chapter
This site — hilarykilgore.com — is the other piece of the year I'm most proud of. It's mine, and it's built to reflect the work the way I actually do it: hyperlocal, neighborhood-first, and honest about what I know and what I don't.
You'll find neighborhood deep-dives I've spent years assembling for the West Knox communities I work most — Farragut, Bearden, Hardin Valley, Concord & Northshore, Cedar Bluff, and Rocky Hill — plus a blog where I write the way I'd talk to a friend over coffee. If you're moving in from out of state, my Farragut relocation post is probably the right place to start. Active listings live at hilary.homesineasttennessee.com; this site is the right place to learn what's actually around the listing.
Late-spring light over the ridges — the kind of evening that always reminds me why people land in East Tennessee and stay.
Now it's summer — let's go to work
The Knoxville market in late spring and early summer always carries a particular energy. Inventory loosens up. Buyers who paused over the winter come back. Families who've been waiting on the school year start setting real timelines. It's the busiest stretch of my calendar every year, and after a season of life that demanded most of my attention, I've been waiting for it.
Time to roll up the sleeves, take care of my people, and — yes — sell some homes.
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Thank you for reading, for sending the kind notes, and for the years of trust that made this chapter possible at all. Some of you I've known through three houses now. A few of you I haven't met yet. Either way — I'm glad you're here.
Let's Talk
Thinking about a move this summer?
Whether it's a forever home, a starter, or somewhere in between — I'd love to talk through what the next few months could look like for you. Same number, same loyal approach. Just a bigger team behind it.
Thanks — message received.
Hilary will be in touch within a day or two. In the meantime, keep reading.
