Home inventory remains at historic lows to start the year, while prices have stayed well above pre-COVID-19 pandemic norms. And in some markets, affordability has fallen off a cliff for would-be homebuyers because of rising interest rates.
Experts are warning that the increase in home values over the recovery period that followed the Great Recession was unsustainably boosted by low pandemic-era interest rates—and, therefore, the bubble must come crashing down. At least a little.
Initially, forecasts characterized the expected housing market "correction" as knocking as much as 10% overall off the value of the average American home by the end of 2023. Real estate firms have continued to issue pessimistic forecasts, but the country is far from a consensus on how dramatic the correction will be.
Existing home sales have plummeted since the start of 2022, but the consistently tight supply of existing and new houses has kept prices more or less in place or simply growing slower than in 2021.
Such pressures as these have led institutions like Goldman Sachs to lower forecasts for how much prices might decline. The bank issued a memo in January 2023 saying it anticipates a 25% decline in four large metropolitan areas, including Phoenix, Austin, San Jose, and San Diego. This would put the pain of this housing correction on par with the 2008 collapse for some hot urban housing markets.
Nashville MLS used third-quarter 2022 ATTOM rankings to find the 10 counties least at risk of a housing downturn in 2023. ATTOM's ranking criteria included the percentage of homes at risk of foreclosure, the proportion of local wages it would take to cover average homeownership expensed, unemployment rates, and whether mortgage balances exceed property value estimates—a situation known as being "underwater." In total, there were 581 U.S. counties with data to be considered for the rankings.
Many of the lowest-risk counties were in the South. Recent research from Florida Atlantic University reports that housing markets in such states as Utah, Idaho, North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona have seen prices rise much more quickly than historic trends, suggesting they should and could be at risk of steeper downward corrections in price.
Tennessee had three counties among the top 10 that are among the least vulnerable in this ranking, the most of any state. And four of the 52 least-risky counties were within the Nashville metro area. The unemployment rates in each county that made the least-vulnerable list were also below the national average of 3.7% in August 2022.
Read on to see if your county is among those where homes are more likely to maintain value than elsewhere in the country.
