Fueled by a booming real estate market and a compelling crop of stylish, feature-laden products, the nation's Top 100 major appliance dealers enjoyed a 10.3 percent gain in white goods sales last year, to $18.1 billion.

The tally comes courtesy of this year's TWICE Top 100 Appliance Retailers report, which also ranks dealers by sales volume. Sears, not surprisingly, remained the No. 1 majap merchant, although the home improvement channel continued to chip away at its lead, while fourth-ranked Best Buy reversed its flagging white goods fortunes.