Whether affordability or attainability, demand isn't there for many other reasons. And unless Nashville once again can become a desirable destination to relocate and raise families for reasons in addition to housing costs, that demand is not coming back. Crime, traffic congestion and public education are among the primary drivers behind Nashville's flattened/falling in-migration and solving those problems require more than mere zoning changes. Of course, those issues are more politically difficult and far harder to achieve. Concentrating higher density development closer to the city core was one of the smarter Metro efforts and abandoning that invariably will exacerbate the problems that have caused the city to stagnate of late.
Some observers like Virgil Davis Hunt have noted that international migration (which for a myriad of reasons is cooling down) is the primary reason Nashville hasn't lost roughly 50,000 people. Even with that, Nashville's population growth has been -6,000 to +15,000 over the last five years depending on whose statistics you buy. The city claims about needed housing do not square with the reality. Even your 1,500 per annum estimate may be generous.
If it is of any comfort, some of the ring counties also have cooled, often for the same reasons, and have flirted with similar responses likely to fail and make things worse.
Thank you, it is obvious in the recent history. The census did not measure it before then. I would not surprise me. My experience with many peers and employees across a few decades is they moved for schools and a handful of other reasons and most to more expensive counties. Thank you for the insight.
2. Housing is the single largest expense for Americans, making up ~ 33% of total household spending.
3. Housing costs have risen far faster than anything else. In Davidson County over the last 10 years, median home prices are up +147%, compared to +31% for overall prices and +70% for income growth.
So yes, everything gets more expensive over time, but housing has completely outpaced inflation and wages in Nashville.
Thank you, Chris Powers, for sharing those numbers. You have, in fact, made the larger point.
Across the country, and especially here in Nashville, market‑rate projects designed to increase density under this same “density/zoning reform” movement have consistently pushed inflation higher. Earlier infill versions, before the glossy PR “Missing Middle” campaigns from deregulation advocates, were already driving property values far beyond sustainable levels.
These efforts inflate land prices and turn property into a commodity valued for its “highest use” potential. As a result, rents and property taxes climb, displacing the very residents these policies claim to help. This pattern is not new; it has been repeating for more than 50 years.
The theory looks tidy in the classroom and in the think tanks, but it breaks down in the real estate world. When you “reduce cost” by adding units, two outcomes usually follow:
Land inflation, Density rights, and deregulation drive up property values, raising prices across the board. The collateral damage includes displacement of middle‑income households and communities of color, often the very areas targeted for "diversification." From the outside, these projects are praised as progress, but inside long‑established neighborhoods, especially among Black and Hispanic residents, the loss is personal and visible. Their neighbors, who form the backbone of the community, are priced out and replaced by higher‑income buyers who gain a relative bargain only because the land beneath was cheaper to begin with. Each community should confront this trade‑off honestly, as the purely market‑rate approach is driven by economics, not a failed equity experiment.
Displacement, New construction targets vulnerable or lower‑cost areas, replacing existing affordable homes with “missing middle” units priced at 150% or more of AMI.
So yes, you are absolutely right, rising prices are the problem. But they are also the predictable outcome of the very densification movement claiming to solve them.
That hasn’t been my experience at all in the neighborhoods I know best - Cleveland Park (where I live), Brentwood (where I grew up), and Edgehill (where I went to church).
In each of those areas, there has been a strong community push to preserve single-family zoning and limit density (less so in Cleveland Park). That has not stopped development or maintained affordability. Instead, older homes are being torn down and replaced with larger, more expensive single-family houses that are twice the size and three times the price. The result is still displacement and rising costs, just without any increase in housing supply that might have helped.
This pattern is clear in the data. Brentwood home prices rose from about $600k in 2015 to ~ $1.4m in 2025, a 130 percent increase. That is the broader issue. Housing costs are surging everywhere, including in places that have resisted any form of density. The idea that “densification” is driving gentrification does not hold up when some of the fastest price increases are happening in areas that have remained exclusively single-family.
How do you explain Brentwood's increase of 130% without any new changes to the zoning law? Or in Cleveland Park or Edgehill where the increase has not come from zoning changes?
Future projections don’t matter. We have a wildly unaffordable city now because we haven’t built enough in the past. Between 2010 and 2023, median household income in Davidson County rose from about $43,800 to $80,200, while median home prices climbed from $189,000 to $493,000, a 161 percent jump versus 83 percent for income. That’s what happens when supply lags demand for more than a decade.
And the idea that ‘we’ve just built luxury condos’ misses the point entirely. It’s one housing market. Every new unit competes for the same land, labor, and materials, and every additional home helps relieve pressure across the board.
Your solution does not pan out with reality. The over simplification that you offer as your "keep building more" cure is tempting yet dangerous. The truth is, the major zoning changes that Metro made (allowed) in 2010 and again 2015 began the abolishment of our modest, affordable single family homes. The race was on for developers to profit off of grabbing the affordable homes in the 200K range, knock them down and replace with two new taller, skinnier homes that started at $500K EACH (now selling for well over $700K) made the property Nashville sits on more expensive. Then again in 2015 Metro changed the zoning to allow those new homes to be separated by just a few feet which made them even more attractive to developer profits and more palatable to buyers which really set the market on fire. The building boom which you have failed to study is still speeding forward with working class home owners constantly harassed by developers to sell their modest homes that were now up-zoned to allow two homes on their lots. Phew... so with new property tax assessments bursting at the seams due to the now expensive homes next door and throughout their neighborhood the cost of remaining in their own homes added to the last straw of struggling homeowners being displaced and able to even afford to stay in their own homes. Gentrification 101. All you have to do is look at the provable building boom statistics to see what erased the affordability in Nashville. Neighborhood character disappeared in these newly up-zoned neighborhoods that still exist creating (allowing) the same attractive opportunity $$$ to developer profits. Our latest skyrocketing property tax assessments prove my point. It was the last straw for many who are (quietly) forced to cave in to the relentless developer sharks circling around their once treed, friendly community looking for their blood in the waters. I have fought for social justice, equality, trees, clean air and water for decades here in Nashville and beyond. Up until recently I was the Executive Chair of the Sierra Club For Middle TN yet even NPR allowed a novice guest to hurl insults calling those opposing Metro's current massive up-zoning bills "climate arsonists" and "rich, white entitled people trying to keep riff-raff out of their neighborhoods." NPR allowed the opposition ten minutes to the 45 minutes of manipulative slick sales propaganda funded by the pro development $$$. It's dangerous and lazy to grab on to the simplistic solution you offer of "build more" and prices will magically drop and we have that repeated scare tactic of "housing crisis!!!" I'm also a Realtor and if you read the article you are commenting on you will see the statistics that show we have a glut of the only homes that developers build; the highest and best profit, luxury, expensive homes. I'm not and I know no one who is against development, follow our current city plan NashvilleNext. Budget and build the necessary infrastructure and listen to the community instead of the corporate REITs, building, associations, and those who profit off of high density development and lowering building standards. Let's WAKE UP and stop also listening to those who are drinking their poisonous chamomile tea that will ruin Nashville as we know it and hurt the very people here who they have tricked you into believing it will help. It won't.
@AntionetteOlesen, I share your concern about how Nashville is changing, but the story of our zoning history is different from what you describe.
There hasn’t been a major citywide rezoning in Davidson County since the late 1990s. Both 2010 and 2015 were defined by small, local adjustments, not sweeping deregulation. In fact, most of those actions made development harder, not easier.
- In 2010, Metro Council passed multiple downzonings, including a 182-acre area in Donelson changed from R10 to RS10 to reduce density. The base zoning code stayed the same. Developers did not get new entitlements; they used long-standing duplex rights under the state’s Horizontal Property Regime law to build the “tall skinnies” we see today. That did not require any Metro policy change.
- In 2015, the main zoning change was the creation of the Contextual Overlay, which limited height and lot coverage to make new homes smaller. The only attempt to expand housing options, a Detached Accessory Dwelling Unit (DADU) overlay, was withdrawn before passage.
So the truth is Nashville’s zoning has remained overwhelmingly low-density and single-family for decades. The city has consistently leaned toward restricting density, not encouraging it.
That is why the argument that “upzoning caused gentrification” misses the mark. The sharp rise in home prices happened without major zoning liberalization. We have seen the same pattern in places that have fought density the hardest. Brentwood home prices, for example, have more than doubled since 2015 despite having some of the strictest large-lot zoning in the state.
What is driving displacement is not deregulation but scarcity. We have built too little housing for too long. In neighborhoods like Cleveland Park, 12 South, and Edgefield, modest homes are being replaced by single-family houses selling for a million dollars because that is all zoning allows.
More than half of Metro’s own employees now live outside Davidson County because they cannot afford to live here. I want to live in a city where our firefighters, police officers, and teachers can live in the same community they serve. Restricting housing supply has made that impossible. If we care about keeping Nashville livable, we need more homes, not fewer.
Whether affordability or attainability, demand isn't there for many other reasons. And unless Nashville once again can become a desirable destination to relocate and raise families for reasons in addition to housing costs, that demand is not coming back. Crime, traffic congestion and public education are among the primary drivers behind Nashville's flattened/falling in-migration and solving those problems require more than mere zoning changes. Of course, those issues are more politically difficult and far harder to achieve. Concentrating higher density development closer to the city core was one of the smarter Metro efforts and abandoning that invariably will exacerbate the problems that have caused the city to stagnate of late.
Some observers like Virgil Davis Hunt have noted that international migration (which for a myriad of reasons is cooling down) is the primary reason Nashville hasn't lost roughly 50,000 people. Even with that, Nashville's population growth has been -6,000 to +15,000 over the last five years depending on whose statistics you buy. The city claims about needed housing do not square with the reality. Even your 1,500 per annum estimate may be generous.
If it is of any comfort, some of the ring counties also have cooled, often for the same reasons, and have flirted with similar responses likely to fail and make things worse.
Thank you, it is obvious in the recent history. The census did not measure it before then. I would not surprise me. My experience with many peers and employees across a few decades is they moved for schools and a handful of other reasons and most to more expensive counties. Thank you for the insight.
Why have housing prices gone up so much if there is no demand?
Why are you asking that of housing only? That’s what happens with time…with everything.
1. The post is about housing, not “everything”.
2. Housing is the single largest expense for Americans, making up ~ 33% of total household spending.
3. Housing costs have risen far faster than anything else. In Davidson County over the last 10 years, median home prices are up +147%, compared to +31% for overall prices and +70% for income growth.
So yes, everything gets more expensive over time, but housing has completely outpaced inflation and wages in Nashville.
Thank you, Chris Powers, for sharing those numbers. You have, in fact, made the larger point.
Across the country, and especially here in Nashville, market‑rate projects designed to increase density under this same “density/zoning reform” movement have consistently pushed inflation higher. Earlier infill versions, before the glossy PR “Missing Middle” campaigns from deregulation advocates, were already driving property values far beyond sustainable levels.
These efforts inflate land prices and turn property into a commodity valued for its “highest use” potential. As a result, rents and property taxes climb, displacing the very residents these policies claim to help. This pattern is not new; it has been repeating for more than 50 years.
The theory looks tidy in the classroom and in the think tanks, but it breaks down in the real estate world. When you “reduce cost” by adding units, two outcomes usually follow:
Land inflation, Density rights, and deregulation drive up property values, raising prices across the board. The collateral damage includes displacement of middle‑income households and communities of color, often the very areas targeted for "diversification." From the outside, these projects are praised as progress, but inside long‑established neighborhoods, especially among Black and Hispanic residents, the loss is personal and visible. Their neighbors, who form the backbone of the community, are priced out and replaced by higher‑income buyers who gain a relative bargain only because the land beneath was cheaper to begin with. Each community should confront this trade‑off honestly, as the purely market‑rate approach is driven by economics, not a failed equity experiment.
Displacement, New construction targets vulnerable or lower‑cost areas, replacing existing affordable homes with “missing middle” units priced at 150% or more of AMI.
Either way, the result is the same: a cycle that gentrifies instead of stabilizing communities. https://ncrc.org/displaced-by-design/
So yes, you are absolutely right, rising prices are the problem. But they are also the predictable outcome of the very densification movement claiming to solve them.
That hasn’t been my experience at all in the neighborhoods I know best - Cleveland Park (where I live), Brentwood (where I grew up), and Edgehill (where I went to church).
In each of those areas, there has been a strong community push to preserve single-family zoning and limit density (less so in Cleveland Park). That has not stopped development or maintained affordability. Instead, older homes are being torn down and replaced with larger, more expensive single-family houses that are twice the size and three times the price. The result is still displacement and rising costs, just without any increase in housing supply that might have helped.
This pattern is clear in the data. Brentwood home prices rose from about $600k in 2015 to ~ $1.4m in 2025, a 130 percent increase. That is the broader issue. Housing costs are surging everywhere, including in places that have resisted any form of density. The idea that “densification” is driving gentrification does not hold up when some of the fastest price increases are happening in areas that have remained exclusively single-family.
How do you explain Brentwood's increase of 130% without any new changes to the zoning law? Or in Cleveland Park or Edgehill where the increase has not come from zoning changes?
Future projections don’t matter. We have a wildly unaffordable city now because we haven’t built enough in the past. Between 2010 and 2023, median household income in Davidson County rose from about $43,800 to $80,200, while median home prices climbed from $189,000 to $493,000, a 161 percent jump versus 83 percent for income. That’s what happens when supply lags demand for more than a decade.
And the idea that ‘we’ve just built luxury condos’ misses the point entirely. It’s one housing market. Every new unit competes for the same land, labor, and materials, and every additional home helps relieve pressure across the board.
The only way out is to keep building.
Your solution does not pan out with reality. The over simplification that you offer as your "keep building more" cure is tempting yet dangerous. The truth is, the major zoning changes that Metro made (allowed) in 2010 and again 2015 began the abolishment of our modest, affordable single family homes. The race was on for developers to profit off of grabbing the affordable homes in the 200K range, knock them down and replace with two new taller, skinnier homes that started at $500K EACH (now selling for well over $700K) made the property Nashville sits on more expensive. Then again in 2015 Metro changed the zoning to allow those new homes to be separated by just a few feet which made them even more attractive to developer profits and more palatable to buyers which really set the market on fire. The building boom which you have failed to study is still speeding forward with working class home owners constantly harassed by developers to sell their modest homes that were now up-zoned to allow two homes on their lots. Phew... so with new property tax assessments bursting at the seams due to the now expensive homes next door and throughout their neighborhood the cost of remaining in their own homes added to the last straw of struggling homeowners being displaced and able to even afford to stay in their own homes. Gentrification 101. All you have to do is look at the provable building boom statistics to see what erased the affordability in Nashville. Neighborhood character disappeared in these newly up-zoned neighborhoods that still exist creating (allowing) the same attractive opportunity $$$ to developer profits. Our latest skyrocketing property tax assessments prove my point. It was the last straw for many who are (quietly) forced to cave in to the relentless developer sharks circling around their once treed, friendly community looking for their blood in the waters. I have fought for social justice, equality, trees, clean air and water for decades here in Nashville and beyond. Up until recently I was the Executive Chair of the Sierra Club For Middle TN yet even NPR allowed a novice guest to hurl insults calling those opposing Metro's current massive up-zoning bills "climate arsonists" and "rich, white entitled people trying to keep riff-raff out of their neighborhoods." NPR allowed the opposition ten minutes to the 45 minutes of manipulative slick sales propaganda funded by the pro development $$$. It's dangerous and lazy to grab on to the simplistic solution you offer of "build more" and prices will magically drop and we have that repeated scare tactic of "housing crisis!!!" I'm also a Realtor and if you read the article you are commenting on you will see the statistics that show we have a glut of the only homes that developers build; the highest and best profit, luxury, expensive homes. I'm not and I know no one who is against development, follow our current city plan NashvilleNext. Budget and build the necessary infrastructure and listen to the community instead of the corporate REITs, building, associations, and those who profit off of high density development and lowering building standards. Let's WAKE UP and stop also listening to those who are drinking their poisonous chamomile tea that will ruin Nashville as we know it and hurt the very people here who they have tricked you into believing it will help. It won't.
@AntionetteOlesen, I share your concern about how Nashville is changing, but the story of our zoning history is different from what you describe.
There hasn’t been a major citywide rezoning in Davidson County since the late 1990s. Both 2010 and 2015 were defined by small, local adjustments, not sweeping deregulation. In fact, most of those actions made development harder, not easier.
- In 2010, Metro Council passed multiple downzonings, including a 182-acre area in Donelson changed from R10 to RS10 to reduce density. The base zoning code stayed the same. Developers did not get new entitlements; they used long-standing duplex rights under the state’s Horizontal Property Regime law to build the “tall skinnies” we see today. That did not require any Metro policy change.
- In 2015, the main zoning change was the creation of the Contextual Overlay, which limited height and lot coverage to make new homes smaller. The only attempt to expand housing options, a Detached Accessory Dwelling Unit (DADU) overlay, was withdrawn before passage.
So the truth is Nashville’s zoning has remained overwhelmingly low-density and single-family for decades. The city has consistently leaned toward restricting density, not encouraging it.
That is why the argument that “upzoning caused gentrification” misses the mark. The sharp rise in home prices happened without major zoning liberalization. We have seen the same pattern in places that have fought density the hardest. Brentwood home prices, for example, have more than doubled since 2015 despite having some of the strictest large-lot zoning in the state.
What is driving displacement is not deregulation but scarcity. We have built too little housing for too long. In neighborhoods like Cleveland Park, 12 South, and Edgefield, modest homes are being replaced by single-family houses selling for a million dollars because that is all zoning allows.
More than half of Metro’s own employees now live outside Davidson County because they cannot afford to live here. I want to live in a city where our firefighters, police officers, and teachers can live in the same community they serve. Restricting housing supply has made that impossible. If we care about keeping Nashville livable, we need more homes, not fewer.