Housing & Appliance Shortages

The residential housing inventory shortage has been burdensome for some years. However, since the pandemic began, the lack of homes for sale is creating even more problems – intense buyer competition, high home prices, and a historic supply crunch. Thus, the National Association of REALTORS® is urging a “once in a generation” federal response to address decades of underinvestment and underbuilding.

In a recent article from Realtor® Magazine, DeedClaim, an online deed preparation service, analyzed the 50 largest metros to identify the markets with the most significant housing deficits. This study crunched realtor.com® data to determine each metro area’s supply levels and analyzed population changes to find where the lowest amount of available housing is compared to demand.

So how does that affect our market? Most of us are used to hearing about real estate inventory crunches in big cities like San Francisco and New York, but the most severe shortages aren’t in those markets. In fact, cities like New York, Miami, Chicago, and Los Angeles are currently experiencing a housing surplus, due in part to many people taking advantage of working remotely and moving to more affordable areas of the country.

Surprisingly, this study shows that Nashville is the 12th in the U.S. with the biggest housing shortage. When our neighbors only two hours away are dealing with this issue, it’s clear that it impacts our area as well.

At Bankrate.com, Dhara Singh explains it like this. “As the coronavirus took hold in the U.S., manufacturers, including in the appliance sector, suddenly had fewer workers available, delaying production and shrinking supply. The constraints also affected foreign suppliers who contribute appliance materials and parts. The shortages began in March 2020, when pandemic shutdowns started and homeowners found themselves staying home, using appliances much more frequently as well as looking to remodel.”

Much like the housing shortage, no one is exactly sure when these appliance concerns will return back to normal, but the housing situation locally had some hopeful news in the past few weeks. Recent actions taken by the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Planning Commission look to ease the burden of housing shortages by easing restrictions for new smaller lot sizes and setbacks in order to get more homes in new residential developments. Simply put, building more houses will allow for increased housing inventory, which will help costs stay in a more affordable range for everyone.

These “growing pains” seem to just be a part of the housing market for now, and Realtors® across the country are working to do what they can to ease these issues. Realtors work for homeowners across the country and our community. That’s Who We R®.