Hey_Hey

I don’t think I would go quite that far. I’m in Huntsville regularly (and will be there this weekend), and compared to Louisville it still feels quite small. It arguably feels more modern, but “modern oftentimes means suburban and less dense. To be honest feels closer in size to Clarksville than Louisville. Louisville feels larger than it is because of its dense urban core.

To provide something of a counter argument, I would contend that the 87/day could grow if there were more supply on the housing side. Nashville seems to be housing constrained at the moment and is likely tamping down growth to some degree. Household size is also decreasing meaning that we will need more units to house the same population. This is especially true in more urban areas. We could see population growth stall and still need additional units because of that phenomenon.

There’s also an employment requirement and interconnectivity between counties. Like UT stated before, MSAs are defined by counties, so a county is either in or out, all or nothing. The determination is made by looking at employment crossover between counties, and there is a TON of employment crossover between Murfreesboro and other primary cities in the MSA. I believe the census bureau uses the community survey to do this. I’ve taken one in the past and it asks what zip code I worked in. Tremendous numbers of people drive the I-24 corridor in both directions for work, and there are also tons of people driving 840 to Brentwood/Franklin to work in Cool Springs and Maryland Farms. Murfreesboro will never be its own MSA because it makes up such an important part of the Nashville-Franklin-Murfreesboro MSA, and as the area grows those connections become even more ingrained. The bigger question is in regards to Clarksville. Clarksville is being drawn into Nashville-Murfreesboro-Franklin orbit quickly, especially as growth to the north accelerates into Robertson County. The only issue is that Clarksville and Hopkinsville are paired into one MSA, and Hopkinsville doesn’t have much connectivity to Nashville from an employment perspective. The anchor that keeps those two communities together is Fort Campbell which administratively lies in Kentucky, so that is going to be a tough hurdle to overcome given the numbers of people who live in Montgomery County and work on base. As of now, Clarksville isn’t even part of the Nashville CSA, so that would have to happen first.

For those mentioning that AirBnB still seems to be growing, that could be the case and still have RevPAL drop. If available units free by 25% but demand only grew 10% the. RevPAL would drop. This could also be a platform specific problem. We have converted back to hotels for most of our stays unless we’re going to the beach. What I’ve found is that it is much cheaper to find the property on Airbnb and then rent it on the management company website. They avoid AirBNB fees that way and pass that along. The fees getting tacked into AirBNB and VRBO are crazy. The cleaning fee is especially painful. my suspicion is that there’s a correction coming and those people who thought they would make a killing are going to be under water since they paid so much for the unit in the first place.

I would make the argument that diverting 2% of the funds earmarked for the Barnes Affordable Housing Fund toward speeding the construction of more housing would do more for overall housing affordability than the Barnes Fund does itself. The Barnes fund does a great job of producing 350-400 affordable housing units every year, but 99% of Nashville's residents won't every reap those benefits. We need a solution for housing affordability that touches every corner of the metro area, and the best way to do that is to do everything we can to promote the delivery of additional units. Obviously, fixing our Codes Department doesn't solve the problem, but it helps. We need to also address the issue through zoning and other avenues as well. Housing affordability helps (or hinders) the hiring of those other key employees as well. In my opinion, it's one of those areas that we can spend a little to save a lot.

It seems the public and politicians only blame developers for price increases, but you hit on another issue that is affecting supply: permitting. I have built or renovated houses in Nashville (on a limited basis) since 2015 or so. I'm currently in the process of attempting to build a house for our family now. The permitting burden and time suck have gotten much, much worse, and codes only get more complex as time goes on. I am all for codes and permitting, but we need to understand that there is never a free lunch. If permitting or inspections slow a project down or make it more complex then there increased costs. If we update a building code and require a sidewalk to be installed there's increased cost. If inspectors can't get out to a job site for three weeks that leads to increased costs. If it takes 6 months to get a septic permit it leads to increased costs. If it takes standing in line 8 hours to get a building permit there are increased costs. There's a tendency to think that those issues only affect developers, but those costs of inefficiency on the government side absolutely trickle down to the resident looking to purchase or rent a residence of any type. Our municipalities need to take a hard look at this and take action to make residential construction easier than it is now. Without doing so we are all paying a sort of tax because of that inefficiency.

It looks like an important qualifier was left off. I think it was intended to say that there are 22 cities in the US with 30 or more buildings over 300 ft.

I’m more optimistic than you about our future volumes, but I agree with you wholeheartedly about transit. There needs to be a light rail line (or at least a robust BRT) connecting BNA to Downtown. That alone would probably clear out 10-15% of the O&D passengers and free up some capacity in the ride share/shuttle/self parking areas. It would also make Nashville a much stronger convention city since we would get rid of any necessity for cars.

That’s really anemic growth for Nashville. Just a few years ago (circa 2013-2016) we were growing at over 35,000 residents per year. What’s odd is that the growth seems to have actually sped up in the last few years compared that prior time, although that may be more of a function of the type of growth (buildings, high profile companies, etc) and not significant numerical growth. A few questions: 1. Has Nashville’s growth actually declined that much or is this inaccurate? 2. Has the cost of living changed the income/wealth of people moving here? Are those 17,000 new people generally higher income and the lower income residents are having to look elsewhere? 3. What does the future hold? Will we see a resurgence of growth rates again?

It looks like BNA is adding yet another airline with multiple desinations. Breeze Airways is beginning nonstop service to five new destinations from BNA as part of a larger national expansion of service. Flights start May 26, 2022, to the following destinations: Tulsa (TUL), Oklahoma City (OKC), Charleston (CHS), Hartford (BDL), and Akron/Canton (CAK). TUL and OKC are twice weekly. TUL is ThursdaySunday and OKC is Friday/Monday. CHS, BDL, and CAK are four times weekly on Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday. https://www.flybreeze.com/destinations/Nashville

Great infill, and the fact that these are micro units hopefully indicates that they will be a bit more affordable. Put me in the camp of preferring 5-10 buildings of this height over 2-3 buildings of 30-35 stories. I prefer the address to play the prominent role in the name, but that may butt up against the wishes of marketers. With all the names floating around I can’t keep them straight. At least with the address I can think of a location. I know exactly where 505 Church is located. Most people have no idea where the Harlowe is located.

A couple thoughts on this: 1. We can't forget property taxes, especially when comparing Nashville and cities in Texas. Tennessee has dirt cheap property taxes while Texas has high property taxes. On average, Tennesseans pay roughly 0.6-0.7% of their house value in taxes every year while Texas pays 1.6-1.7%. On a $750k house that equals $4875 annually ($406 monthly) in Tennessee and $12,375 ($1031 monthly) in Texas. (Truth be told, those rates for both states are likely lower now after the rapid run up in prices, but the difference in scale is the same.) That $625 difference in monthly costs is pretty substantial and creates a situation where a house that costs $935k in Tennessee has the same cost of ownership on a 30 year mortgage as a house worth $750k in Texas. Homebuyers may not even realize that this is happening, but over time the property tax difference is going to be priced into the market. The same is true when comparing Tennessee to Georgia, although the difference between the states is less the difference between Texas and Tennessee. 2. The Nashville MSA grew at ~21% from 2010 to 2020. That compares to the Atlanta MSA at 15%. At the same time, and likely more impactful, it seems Nashville's job mix went from a more equal blue collar/white collar mix from to being more white collar/no collar. That brought an influx of people with substantially higher incomes and net worths into the market which drives the prices up. The biggest economic drivers in the 80s and 90s was likely automotive with the development and growth of the Nissan plant in Smyrna and Saturn plant in Spring Hill. Beginning in 2000-2010 we saw that shift to more finance, corporate headquarters, and healthcare administration as companies like Nissan relocated here and HCA, CHS, and other healthcare companies exploded and their headquarters grew. Beginning in 2015 or so we have seen the tech sector explode as well as the phenomenon of companies located in high cost of living area relocate their back office staff or their C-suite to Nashville (Alliance Bernstein, UBS, Amazon, Lyft, etc.). Nashville is fundamentally a different place in 2020 as it was in 2000, and I would contend the change from 2010 to 2020 was greater than 2000-2010. With the exception of Austin, I can't think of a place that has shifted its economy more than Nashville.

One of the biggest issues right now is the heavy expense to build anything new. It is almost impossible to build something new and have it be truly affordable. That being said, any new construction (especially in rentals) should make existing options slightly less desirable which will provide downward pressure on prices over time. I like the idea of opening up any single family zoned lot to accessory dwellings and excluding a portion of the increased value from property taxes. That includes any R-zoned or RS zoned lot, and I would also get rid of the requirement that the primary house be owner occupied. Doing all of that creates a fantastic incentive to add a small 1-2 bedroom apartment that could be rented out, and it does so while still keeping the neighborhood’s feel intact.

Gannett buying all of these local papers and pushing national stories was really dumb in retrospect. Nobody is looking to their local media outlets now to bring them national stories. Local media outlets are there to bring local stories and politics which Gannett gutted from the newsroom. The only way for local papers to success is to jettison national and international news and be hyper focused on local and regional news…..but that is exactly opposite of what Gannett does.

Goshen is in Oldham County near Louisville. Oldham County lies somewhere between Williamson County and Sumner County in terms of wealth.