Bill Diebenow Properties

  Greater Nashville boasts the second-strongest job market in the nation, according to an analysis from The Wall Street Journal (article below) and Moody's Analytics. And, from my vantage point as advisor in the residential housing market, the employment figures support the ongoing sustainability of property appreciation. The hottest job markets in America are in five different states, but they have a lot in common. They’re in midsize cities, all with a population under 2.3 million. They’re in states with fairly low income taxes, or none at all. And their climates allow for outdoor activities all year round.  This is the fourth year that The Wall Street Journal and Moody's have done this kind of number-crunching. It is the latest evidence of the region's rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic, having now regained the number of jobs lost during the brief recession as the virus spread worldwide. The assessment ranked metro areas by five factors, using 2021 data: unemployment ...

It's remarkable that more than 1-in-5 home sales is an investor purchase, according to housing research firm CoreLogic in December. As this WSJ article (click link) states, HOAs are rewriting home ownership rulebooks to thwart investor purchases. As a realtor and investment property owner, I can understand the pressure on different sides of this discussion. What seems to be pushing this to a boiling point is the entry in recent years of large-scale landlords, Wall Street-backed institutions, and iBuyers. A Money magazine article sited 57% of investor transactions originate today from these sources. The HOA response is tricky because not all homeowners are uniform and will want to maximize their asset when it comes time to sell. Is it reasonable to: Place a cap on the number of homes that can be rented in a particular neighborhood? Require new buyers to live in a home or leave it vacant for a certain number of months before they can rent it out?