Nashville is unaffordable! Navigating complex household market By Marqueze Williams
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ashville is one of the hottest real estate market in the country right now and this has a snowball effect to the social dynamics of this market. Even before the Pandemic hit in 2019, the average buyer was spending about 28% of their annual income on housing alone, which meant that many were already cost-burdened. In case you are wondering, when a household is cost burdened, this means they are paying more than 30 percent of its income towards housing expenses. The Department of Housing and Urban Development recommends a household to not use more than 30 percent of its income on housing, a point if breached then the household is put under the cost-burdened category. A household is said to be severely cost burdened if it spends more than 50 percent of its income towards housing expenses. While households in Nashville are not yet at either points, I feel that we are fast approaching these levels.
To put our discussion in perspective, majority of Nashville households are approaching the costburdened levels which means families are having it hard! In 2021, homebuyers who bought into this market for median properties were spending an average of 33% of their income which is relatively high considering that this income is being spent on housing alone. Keeping in mind the economy in the area is also high. While the real estate market in Nashville seems to be slowing down, the term ‘slow’ is used in this context as a relative term. Nashville was White Hot! But now, we are getting to the red hot levels. Demand is seems
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In order to make an argumentative case, we need to first understand what the term household and family means. A household according to the U.S. Census Bureau is defined as all the people who occupy a single housing unit regardless of their relationship to one another. Therefore this means that we could have a house occupied by four to six different people all working and contributing to the livelihood of this household. On the other hand, a family is defined as a group of two or more people related by birth, marriage or adoption residing together. JUNE 2022 | 119
