After three months of losing out to competing offers, first-time home buyers Alan and Lindsey Laseter finally have a house under contract in Nashville’s Woodbine neighborhood.
“We’ve been equating it basically to a rollercoaster,” Lindsey Laseter said. “It’s a big decision, so you want to make sure you’re making the right choice. It’s difficult to be competitive with so many cash offers out there as well.”
Heightened demand in the fast-growing region, together with a limited inventory of affordable housing, has created an ultra-competitive environment that has pushed home prices higher than ever before. On Monday the Greater Nashville Association of Realtors released data showing that the region’s median single-family home sale price reached $250,000, marking the second straight month that home prices reached a high water mark.
And with available properties often receiving multiple offers and being snapped up quickly, realtors are getting creative to give their clients the upper hand.
At the end of April, the single-family inventory consisted of 8,318 homes, down 6 percent from a year ago. The most recent month’s inventory equates to just under a four-month supply of homes or, in other words, a seller’s market.
GNAR’s President Denise Creswell called inventory the biggest challenge in Nashville’s housing market.
“Low inventory contributes to the fast clip of homes entering and leaving the market, as well as housing affordability,” she said in a statement. “Until there are more available properties on the market, median prices will continue to rise.”
The figures GNAR released for April, meanwhile, showed year-over-year home sales rose 11.7 percent to 3,284 closings, pushing year-to-date residential property sales up 1,000 units compared to the same period last year. At the end of April, there were 3,756 sales pending, up 17 percent from a year earlier and boding well for expected sales this month.
Continue reading: The Tennessean