Rob Mitchell: A Decade Lost: The Cost of Development on Homeownership

By Rob Mitchell

For decades, Rutherford County and Murfreesboro have pursued growth through a narrow lens. The community is now home to nearly 390,000 and is recognized universally as the fastest growing county in Tennessee. To accomplish this we put sales tax revenue and corporate recruitment as our first priority. We put growing the size of our fiscal reserves before quality of life for our citizens. We put long-term housing stability and generation wealth building for families as our lowest priority. Through property tax breaks and Industrial Development Board deals, we have brought in jobs. But working families are now quietly paying the price.

The numbers tell a stark story that demands our attention.

Recent data shows the affordability crisis with alarming clarity. The fair market rent for a modest two-bedroom apartment in Murfreesboro exceeds $1,600 per month. To afford this without being cost-burdened (spending more than 30% of income on housing), residents must earn over $30 an hour. That’s more than triple Tennessee’s minimum wage of $7.25.

But the rental market is only part of the story. Statewide data reveals the full scope of the problem. Tennessee’s median household income is around $67,631. This is well below the national median of $80,610. Yet with median home prices reaching $383,300, families need an estimated annual income of $120,855 to afford a typical home. That creates a devastating gap of more than $53,000 between what families earn and what they need to buy a home.

This gap helps explain why homeownership is slipping away from an entire generation. The national median age of first-time homebuyers has climbed from 31 to 38 years old in just ten years. That represents a full decade of lost opportunity. Seven years when families could have been building wealth instead of paying rent.

For a typical family, this delay costs tens of thousands of dollars in lost equity. A home purchased at age 31 versus age 38 means seven additional years of building equity. In today’s market, that could easily mean $50,000 to $100,000 in lost wealth.

Meanwhile, residential assessments are growing rapidly. This is especially true in modest neighborhoods where working families live. Among Middle Tennessee counties, Rutherford falls in the middle range for affordability. But the trend is alarming. While our median household income trails behind counties like Williamson, our housing costs continue to climb. This squeezes out the very workers our economic development efforts aim to attract.

The math in the equation is simple, but the results are serious. Families, not corporations, are increasingly paying the bill for county services and infrastructure improvements. This burden gets worse because of Tennessee’s property tax structure. It effectively punishes renters and aspiring homeowners by charging taxes 60% higher on rental properties than on owner-occupied homes. Those struggling to save for a down payment face a double penalty. They pay higher rent costs and higher property taxes passed through by landlords.

Consider what this means in practice. A manufacturing facility gets a 10-year tax break. It benefits from new road improvements, upgraded utilities, and better emergency services. Yet their property assessment may stay artificially low while the modest three-bedroom home down the street sees its assessment and tax burden climb year after year.

This isn’t an accident. It’s the predictable result of policy choices that put corporate recruitment over housing affordability.

While these observations may fall outside the narrow technical scope of the assessor’s traditional role, it would be wrong to stay silent. Our duty goes beyond technical accuracy. We must interpret the consequences of policy decisions in ways that inform and empower citizens.

The data we collect doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It reflects real families making difficult choices. Young couples delay homeownership. Teachers and firefighters commute from neighboring counties they can afford. Grandparents can’t help their children with down payments because their own housing costs have consumed their savings.

If we fail to communicate what we see in the numbers, we risk continuing a system that quietly rewards big money while penalizing the working families who form the backbone of our community.

We’ve succeeded in attracting businesses and growing our tax base, but have we done this in a way that makes it harder for the workers those businesses need to afford living here? Yes. We’ve created jobs while pricing the jobholders out of their homes.

This approach may generate sales tax revenue in the short term. But it undermines the long-term economic foundation of our community. Tennessee has historically faced higher poverty rates and lower income levels compared to the rest of the United States. This makes our households particularly vulnerable to housing cost increases driven by tax policies and local revenue generation strategies. When teachers, nurses, firefighters, and retail workers can’t afford to live where they work, we lose more than just residents. We lose the social fabric that makes communities thrive.

The research shows that homeownership supports community vitality in measurable ways. Homeowners stay longer, invest more in their neighborhoods, participate more in local civic life, and provide more stable environments for children’s education. When we “price out” homeownership, we’re not just affecting individual families. We’re weakening our entire community.

We must confront some uncomfortable questions about what may be driving this crisis. Each question requires us to consider honest answers, not political sound bites, if we’re serious about solutions.

Does a growing government create a tax spiral? As governments expand to provide more services (often popular programs that help politicians stay in office), the tax burden inevitably grows. Are we caught in a spiral where expanding services require higher taxes, which makes housing less affordable for the families these services claim are there to help?

Are we pricing ourselves out of affordability because of higher land costs? High land values, driven partly by investment speculation and development pressure, push housing costs beyond reach. When land becomes a commodity for wealth extraction rather than community building, who benefits and who pays?

Does density sacrifice quality of life for affordability? The push for higher-density housing as an affordability solution raises fundamental questions. Are we forcing families to accept diminished living standards (smaller spaces, less privacy, more congestion) in the name of affordability? And does this “solution” really make housing more affordable, or does it simply allow developers to extract more profit per acre?

Do we need more regulations or less? Some argue that excessive regulations drive up housing costs, while others say that insufficient regulation allows exploitation. Which regulatory approaches serve working families versus those that primarily benefit developers, large corporations and government agencies?

Is the tax structure truly the will of the people? Most critically, is it really the will of Tennessee residents to interpret our state constitution in ways that force renters to pay 60% higher property taxes than homeowners? Did voters consciously choose a system that penalizes those struggling to save for their first home while rewarding those who already own property?

Are we, through the policies we create, accelerating wealth transfer? If our policies encourage more rental properties while maintaining this tax difference, are we systematically transferring wealth from struggling families to government coffers and large corporations? Does every new apartment complex built under current tax policy represent another way to extract wealth from those who can least afford it?

The solution isn’t to stop economic development or reject all corporate incentives. Rather, it’s to ensure that our development policies serve the full community, not just the companies we’re courting or those who already have obtained “the American Dream” of home ownership.

We should be asking the harder questions about the true return on investment for tax incentives. Are the jobs being created accessible to our current residents or will they attract more new residents? Do the wages pay enough for workers to afford local housing, or must they commute long distances? Are the companies receiving incentives contributing proportionally to the infrastructure and services they use?

It also means addressing the inequities built into our current tax structure. Why should families saving for their first home pay 60% higher property taxes through their rent while established homeowners enjoy preferential treatment? Why should working families bear an increasing share of the tax burden while corporations benefit from long-term tax breaks?

What are some comprehensive approaches that directly support homeownership and housing affordability alongside our business recruitment efforts we can deploy? How have other communities successfully implemented first-time homebuyer programs, workforce housing requirements, or graduated tax incentive structures that tie corporate benefits to local hiring and wage standards.

It’s time we spoke plainly about our priorities. The incentives we’ve granted must be weighed against the tax burdens we’ve shifted. The revenue we’ve generated must be measured against the opportunities we’ve denied our working families.

Our development approach must ensure that growth serves the families who call Rutherford County home, not just the companies that profit from it. Our children deserve the same opportunities for homeownership and wealth-building that previous generations enjoyed. Our teachers, first responders, and service workers deserve to be able to afford living in the communities they serve.

The data is clear. The trends are unmistakable. The choice is ours.

We can continue down the current path, putting short-term revenue over long-term community stability. Or we can chart a new course that recognizes housing affordability and homeownership as essential foundations of a thriving community.

The families of Rutherford County (present and future) are counting on us to choose wisely.

Rob Mitchell serves as Assessor of Property in Rutherford County, Tennessee. The views expressed are his own and are based on publicly available assessment data and housing market analysis.