Depends if you find the following prices affordable, for TN salaries. Here's one blog I found [0]; seems Nashville has a slight glut at the high-end:
> Nashville home prices went up in May 2025, but not by much compared to last year.
> Average sale price $853.8K; median price stayed flat at $613K.
> But here's what's interesting: sellers had to drop their asking prices more than before. The average list price was $1.012 million, but homes actually sold for about $158K less than that...
> More Homes Available for Buyers: Active inventory jumped +29% compared to last year.
> Total inventory (including homes under contract) increased +16%
When more people are being priced out of a market than new housing units are added, then yeah they do need to be cheaper to make housing more available. The net result is more stratification, not less.
Ask anyone how to make cheap housing though. No one has a convincing answer. I'm convinced that it's the right question.
Housing becomes cheaper when supply outstrips demand. That is really all there is to it. If there is induced demand due to new housing being built, you just need... more housing.
A U.S. default would spike interest rates, crash bond markets, trigger a credit freeze, and destroy consumer confidence. Mortgages would become unaffordable. Mass foreclosures and job losses would crush demand. Asset fire sales would follow. Housing prices would collapse.
This would also reshuffle assets, so speculators and highly leveraged people would be punished instead of being rewarded.
It will also cleanup the situation for future generations so kids won't have to be under extreme debt to pay back in some way to government, because the older people lived above their means.
The dilemma is you can’t make new housing cheap because if the price falls too much it becomes unprofitable to build and you don’t get new supply.
My city is currently facing this where the interest rate hikes, build tax hikes and falling prices have created a perfect storm of vastly reduced housing starts.
This does appear to be an application of Goodhart’s Law (when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure). Affordable housing is neat but it implicitly encourages infinite housing be built and does nothing to address employment and crazy down payment requirements (especially for those who could otherwise pay the mortgage!).
[0]: https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1314...