Nashville Housing Market: The Tax Mirage Under the No-Income-Tax Pitch

Data as of July 2026

Nashville’s relocation pitch leads with one number: zero. Tennessee has no state income tax, and for a high earner that is a real and large advantage. But a state still has to pay for schools and roads, and Tennessee funds local government through sales tax (Davidson County is at 9.75% since February 2025) and property tax. In 2025 the property-tax side of that bargain got more expensive, and most of the increase was a choice, not an accident of the market.

This page reads the Nashville data the way a numbers-literate friend would: why the no-income-tax advantage is smaller than the brochure says, why the record apartment glut hands buyers and renters real leverage, and why the single balance score for this market says less than the concession rate does. Every dollar figure we call our own is computed by our tested calculator engine from stated assumptions.

Two scope notes before the numbers. First, “Nashville” here usually means the 9-county Greater Nashville REALTORS (GNR) region (Davidson, Cheatham, Dickson, Maury, Robertson, Rutherford, Sumner, Williamson, and Wilson) unless a figure says otherwise, and the property-tax mechanics live in the City of Nashville and Davidson County, labeled every time. Second, several sources publish different price figures for good reasons, and we label the scope rather than averaging them: the GNR 9-county single-family median of $503,340, Redfin’s City of Nashville all-types median of $475,000, and Redfin’s Davidson County median of $470,000 are different geographies and property-type mixes, not a conflict.

The market scorecard

Nashville market scorecard, April-June 2026 market data; mortgage rate as of mid-July 2026

Single-family median sale price

● unchanged over the stated period: $503,340

Nashville metro (GNR 9-county region), April 2026 , essentially flat year over year

About $503,340 and essentially flat year over year, the plateau after a 2019-2023 doubling. Flat prices are stability, not a gift or a penalty.

Months of supply (blended)

▲ up over the stated period, favors buyers: about 6 months

Nashville metro (GNR 9-county region), April 2026

About 6 months blended and rising, the most inventory since 2014. Single-family sits near-balanced; the condo segment is looser and clearly favors buyers.

Median days on market

▲ up over the stated period, favors buyers: about 70 days

City of Nashville, three months ending May 2026 , up from 58 days a year earlier

About 70 days on the Redfin city read, up from 58 a year earlier. Longer time on market is time to negotiate.

Sale-to-list ratio

▼ down over the stated period, favors buyers: about 98%

City of Nashville, three months ending May 2026 , roughly 2% below list

About 98%, roughly 2% below list. Homes closing under asking is a buyer-favorable read; Tennessee statewide runs 97.3%.

Apartment vacancy rate (cyclical high)

▲ up over the stated period, favors buyers: about 8.5%

Nashville metro, 2025

Apartment vacancy near 8.5%, a cyclical high, with 1-3 months free in lease-ups after a record wave (5.7% of stock added in 2025 vs 3.3% national). The glut is a buyer's and renter's friend.

Effective property tax rate for a new buyer (derived)

▲ up over the stated period, favors sellers: about 0.70% of market value

Davidson County (Urban Services District), 2025 tax year

About 0.70% of market value for a new buyer, up from a lower base after the 2025 reappraisal and the Council's 26.64%-above-neutral rate. Higher than Phoenix or Denver, and the twist under the no-income-tax pitch.

A colored triangle shows whether the change favors buyers: green favors buyers, red favors sellers. A gray dot marks a metric that is neutral for buyers (its direction is in the subtitle). Direction and color are descriptive of each metric's own stated period, not a forecast. Sources are listed in the source registry at the end of the page.

Five of the six cards point the buyer’s way, which matches Nashville’s status as the country’s strongest buyer’s market. The one red card is the tax, and it is the page’s whole point: the effective property tax rose after the 2025 reappraisal, which is unfavorable to a buyer’s carrying cost and is the twist hiding under the no-income-tax pitch. Green favors buyers, red favors sellers.

Is Nashville a buyer’s or seller’s market right now?

A buyer’s market, and one of the strongest in the country by the evidence that matters most. In May 2026 Redfin counted more than twice as many sellers as buyers, and Nashville sellers gave concessions in 75.5% of sales, the highest of 28 major U.S. metros and up from 61.8% a year earlier. Homes sit about 70 days, up from 58, and price cuts are widespread.

FinExplained Market Balance Score (beta)

Balanced market balanced on the blend, buyer's where it counts

Direction basis: The five mechanical inputs (about 6 months of supply, 70 days on market, 98% sale-to-list, 19.2% price cuts, inventory up about 13%) compute to a balanced reading just above the buyer's-market line, because single-family supply and sale-to-list are near-balanced values that sit in the middle of the market. The evidence the index does not weight points the other way: Nashville sellers gave concessions in 75.5% of May 2026 sales, the highest of 28 major U.S. metros, and there were more than twice as many sellers as buyers, which Redfin called the strongest buyer's market of any major metro. This is the third city in the series where the mechanical score contradicts the surface narrative (Chicago read seller's on scarcity, Denver read seller's on a detached-weighted mix, Nashville reads balanced-not-buyer because a resilient single-family segment props up a blend whose buyer's-market reality lives in unweighted concession and ratio data). The headline and the index measure different things, and this page publishes both rather than reconciling them into one number.

Beta: this score has not yet been backtested against historical market data, and the bands may be recalibrated. Read it alongside the metrics below, not instead of them.

Input	Reading	Normalized (0-100)	Weight applied
Months of supply	6 months	33	30%
Days on market	70 days	42	20%
Sale-to-list ratio	98%	53	20%
Share of listings with a price cut	19.2%	68	15%
Year-over-year inventory change	13%	34	15%

Months of supply: Nashville metro (GNR 9-county region), April 2026, blended. Single-family runs about 4-5 months (near-balanced) and condominiums 5-6+ months (a buyer's market); the blend sits near the balanced line.

Days on market: City of Nashville, three months ending May 2026 (Redfin), about 70 days, up from 58 a year earlier. The metro-consistent figure the compute layer uses; the GNR single-family regional read is faster at about 57 days on a different clock.

Sale-to-list ratio: City of Nashville, three months ending May 2026 (Redfin), about 98% (roughly 2% below list). Tennessee statewide was 97.3%.

Price-cut share: Tennessee (statewide proxy), May 2026 (Redfin), 19.2%, confidence Medium. The Nashville-specific figures measure different things (Realtor.com 13%+ monthly listings flow in January; Altos 34% cumulative active single-family stock in May) and neither is a clean stock share; the statewide proxy is disclosed rather than substituted silently. A clean Nashville-city stock share is a backlog item.

Year-over-year inventory change: Nashville metro (GNR 9-county region), entering 2026, up about 13% (the conservative end of the 13-19% range).

THE CAVEAT THAT MATTERS: this five-factor blend reads BALANCED (just above the buyer's-market line) because single-family months of supply (about 6, near-balanced) and sale-to-list (about 98%) are middle-of-the-market values. But the score does NOT weight the two data points that most decisively prove a buyer's market: seller concessions ran 75.5% of May 2026 sales, the highest of 28 major U.S. metros (Redfin), and there were more than twice as many sellers as buyers. Those place the lived market firmly on the buyer's side, concentrated in the condo and apartment segment. A blended index measures the middle of the market; Nashville's pain is at the property-type edges, exactly as Denver's was. Read the score with the concession and buyer/seller-balance figures, never on its own.

How this score works

Each input is normalized onto a 0-100 scale where higher means more seller-favorable: months of supply maps 0 months to 100 and 9 or more to 0; days on market maps 0 days to 100 and 120 or more to 0; sale-to-list maps 90 percent to 0 and 105 percent to 100; price-cut share maps 0 percent to 100 and 60 percent or more to 0; year-over-year inventory change maps a 40 percent rise to 0 and a 40 percent fall to 100. The design weights are months of supply 30 percent, days on market 20 percent, sale-to-list 20 percent, price-cut share 15 percent, and inventory change 15 percent; when an input is unavailable its weight is redistributed proportionally. Bands: below 40 reads as a buyer's market, 40 to 60 balanced, above 60 a seller's market. We show the band rather than a decimal because the inputs do not support decimal precision. The score is in beta and has not yet been backtested against historical market conditions; read it alongside the underlying metrics, never instead of them.

Now read that score carefully, because it is the interesting seam on this page. Our beta Market Balance Score lands Nashville in the balanced band, just above the buyer’s-market line, and it is arithmetically correct on its five inputs. It reads balanced because single-family months of supply (about 6) and sale-to-list (about 98%) are middle-of-the-market values. But the score does not weight the two data points that most decisively prove a buyer’s market: the 75.5% concession rate and the roughly two-to-one seller-to-buyer ratio. A blended index measures the middle of the market. Nashville’s pain is at the property-type edges, in the condo and apartment segment, exactly as Denver’s was.

This is now the third city in this series where the mechanical score contradicts the surface narrative. Chicago read seller’s on scarcity, Denver read seller’s on a detached-weighted mix, and Nashville reads balanced rather than buyer’s because a resilient single-family segment props up a blend whose buyer’s-market reality lives in unweighted concession and ratio data. The lesson is becoming the series’ signature: the headline and the index measure different things, and we publish both rather than tuning one number to match a story.

What changed this month

This is the first edition of this dashboard, so the baseline is the story. The moves already visible in the sourced data:

• The 30-year fixed averaged about 6.6% in mid-July 2026 (Freddie Mac read 6.49% on July 9; daily trackers ran 6.6% to 6.8%), range-bound in the mid-6% range all year.
• The GNR 9-county single-family median was about $503,340 in April 2026, essentially flat year over year, while price per square foot was down 2.0%, so the flat median partly hides a mix shift toward newer, larger homes.
• Sellers gave concessions in 75.5% of May sales, the highest of 28 major metros, up from 61.8%.
• Apartment vacancy reached a cyclical high near 8.5% after a record delivery wave, with metro asking rent down 1.2% to about $1,642.

Future editions will track each of these against this baseline.

Why is the no-income-tax pitch smaller than it looks?

Because the property tax that funds it just went up, and the increase was a policy choice. Here is the mechanic, and it is worth understanding because it is what makes Nashville different from every prior city in this series.

Tennessee taxes residential property on 25% of its appraised market value, a ratio fixed by the state constitution. Davidson County finished its quadrennial reappraisal effective January 1, 2025, the first since 2021, and the countywide median value rose 45%. Under the state’s truth-in-taxation law, a reappraisal cannot be a backdoor tax increase: the rate must fall to a revenue-neutral certified level, which for the Urban Services District was $2.222 per $100 of assessed value. Mayor Freddie O’Connell and Metro Council set the rate at $2.814 instead, 26.64% above neutral, inside a $3.8 billion budget. That was a deliberate revenue increase, and it is the reason many owners saw a real tax hike rather than the revenue-neutral relief the law defaults to.

For a new buyer, the arithmetic is short and you can check it. Take a home at the round $500,000 mark:

• Appraised (market) value: $500,000.
• Assessed value: $500,000 times the 25% ratio, or $125,000.
• Annual tax: $125,000 divided by 100, times the $2.814 rate, or about $3,517.50.
• Effective rate: $3,517.50 divided by $500,000, or about 0.70% of market value.

The General Services District rate of $2.782 works out to about 0.696%, near-identical. So a new buyer in Davidson County pays roughly 0.70% of market value, which is meaningfully higher than Phoenix (0.55%) and Denver (0.54%), though still below Chicago and Cook County.

And here is the Tennessee mechanic that matters for a buyer: buying does not reset your assessed value. Tennessee is a periodic-reappraisal state, not an acquisition-value state like California. Values reset on the quadrennial cycle, next in 2028 or 2029, or when the property physically changes, not when it sells. A new buyer inherits the current assessed value until the next countywide reappraisal. That makes Tennessee the fourth genuinely different tax machine in this series, after Texas’s statutory rate with a homestead exemption, Colorado’s biennial reassessment with no reset on sale, Arizona’s capped Limited Property Value, and Illinois’s classification plus an equalizer.

The suburbs generally carry a lower effective rate than post-reappraisal Davidson, which adds a tax reason to the suburban migration, not just a price reason. Wilson County (Mt. Juliet, Lebanon) and Rutherford County (Murfreesboro) run near 0.48%, below Davidson’s 0.70%. Williamson County (Franklin, Brentwood) is the trap worth naming: its effective rate is low, near 0.48% to 0.50%, but its median home value near $868,600 produces the highest median tax bills in the state, around $2,980. A low rate does not mean a low bill. The property tax calculator shows what a different rate does to a monthly payment.

Does the low income tax make Nashville cheap to insure?

Insurance is a moderate cost here, not the signature one, but it is the line most likely to move next. A typical Nashville homeowner pays about $2,931 a year (MoneyGeek, spring 2025), roughly 17% below the $3,548 national figure, and MoneyGeek’s Tennessee statewide average of about $3,045 corroborates it. Two aggregators disagree on where Tennessee ranks: MoneyGeek puts it 17th most expensive, while LendingTree reads a higher $3,408 and ranks it 7th. We model the MoneyGeek Nashville figure, treat both as aggregator estimates rather than regulator filings, and publish neither divergent read as a headline.

The real insurance story is a mismatch. Middle Tennessee sits in the eastward-shifting tornado belt, and Tennessee’s confirmed tornado count jumped from 6 in 2022 to 60 in 2025. The March 2020 EF3 tornado caused about $1.5 billion in damage across Davidson, Wilson, and Smith counties. Premiums have not yet caught up to that risk because of the regulatory filing cycle, so the honest read is that Nashville insurance is priced for a lower-risk state than the one that now exists, and increases are likely coming. Budget it as a line that is still moving.

Why are rents falling in Nashville?

Overbuilding, on a scale that puts Nashville in the same top tier as Austin, Denver, Phoenix, and Tampa. Multifamily deliveries peaked at 14,723 units in 2024 and stayed elevated at 11,195 in 2025, which equaled 8.2% and then 5.7% of existing apartment stock, well above the national 3.8% and 3.3%.

The result: vacancy near 8.5%, a cyclical high, with one to three months of free rent in high-supply submarkets, and metro asking rent down 1.2% year over year to about $1,642 (Yardi Matrix, February 2026). City listing reads run lower or in a similar band on different inventory definitions (Apartment List near $1,358, Zumper one-bedrooms near $1,634), and are range context, not the engine input. One thing held up: single-family home rents, near $2,300 to $2,500, far more resilient than apartments.

The catch, and renters should hear it clearly: the pipeline that created this is closing. Construction starts collapsed from a record 15,400 units in 2022 to about 6,200 in 2024. The under-construction pipeline of 17,470 units (February 2026) keeps rents soft into 2026 and 2027, but a tightening cycle is set up after that.

What does the monthly payment actually look like?

For the worked example we use the GNR 9-county single-family median of $503,340 at 20% down and the 6.6% mid-July rate. Principal and interest run about $2,572 a month. Add property tax at the derived 0.70% new-buyer rate (about $294) and homeowners insurance at the $2,931 MoneyGeek figure (about $244). That is roughly $3,110 a month of principal, interest, taxes, and insurance, before upkeep.

Notice one detail that inverts the Denver lesson. In Denver, the lowest-tax city we have studied, the insurance line is bigger than the tax line because of hail. In Nashville it is the reverse: the property tax of about $294 a month is larger than the $244 insurance line, because the 2025 reappraisal and the above-neutral rate lifted the tax while insurance sits near or below the national average. The tax is the carrying cost that defines this market. Run your own numbers in the mortgage calculator.

Rates are the other quiet weight. The same $503,340 home at 20% down cost about $1,698 a month in principal and interest at a 3% pandemic-era rate. At 6.6% it costs about $2,572, a difference of roughly $874 a month on the identical house. That is a large part of why demand cooled and prices went flat.

What income do you need to buy in Nashville?

About $133,267 a year for the median-priced example with 20% down, by our math: the gross income at which the roughly $3,110 monthly PITI equals 28% of income, the front-end half of the 28/36 rule. Davidson County’s median household income is about $77,371 (ACS 2024), so the gap is roughly $55,896 a year.

That gap is the honest reason prices went flat and stayed flat. The median household cannot buy the median home on the standard rule, and no income-tax advantage fixes a price-to-income ratio around 6.5 times. Test your own income, debts, and down payment in the home affordability calculator and the how much can I borrow calculator, and check your ratios with the DTI calculator.

Cash to close is the other gate, and Tennessee’s is plain: the state’s realty transfer tax is modest (about $0.37 per $100 on the deed plus a small mortgage recording tax), nothing like Chicago’s 0.75% buyer transfer tax, so nothing exotic hides in your closing statement.

Below 20% down, add PMI on top of these payments. Our sources do not publish a Nashville PMI average, so we leave it unquantified rather than guess. There is one piece of Nashville-specific leverage worth knowing: 75.5% of May sales carried a seller concession, so ask for one. Itemize your own line items in the buyer closing cost calculator.

Is it cheaper to rent or buy in Nashville right now?

On the monthly number, renting wins, and we have to be precise about why, because the easy version of this comparison is wrong.

Here is the honest reading. A $1,642 apartment and a $503,340 single-family median home are not the same product, so the roughly $1,887 monthly gap is the size of the step up from renting an apartment to owning a median house. It is not a clean rent-versus-buy verdict, and anyone quoting it as one is mixing metrics. For the like-for-like comparison, our rent vs buy calculator loads an editable Nashville preset that prices a $503,340 house against a $2,400 comparable single-family rent instead. At that comparable rent it is close to a wash over a shorter stay, and buying pulls ahead around year 11 in a flat-price market.

Owning does build equity that renting does not, and rents will not stay this soft forever with the pipeline emptying. Both cut the other way, which is why this is a tradeoff and not a verdict.

Which Nashville submarkets fit your budget?

The metro splits by property type and by county. Detached-dominated neighborhoods held up better than the condo core, and the value-tier suburbs carry both lower prices and lower effective tax rates.

How healthy is the Nashville economy behind this market?

Solid on jobs, cooling on demand. Metro unemployment ran about 2.7% in August 2025 to 3.3% in early 2026, below the national rate, and the metro added about 24,000 jobs year to date in 2025, a 3.1% increase led by healthcare, government, leisure and hospitality, and professional services. The employer base is deep: Vanderbilt University and Medical Center, HCA Healthcare, the State of Tennessee, Nissan, Amazon, and Bridgestone.

The demand side is the number to watch. The metro grew about 6.4% from 2020 to 2024, but 2025 growth decelerated sharply as international migration into Davidson County fell 58%, from 14,102 to 5,887. Davidson still added roughly 9,300 residents, the most of any Tennessee county, so the metro is slowing, not emptying, but the torrid pace that justified the pandemic-era price run has moderated.

One demand story is a risk, not a catalyst, and it belongs here rather than in the growth column. Oracle’s planned East Bank global headquarters, announced in 2021 with a pledge of 8,500 jobs, is now in serious doubt. On March 31, 2026 Oracle emailed up to 30,000 employees about layoffs, and per one analysis it had created a net gain of just 7 Nashville jobs from 2022 to early 2026, with about 800 workers assigned locally. Underwriting Nashville’s high-income demand on Oracle is now speculative, and a formal pullback would weaken East Bank land values.

Can you buy a Nashville house to run as an Airbnb?

Generally not as a pure investment in a residential neighborhood, and this is the distinct investor lesson here. Metro stopped issuing new non-owner-occupied short-term-rental permits in residential zones (R, RS, RM, and AR2A) in January 2022. New non-owner-occupied permits are available only in specified commercial, mixed-use, and downtown zones, an owner-occupied permit requires a natural person who actually lives at the property, and existing non-owner-occupied permits are renewable but not transferable when the property sells.

As of October 2025 there were 7,473 active permits (2,179 owner-occupied, 378 non-owner-occupied, and 4,915 grandfathered), while one aggregator counted about 9,018 Airbnb listings with only about 10% licensed, which points to significant unpermitted operation and real enforcement risk. In plain terms, you cannot buy a house in East Nashville, Germantown, 12 South, Sylvan Park, or The Nations today and legally run it as a pure non-owner-occupied short-term rental. The pathway is an owner-occupied permit, a property in a commercial or downtown zone, or a building specifically permitted for it. Nightly economics have also softened, with lower occupancy and rates than the boom years.

Who wins and who loses in this market?

• Buyers win. The most leverage since before the pandemic: more than twice as many sellers as buyers, 75.5% getting concessions, homes sitting about 70 days, price cuts widespread, and builder buydowns available on new construction. Patient, pre-approved buyers can negotiate price, repairs, and closing costs.
• Renters win. Record apartment supply, roughly 8.5% vacancy, negative rent growth, and one to three months free in lease-ups. This is the best renter market in over a decade, especially for newer downtown and southeast product.
• Sellers lose leverage. Overpriced or cookie-cutter homes sit; only well-priced, well-presented homes move quickly, and sellers should budget for a concession before they list.
• Homeowners face higher taxes. The 2025 reappraisal plus the above-neutral rate raised real tax bills for many Davidson County owners, partially offsetting the no-income-tax appeal. Owners whose values rose less than 45% but who still paid more felt it most.
• Investors face a split picture. Short-term-rental investors are boxed out of residential-zone permits and face softening nightly economics; buy-and-hold investors face soft rents now but a thinning pipeline that should firm rents by 2026 to 2027. Single-family rental holders are best positioned, because detached rents held up.

Three scenarios for the next 12 months

No single price forecast here, stated as fact or otherwise. Instead, three scenarios with the signals that would confirm or break each one.

The buyer’s market holds (the base tilt). Supply stays elevated, concessions stay near 75%, and prices stay flat. Confirmation: months of supply holding near 6, the concession share staying above 70%, and days on market near 70. This is the continuation of today’s market and it is what the migration and pipeline data support.

The rent floor arrives. The pipeline drought bites, vacancy falls back from 8.5%, and rents stabilize. Confirmation: vacancy declining for two consecutive quarters and concessions shrinking from one to three months free. This would firm the condo floor, because a would-be buyer’s rental option gets worse. Watch this one; it is the most likely thing to change the story.

Rates break below 6%. Demand revives, and the flat-price stalemate ends. Confirmation: a sustained sub-6% 30-year fixed and inventory turning down. This would firm prices, especially single-family.

The risk case, framed as pending rather than fact: a formal Oracle pullback at East Bank, or an insurance repricing that finally catches up to the tornado-frequency surge, would each cut against the demand and carrying-cost math above.

What to watch next month

• The GNR single-family and condo medians against the $503,340 and $345,000 April baselines.
• The seller-concession share against 75.5% and the buyer-to-seller ratio, the leading proof of the buyer’s market.
• Apartment vacancy against 8.5% and the pace of new lease-up concessions.
• The Tennessee insurance trajectory and any severe-storm event, the cost line most likely to move.
• Net migration and the Oracle East Bank status, the demand engine underneath all of it.

Run your own numbers

Every dollar figure on this page came from our tested calculator engine at stated assumptions, and each of these tools lets you swap in your own: rent vs buy (with an editable Nashville preset), mortgage, home affordability, how much can I borrow, buyer closing costs, seller net proceeds, refinance, DTI, property tax, and rental property ROI. Compare Nashville with our Austin housing market study, Tampa housing market study, Phoenix housing market study, Chicago housing market study, and Denver housing market study, and for how metro costs shape long-term plans, the FIRE number by metro study.

Frequently asked questions

Is Nashville a buyer’s or seller’s market in 2026?

It is a buyer’s market, and one of the strongest in the country. In May 2026 Redfin found Nashville had more than twice as many sellers as buyers and ranked it the top buyer’s market among major U.S. metros, with 75.5% of sellers offering concessions, the highest of 28 major metros.

What is the median home price in Nashville?

The 9-county Greater Nashville region’s single-family median was about $503,340 in April 2026, essentially flat year over year, and the condo median was about $345,000. Redfin’s City of Nashville all-types median was about $475,000 for the three months ending May 2026, a different, smaller scope.

Does Nashville have a property tax if Tennessee has no income tax?

Yes. Tennessee has no state income tax and no state property tax, but local property tax is significant. In Davidson County the post-2025-reappraisal rate is $2.814 per $100 of assessed value in the Urban Services District, which works out to about 0.70% of a home’s market value.

How does the 25% assessment ratio work?

Tennessee taxes residential property on 25% of its appraised market value. A $500,000 home has an assessed value of $125,000, and the tax is that assessed value divided by 100, times the rate ($2.814 in Davidson’s Urban Services District), or about $3,517 a year.

Did Nashville property taxes go up in 2025?

Yes for many owners. The 2025 reappraisal raised the countywide median value 45%, and although the rate was legally required to drop to revenue-neutral, Metro Council set the Urban Services District rate 26.64% above that neutral level, so many homeowners saw real increases.

Does buying reset my property taxes in Nashville?

No. Tennessee reappraises on a quadrennial cycle, next in 2028 or 2029, or when a property physically changes, not when it sells. A new buyer inherits the current assessed value until the next countywide reappraisal, with no acquisition-value cap like California’s.

Can I buy a house in Nashville to run as an Airbnb?

Generally not as a pure investment in residential neighborhoods. Metro stopped issuing new non-owner-occupied short-term-rental permits in residential zones (R, RS, RM, AR2A) in January 2022. You can get an owner-occupied permit if you live there, or buy in a commercial, mixed-use, or downtown zone that still allows non-owner-occupied permits.

What are rents doing in Nashville?

Rents are flat to slightly negative because of a record apartment-construction wave. The metro average asking rent was about $1,642 in February 2026, down 1.2% year over year, and vacancy reached a cyclical high near 8.5%, prompting concessions of one to three months free in some buildings.

How much is homeowners insurance in Nashville?

A typical Nashville homeowner pays roughly $2,900 to $3,100 a year, near or slightly below the national average, but Middle Tennessee’s rising tornado and hail exposure means premiums are likely to increase. Tennessee’s confirmed tornado count jumped from 6 in 2022 to 60 in 2025.

Which suburbs have lower property taxes?

Wilson County (Mt. Juliet, Lebanon) and Rutherford County (Murfreesboro) have effective rates around 0.48%, below post-reappraisal Davidson County’s roughly 0.70%. Williamson County has a low rate too but very high home values, so its dollar bills are the highest in the state.

Are home prices going to crash in Nashville?

There is no evidence of a crash. Prices have flattened rather than fallen: single-family medians are roughly flat year over year and price per square foot is down about 2%. The market is rebalancing toward buyers, not collapsing.

Should I rent or buy in Nashville in 2026?

On the monthly number, renting is cheaper against an apartment. Buying makes more sense for a buyer with a longer horizon who can capture a seller concession, and at a comparable single-family house rent our Nashville preset shows buying pulling ahead around year 11. Run the like-for-like math in our rent vs buy calculator rather than comparing an apartment rent to a house payment.

Methodology

Where the numbers come from. Every market figure on this page is transcribed from a named source with its geography, period, and confidence level in the source registry below, and is never presented without its period. Where sources differ (a GNR 9-county single-family median, a Redfin City of Nashville all-types median, a Redfin Davidson County median), we show them and label the scope rather than averaging them. We reject the circulating $445,000 luxury-blog figure, which is inconsistent with the primary sources.

Why the metro, and where the city appears. This page is metro-first: the GNR 9-county footprint is the region the monthly medians and supply figures cover. The City of Nashville and Davidson County appear where the tax mechanics live, because the assessment ratio and the Urban Services District rate are county-specific. The Tennessee statewide figures for the price-cut share and the insurance corroboration are labeled as statewide.

What we computed ourselves. Monthly payments, PITI, income needed, cash to close, the escrow split, and the rent-versus-own gap are computed by the FinExplained calculator engine (decimal-precise, tested) from the stated assumptions: a $503,340 example home, a 6.6% 30-year fixed, the derived 0.70% new-buyer effective property tax rate, $2,931 annual insurance, and 1% annual upkeep. PMI below 20% down is disclosed and excluded. Golden tests pin each published figure, so a silent change would fail our build.

The 0.70% tax rate is derived, and shown as arithmetic. Tennessee publishes no single effective rate, so we compute it from the 25% constitutional assessment ratio and the Council-set $2.814 rate and show the working above. The optional-cost figure we surface, about $3,517 on a $500,000 home, is the same tax expressed in dollars; it is the most on-thesis figure for a market whose signature story is the tax, and it is already inside the PITI above rather than an extra line.

The rent comparison is not like-for-like, and we say so on the chart. The $1,642 rent is a metro apartment average and the $503,340 home is a single-family median. The gap between them is the step up from an apartment to a median house, not a rent-versus-buy verdict. The rent vs buy calculator’s Nashville preset runs the comparable-rent version against a single-family house rent.

The Market Balance Score is in beta, and Nashville is a case where the single number understates the market. Its formula, weights, normalization anchors, and this month’s inputs are fully disclosed on the card above. Nashville carries all five inputs, so no weight renormalization applies; the price-cut input is a Tennessee statewide proxy and is labeled, and the days-on-market input uses the Redfin city figure that is metro-consistent with the sale-to-list read. The score lands in the balanced band because its five factors are near-balanced values, while the two facts that most prove a buyer’s market, the 75.5% concession rate and the two-to-one seller-to-buyer ratio, are not among its inputs. It is arithmetically correct and understates the lived market, which is why it renders beside the concession and buyer/seller charts and never as a headline.

Charts. Every chart states its geography and period and carries a text description. The cross-city tax chart derives each bar from that city’s engine tax rate, not a literal.

Source registry

Every figure used on this page, with value, geography, period, source, and confidence:

Assumptions and limitations

• The worked examples assume a $503,340 home, 20% down unless stated, a 30-year fixed at 6.6%, the derived 0.70% new-buyer effective property tax rate, $2,931 annual insurance, and 1% annual upkeep. Change any input and the outputs move; the linked calculators exist for exactly that.
• The 0.70% tax rate is derived from Tennessee’s 25% assessment ratio and Davidson’s Council-set $2.814 rate, not read off a published table. Your assessment, your district (Urban vs General Services), and any appeal decide where you actually land.
• The $2,931 insurance premium is a MoneyGeek Nashville aggregator figure, not a regulator filing, and a conflicting LendingTree read is higher ($3,408). A primary Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance figure remains unobtained.
• The rent comparison uses the Yardi metro apartment average ($1,642). It is not the same product as the $503,340 single-family median home, and the page says so wherever the gap appears.
• Months of supply, days on market, sale-to-list, and the price-cut share span the GNR region, the City of Nashville, and a Tennessee statewide proxy, each labeled. The Balance Score reads balanced and understates a lived buyer’s market, as the card and methodology explain.
• Submarket figures come from single-brokerage reports, are labeled lower confidence, and mix property types and periods. Treat them as direction, not precision.
• Everything here is educational analysis of market data, not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice, and not a recommendation to buy, sell, or rent any property.

Data freshness

This edition carries April to June 2026 market data with mid-July 2026 mortgage rates, was published July 14, 2026, and refreshes monthly: the next update is planned for mid-August 2026, after the July data lands in the Greater Nashville REALTORS report. A notable rate move below 6%, a Tennessee insurance filing or major storm event, or a change in the concession and buyer/seller-balance readings trigger an off-cycle update. Corrections follow our corrections policy and are logged in the changelog.