After building 1,200 apartment units in Nashville over the past three years, Atlanta-based SWH Residential Partners will take a pause this year.
The move, driven by concerns about an overheated market, comes as more than 15,000 units are under construction and building costs are rising.
“The market is healthy right now and should be able to absorb the pipeline, but we don’t need to add more supply in the near term,” said John Tirrill, SWH Residential’s managing director.
The cautious tone Tirrill struck on a panel during last month’s Urban Land Institute’s Nashville Real Estate Outlook 2016 event evokes the lingering $64 million question of how long can the city’s real estate boom continue.
On the development side, experts see more new apartment, office, industrial and mixed-use buildings, including with retail space, rising in the Nashville area this year. But the rate at which the region adds jobs and people will be key in determining how quickly space in those buildings is absorbed and ultimately how long the growth boom continues.
“Since 2010 on average, we’ve created about 30,000 jobs a year,” said Tom Frye, a broker with retail-focused real estate firm Baker Storey McDonald Properties Inc. in Nashville. “As long as that trend continues, I don’t see a pause in the action.”
In their Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2016 report, the Urban Land Institute and accounting/consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers ranked Nashville among the nation’s top 10 real estate markets to watch this year. Nashville also was ranked (continue reading at Tennessean)