02-05-2025
$145K income needed to buy median-priced home in Middle Tennessee market, report says
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — A report shows a family needs to earn at least $145,244 a year to purchase a median-priced home in the 'Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin' market.
According to the report, the median listing price for a house in that Middle Tennessee market is just under $550,000 as of April 2025.
A number of longtime Nashville residents said they can't believe how expensive real estate has become in the Metro area. They remember Nashville as an affordable city.
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'I retired four years ago, 40 years in higher education, and I didn't make $150,000 when I retired,' Nashvillian Wilson Lee said. 'When I was 30-some years [old], no, there was no way I was making that kind of money.'
Based on the report from the income needed to buy a median-priced home in Nashville and the surrounding area has risen 84.6% since April 2019. That means the required income for local homebuyers six years ago was just over $78,680.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the median household income in the U.S. is around $75,000 a year, nowhere close to what you now need to buy a median-priced home in many major cities.
'Certain areas like Davidson, Williamson, and even Sumner [counties] have seen the home prices escalate over the last few years, and home prices really haven't been coming down, so yeah, borrowers' incomes do need to be higher,' Castle & Cooke Branch Manager Rodney Jones said.
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Jones also mentioned there are still homes that are more favorably priced in the $300,000 and $400,000 range, but looking outside of the Metro Nashville area will offer more affordable homes. He also believes continued demand is keeping the prices so high, so making that decision to rent or buy a home depends on your future plans.
'The rental market in Nashville is one of the more higher price rental markets, so it's not cheap to rent an apartment, even though it looks like we have an abundance of rental prices to rent,' Jones said.
According to the report, the metropolitan area with lowest required income to afford a median-priced home in the U.S. is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ($64,427). On the opposite end of the list is the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara market in California, where an income of $370,069 is needed to buy a median-priced home.
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