Every market update you read about Nashville is built on the same number: homes are
selling in about 19 days. That number is true. It is also measured only on the homes
that sold.
I wanted to know what happened to the rest. So I pulled every Davidson County listing
from the MLS for the 12 months ending August 3, 2026. That is 35,324 listings across 26
zip codes, deduplicated and sorted by how each one actually ended.
Here is what I found: 46.9% of them never sold. They expired, they
were cancelled, or the seller withdrew them.
Almost half.
Where listings fail most
The county average is 46.9%, but it is not spread evenly. Bordeaux and downtown are a
different market from Oak Hill and Donelson.
| Neighborhood | Zip | Listings that ended without a sale |
|---|---|---|
| Bordeaux | 37218 | 59.7% |
| Downtown | 37201 | 57.7% |
| Midtown / Music Row | 37203 | 57.4% |
| North Nashville | 37207 | 56.2% |
| Downtown Core | 37219 | 55.6% |
| Madison | 37115 | 54.5% |
| Germantown / Hope Gardens | 37208 | 53.8% |
| Sylvan Park / The Nations | 37209 | 49.6% |
| Hillsboro Village | 37212 | 48.1% |
| South Nashville | 37211 | 47.5% |
| Antioch | 37013 | 46.8% |
| East Nashville | 37206 | 45.8% |
And the other end of the table, where listings actually close: Whites Creek at 32.9%,
Oak Hill at 34.5%, Donelson at 37.9%, Bellevue at 38.7%, Old Hickory at 38.9%.
If your house is in 37218 or 37203, you are closer to a coin flip than a sale.
The number nobody reports
Here is the part that changed how I read every market report.
That 19-day median is calculated only on homes that closed. It is a survivor’s number.
When I recalculated days on market across every listing, including the ones that gave up,
it roughly doubled in every single zip code.
| Neighborhood | Sold homes only | Every listing |
|---|---|---|
| Downtown | 33 days | 94 days |
| Downtown Core | 53 days | 106 days |
| Midtown | 27 days | 65 days |
| Hillsboro Village | 25 days | 62 days |
| Germantown | 26 days | 61 days |
| Berry Hill | 21 days | 52 days |
| Green Hills | 19 days | 48 days |
| East Nashville | 14 days | 38 days |
| Antioch | 16 days | 28 days |
So when someone tells a downtown condo owner that Nashville moves in 19 days, the
honest answer for their building is closer to 94.
What is actually driving it
A few patterns showed up clearly in the data.
Property type matters more than most sellers think. Single family
homes in Davidson closed at a median of 15 days. Townhouses took 25. Condos took 33, and
condos also settled for the least relative to asking, at 96.2% of original list price
versus 97.5% for single family.
The bottom of the market is the hardest place to sell, not the easiest.
Homes under $200K closed at just 90.9% of original list price after a median 26 days on
market. Every tier above it did better. Cheap does not mean easy.
Supply is wildly uneven. The Brentwood edge of Davidson has 1.8 months
of supply, which is genuinely tight. Downtown Core has 20.9 months. Those two facts
describe the same county in the same month.
Roughly a third of all listings took a price cut before they closed or
gave up, running between 29% and 43% depending on the zip.
If you are the seller in that 46.9%
Nothing in this data says your house is unsellable. It says the listing path failed,
which is a different problem.
The listings that fail tend to share the same shape. They were priced against a
neighbor’s asking price instead of a neighbor’s closing price. They needed work the
seller could not front. They were on a timeline the market did not agree to. Or the
seller was solving for something other than price, like a job start date, a probate
deadline, or a house they no longer live near.
If that is you, the first move is not another agent and another 90 days. It is finding
out what your house is actually worth to a buyer who will close, and comparing that to
what another listing cycle would net you after carrying costs, repairs and commission.
Sometimes the listing is still the right answer. Sometimes it is not.
I buy houses in Davidson County directly, and I will tell you honestly when listing is
the better math. If you want that comparison run on your specific address, call or text
615-436-8003.
What this looks like if you build or flip
The property-type split above stops at single family, townhouse and condo. It says
nothing about vintage, so I cut the same 12 months by year built. New construction here
means built 2023 or later. The flip pool means built before 2000.
| Cohort | Listings | Failed | DOM (sold) | SP/OLP | Took a price cut | Months supply |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New construction, 2023+ | 10,125 | 60.3% | 14 | 100.0% | 22.6% | 5.7 |
| Built 2000 to 2022 | 10,314 | 45.3% | 26 | 97.0% | 37.4% | 5.8 |
| Flip pool, pre-2000 | 14,129 | 40.0% | 17 | 96.8% | 34.3% | 3.8 |
New construction fails more often than anything else on the market, and it is not
close. But that number needs a caveat, and the caveat turned out to be the more useful
finding.
Builders do not cut prices. They cancel the listing and start a new one.
New construction closed at 100.0% of original list price, and only 22.6% of those
listings ever took a recorded price reduction, against 37.4% for 2000s stock. A homeowner
who misjudges the market leaves a trail of price drops. A builder relists. So a real share
of that 60% is listing churn rather than unsold houses, and it means you cannot read
builder pricing off the MLS the way you can read a homeowner’s.
Where the new-build math is working
Antioch is absorbing new construction in 1.8 months of supply at a 3 day median sale.
Goodlettsville is at 1.7 months and is the only zip in the county where new construction
closed above original list, at 101.8%. Donelson sits at 2.6 months.
And where it is not: Midtown / Music Row is carrying 21.8 months of new-construction
supply. Oak Hill is at 12.0, Germantown 10.6, Bordeaux 10.1.
The hardest band to build into right now is $600K to $800K. That tier
failed at 67.2% with 8.1 months of supply, worse than the tiers both above and below it.
New condo product is worse still: 18.6 months of supply and a 63.9% failure rate.
Where renovating beats building
In ten Davidson zip codes, pre-2000 stock sells for more per square foot than
new construction does. Inglewood is the widest gap at $36 per foot, then The Nations at
$35, East Nashville at $27 and Goodlettsville at $22.
The older stock also clears faster in those markets. Pre-2000 East Nashville is running
2.3 months of supply against 5.5 months for new construction in the same zip. Inglewood is
2.7 against 4.3. If you are choosing between a teardown and a renovation in those
neighborhoods, the data says renovate.
The reverse is just as sharp. Midtown pays a $341 per foot premium for new, Belle Meade
$188, the Brentwood edge $180, Green Hills $141. Those are build markets, not flip
markets.
One warning for the flip side. Germantown pre-2000 closed at 93.2% of original list,
the worst ratio of any cohort in any zip in this dataset, on 6.1 months of supply.
Downtown pre-2000 is carrying 18.0 months. Bordeaux pre-2000 failed at 50.6%. Those are
the three places where the renovation trade is currently getting priced wrong.
If you build or flip in Davidson County and want the full zip-level table behind this,
including the tier and property-type breakdowns, call or text
615-436-8003 and I will send it over.
If you build or flip here, I ran the same data by year built and produced a build-or-flip call for every Davidson zip code, including months of supply by vintage and the target resale bands that actually exit. That is here: Build or Flip in Nashville? I Ran All 26 Davidson Zip Codes.
A note on the method, because it matters
“Never sold” here means the listing ended as Expired, Cancelled or Withdrawn rather
than Closed, measured as a share of all listings in that zip over the 12 months ending
August 3, 2026.
One honest caveat: some of those sellers relisted later and eventually closed under a
new MLS number, so this measures listing attempts that ended without a sale,
not houses that are permanently unsellable. That distinction matters and I would rather
state it than let the headline number do work it has not earned.
Scope is Davidson County only, 35,324 listings, source RealTracs MLS. I compiled and
analyzed the data myself. If you want the zip-level numbers behind any of this, ask and
I will send them.