8,850 listings, no new permits, and mortgages back over 7%
The Nashville Scene ran the numbers last month. Roughly 8,850 short-term rental listings across Davidson County, up from 7,733 in November 2022 and about 1,500 back in 2015. District 19 alone has 2,068. And Metro has not issued a new non-owner-occupied permit in a residential zone since January 1, 2022.
Meanwhile the 30-year fixed went back above 7 percent on April 18, printing 7.10 percent.
Those three facts together are the entire spring 2024 story for a Nashville owner. Let me pull them apart.
Supply is up, but not where you might assume
Eighteen months, 7,733 to about 8,850. That is real growth in a market where a whole category of new permit has been closed for over two years.
Where is it coming from? District 19 — downtown, the Gulch, the urban core — holding 2,068 of those listings tells you most of it. Multifamily buildings zoned for it, owner-occupied properties, and units in areas where short-term rental use is permitted by right are all still adding inventory. The closed door applies to non-owner-occupied homes in residential zones. It does not apply to the rest of the market.
So the practical read depends entirely on what you own.
If you own a downtown condo or a unit in a purpose-built building: your competitive set is growing quickly and will keep growing. Your differentiation has to come from operations, because it is not coming from scarcity — which is precisely what a market where supply and demand grow at the same rate does to the average listing.
If you own a permitted non-owner-occupied house in a residential neighborhood — East Nashville, the Nations, parts of 12South: your specific category is capped. Nobody new is joining it. That is a genuinely valuable position and it is why letting a permit lapse is such an expensive mistake.
What 7 percent does to the picture
It slows the buy side, which slows the parts of supply growth that come from new investor purchases. That is helpful to you, and it is the same mechanism I wrote about last fall when a new mayor and a mortgage in the sevens landed in the same month.
It also means anyone who bought in the last eighteen months is carrying a heavier payment and is under more pressure to fill the calendar. Pressure produces discounting, and discounting from a distressed neighbor drags the whole block's realized rate down for a season. You will feel this in the shoulder weeks more than the peak weekends.
The wrong response is to match every discount. The right response is to know what is happening and price deliberately rather than reactively.
Pricing in a market with more listings
Three things we adjust when a submarket's supply is climbing.
Widen the comp set and check it more carefully. When five new homes come online in your bedroom count within half a mile, your old comp set is stale. New listings tend to price aggressively for the first month to build reviews, so a naive read of the set tells you the market has collapsed when actually three homes are running a launch promotion. Distinguishing a launch discount from a market move is most of the skill.
Defend the peak, flex the trough. The weekends that will book anyway should not be discounted because Tuesday is soft. Move Tuesday. Hold Saturday.
Use minimum stays as a pricing tool. In a soft midweek market, dropping from a three-night to a two-night minimum often produces more revenue than a rate cut, because it opens a category of booking rather than lowering the price of the one you already had.
That is the kind of judgment call that only exists if somebody looks every week. We reprice every home we manage weekly — pull the pace, pull the set, answer whether the near calendar is too full and the far calendar too empty, then make small changes. Fifty-two small corrections a year beats two big ones, and it is the core of what we do for an owner.
What I would watch through the summer
Whether District 19's listing count keeps climbing at this pace, because that is where the downtown rate pressure comes from.
Whether the permit conversation at Council moves from individual exemptions toward something broader. Spring and summer are when this comes up here.
And your own 60-to-90-day pace against the same date last year. That is the number that tells you whether the market is soft or your listing is.
If your spring is pacing behind last year and you cannot tell whether it is you or the market, I will pull your comp set and tell you which. Costs nothing. Get started here.