Nashville’s June Home Sales Pick Back Up — And Set Another Record

Year-to-date closings for the Greater Nashville area are up 3.2 percent with 15,336 through mid-year 2013. Image via Flickr

Homes in Nashville are moving faster than previous months and selling for more than ever before, according to numbers for June released by the Greater Nashville Association of Realtors.

April and May backed off of 2013 levels, but last month was up more than 9 percent with 3,300 home sales in the Nashville area. Most notably, the median price of those properties reached an all-time high at $222,000 for a single family home.

Henry Pile just sold a house in Inglewood that he’s been renting out since moving out in 2012.

“We just hung onto it for another two years and now the market is so hot, we felt like it would be silly not to take advantage of it,” he said.

Pile bought the house for $129,000 four years ago and sold it in recent weeks for $227,000 — nearly $100,000 more, and Pile says that’s without major renovations.

Realtors say the higher prices may encourage more people to sell, which they say would be good because currently inventories are lower than what’s considered a “healthy market.”

The calculation is complicated for many would-be sellers. Lesley Lassiter of West Nashville says she’s been waiting to list her house until she and her family find a bigger house they like and that’s still within their price range. But any place they can afford already seems to have a contract on it.

“I have a feeling we’ll still be looking a year from now, and my poor real estate agent is pretty worn out, I think, already,” she said.

While June had more closings this year than last, there were several periods before the recession in which homes were selling even faster. In June of 2006, more than 4,000 closings occurred in the Nashville area.