Newcomers, return to offices bring worsening traffic woes

(As seen in the 7/9/21 Ledger column)

Nashgeddon! It’s coming! During the pandemic, as traffic slowed, the woes and moans of the drivers dropped into eerie silence. With the decrease in cars skirting about the roads and bridges of the county, travelers were once again happy, safe in their little COVID hideaways traveling down the highways.

And now, as if overnight, they’re back.

Since we have no trains, the lanes are filled with automobiles and other forms of automotive travel. With thousands, that’s thousands, of jobs being dropped on the city, some of the companies relocating to Nashville have understood the impending congestion and offered monetary bonuses to those who will travel to work via mass transit, bicycle or afoot.

But there’s always something, and this time it’s education. The lack of what is perceived to be good education in Davidson County has many families with school-age children moving into Williamson County.

A family with three children might spend from $33,000 to $93,000 per year on private schools in Davidson County. While some of the companies relocating boast they are bringing “high-paying jobs” with them, that number might reflect salaries of $120,000 annually. Some parents would have to earn $120,000 simply to educate their three children in some of the area’s private schools.

With no mass transit in sight, and Metro Council reeling from the recent 34% tax hike, it is impossible to find the funds to improve education or transit. As a former Metro bigwig stated: “Metro does not offer that many services. There is nowhere to cut.”

He agreed with a statement once made by?Danny Herron , president and chief executive officer of the Nashville Area Habitat for Humanity, who said that for every person relocating to Nashville, three people are needed to provide services for that person.

With real estate prices and rents shooting skyward, there is nowhere for the service people to live. If they are forced to live outside the area, they must drive to work, and that equates to three more cars for every one person moving here.

As MetroMan stated, there is no room in the budget for much of anything. Add affordable housing to education and transit, and things get scary.

It eventually implodes. That, my friends, is when the bubble bursts.

Sale of the Week

There was a time when a million dollars was considered an enormous sum of money, hence the term “millionaires,” a status reserved for elite, wealthy persons of grand financial stature.

In Nashville real estate, a million-dollar home was referred to as a mansion, and for years was reserved for areas such as Belle Meade.

Newcomers might be surprised to know East Nashville once was the neighborhood of the affluent before the fire in March 1916 burned three blocks of the esteemed area. The fire was started by a young boy playing with a ball fashioned from a yarn sock. He accidently threw the ball into his fireplace, retrieved it and then pitched it into his front yard, a bad decision on his part.

The burning orb ignited the grass, and the March winds fanned the flames of the instant inferno. In short order, there was no East Nashville.

As the wealth migrated west, the area remained desolate and only began to rebound in the late 1990s, then to have a tornado rip through in 1998 as the neighborhood began to flourish. Ironically, the savage winds brought tens of millions of dollars into the East Side along with its devastation as insurance money flooded the area.

Within a few years, East Nashville real estate values began to compete with Sylvan Park and Belmont. Once again, a disaster hit, this one a financial crisis that gripped the world. Yet again the properties along the river fought back through the Great Recession, only to have yet another tornado swoop into various shops, businesses and homes in 2020, just ahead of the pandemic.

Last week, the home at 518 South 10th Street sold for $428 per square foot, a huge number in any area of Nashville. With a sales price of $1.175 million for 2,807 square feet, the sale impressed the real estate industry, even in this wacky market.

Kelley Engels Mayo, a market leader at Compass RE, listed the house for $1.2 million and sold it in only five days, rewarding Music City Builders. The 2,807 square feet were well utilized and included four bedrooms, three full bathrooms and one half bathroom, along with a home office and a rec room.

Mayo described one bathroom as a “spa-like sanctuary,” and noted that Kelley Jeanne Designs was the designer of the home. There are extra-large closets throughout and spray foam insulation, tankless water heaters and dual flush toilets, because apparently once is not enough.

Reid Anderson, one of the preferred Parks people, represented the buyer of this package prepared by Music City Builders, Kelley Jeanne Designs and marketed by Compass.

Richard Courtney is a licensed real estate broker with Fridrich and Clark Realty and can be reached at?[email protected] .