Hello all of you!  It’s Joshua here with the Home Agent Group.  We talk about all things related to real estate here on this channel, and I focus mainly on Nashville, Tennessee because that’s where I live and work, and invest.

Today I want to cover – really two topics, because they’re directly related, No.1 “Is Nashville a good place to invest?” and No.2 “What are the best places to invest in Nashville?”  I get asked about this pretty regularly so I figure we may as well cover it today.

Be sure to mash that Like button, subscribe and click on that little Bell over there – that turns on notifications so you can be notified when I post videos like this one…. and be sure to watch this video till the end to get all the dirt.  Now let’s look at Nashville in Real Estate!

—

No.1 – Is Nashville a good place to invest?

I watched a video on this in doing research for this topic.  The guy that did the video showed a graphic comparing Nashville to Vegas from 2000 to 2020.  That big curve you see there happened during the last recession.  Nashville is the red line.  You can see that although the market in Vegas boomed leading up to the market crash in 2008, Nashville had more of a steady incline and in fact didn’t slump much at all during or after that time.  And since then has been really in lock-step (as they say) with Vegas.

So, wouldn’t you rather invest in a place that historically isn’t as impacted by the major market changes we see in other places?  In fact, Nashville traditionally has low unemployment, a strong average income, and a steady flow of new residents coming to the area – all signs of a strong economy which helps dictate the prices and sales of homes.

Lets’s look at the end of 2020 though in this guy’s chart, Nashville was at a value of $299k on average at the end of last year evidently. I actually double checked that number, the median home value, in fact, was actually $345k at the end of last year according to the Greater Nashville Association of Realtors. But if you remember in the Market Report from July, we’ve had a pretty significant increase in prices this year, 17% since January to be exact.  So bearing in mind that this year we’ve had a pretty major hike in prices, let’s now look at the national average this year.

From Q4 to Q2 of this year, according to FRED, we saw about an 8 or 9% increase in price, and when this data carries into Q3, where we are now, I think you’ll see that Nashville is right in line with the country average. So again, we’re pretty much trucking along like the rest of the nation – this year saw a major increase in home prices because of more demand vs less supply.  But if you ask anyone active in the real estate market that is paying attention to the rest of the nation, Nashville home prices have been a little overdue for a hike.  So again, I don’t see this is as a problem, because I don’t see prices weakening after this recent significant shift.

Now, No.2, “What are the best places to invest in Nashville?”

It’s a little difficult to answer this as a blanket response, but I have a method in mind. I’m break this up in to a couple quick categories…

For short term rentals: North Nashville is the best at the moment. There are other places that work well, but a lot of the development happening there is encouraging a change in zoning which helps for investors to know that they will be able to get a STRP (or short term rental permit) for a non-owner occupied short term rental.  Now that doesn’t mean that if you’re looking for a house to reside in, you shouldn’t look in North Nashville, because there are some beautiful homes being built there, renovated there, and existing homes that are historical and recently built homes that are very nice to live in.  But this area is attractive for investors too because of the proximity and access to downtown – which is again a great place for a short term rental.

For long term rentals: Anywhere within an hour of the city that you can find a good deal, that happens to be close a town center like, Madison, Springfield, or  even as far out as Manchester.  Literally – I don’t have any recommendation for a specific spot, unless you want to manage it yourself, then you’ll want to find something close to wherever you live, or intend to live. My best recommendation for long term rentals is just to find something that makes for a good investment in terms of profit margins. So, low cost, low maintenance and resell-able.  And you can sell anything that fits this description.  I also recommend multi-unit long-term rentals over single family, but it’s up to you and your comfort level for this investment type.

Let’s breeze past any other income producing properties, including commercial property and just focus on where the best place to live in Nashville might be.  “Where should I buy a house?” “What’s the best neighborhood?” I get this all the time.  To this I usually ask a lot of questions – so let’s run through a couple of these points to get to the suggestion…

Firstly, are you looking to be within a certain proximity of work? Are you trying to be close to family, or are schools a concern? These are super subjective questions, but I would be able to answer them and provide a good area near where you need to be if you want to leave your answers in the comments… There’s also the question of how much you can spend, and if you want to have more space in the home, or more yardage – maybe space between you and your neighbor.

As you may be getting at this point – we kinda have to talk about what it is that you’re actually looking for in order for me to make a suggestion without just running through the pros and cons and any and every neighborhood in Nashville.  Which, I’m not going to do in this video because we’d be here for hours.  For this I say call me, or add a comment below so we can talk about what you’re looking for, or wherever you’re thinking and let’s just have a conversation.  That’s the easiest and surest way for me to get you the answer you’re looking for.

I hope that helps.  I certainly hope you like this video, if you did, let me know by hitting that button.  Till next time!