With summer winding to a close, Realtors and homeowners are preparing for the fall selling season. And with properties that have not sold, the square dance is in full force.

Owners of unsold homes are swinging their Realtor partners round and round as the musical chairs begin. The result: many homes that have lasted through the spring and summer markets will have new real estate signs in their front yards.

Fresh blood can be a good thing, especially if the new agent is given permission to significantly reduce the price. That can leave the former listing agent questioning his chosen profession.

But there’s good news on the horizon, if the scuttlebutt proves true, with this fall’s market bringing a relative abundance of new inventory – more than the spring, anyway.

Recently, there was a conversation among two of the top-performing agents in city history in which they both discussed how they had begun to slow down and head towards retirement. They mentioned they had not been busy lately, but that each had seven homes coming on the market in the coming weeks.

There remains an overabundance of buyers. It will be interesting to see if they devour inventory or if the “days on the market” numbers will increase.

On another topic, Alison Hendrickson, director of events & coordinator of government affairs for the Greater Nashville Realtors, says the Metro Council’s ad-hoc committee on short-term rental properties has met several times recently and met again last Wednesday.

“There are twice as many advertised properties than there are permitted properties,” in the world of SPRs, she adds. Hendrickson says there have been 900 citations issued so far and that 85 percent of them are for non-permitted. She learned that one “owner-occupant” currently being prosecuted claims to be an owner-occupant for five different properties.

On a somber note, as most are aware, Mayor Megan Barry and her husband Bruce lost their 22-year-old son Saturday. They were doting, loving parents who placed their son, Max, above all else. He was a brilliant, sharp, loving young man. He will be greatly missed by those who knew him.

Sale of the Week

Located between 15th Avenue South and Music Row’s 16th Avenue South is the unassuming street known as Villa Place, a street without an identity.

When she listed 1023 A Villa Place, Griffin Saunders, one of leading agents at PARKS, had a tough decision to make when she entered the name of the subdivision in MLS, so she ran the gamut, listing the property in Edgehill/Belmont/Music Row.

Villa Place borders Music Row and runs smack into Belmont and houses all the great Edgehill restaurants such as Taco Mamacita, Bella Napoli and Barcelona. It is a combination of all of these cultures – music, academic and culinary.

Saunders, the listing agent, often teams with her mother, Abbe Quarles, and acquires residential properties, gives them the Quarles touch and then unleashes them on the buying public. In the case of 1023 Villa Place A, they purchased the home for $625,000 and sold it for $699,000.

Saunders noted that the property had been rented for $5,000 with a six-month lease. No short-term rental here.

Also of note was the fact that the area has sidewalks to all the cool places, including the Gulch and Hillsboro Village.

The Nashville Food Project has created the Thomas Williams Golden Skillet Award in honor of the fundraising efforts of Thomas Williams, managing broker of Tarkington & Harwell.

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Thomas Williams, the managing broker of Tarkington & Harwell, served the buyer. When he is not fileting real estate transactions, Williams is in the kitchen consulting with the most talented chefs across the country.

In the months following the Flood of 2010, he took that passion and directed it toward Taking Nashville’s Table to Higher Ground, a benefit dinner for the flood victims.

At that benefit, he assembled an all-star cast of chefs – Tandy Wilson, Will Ulhorn, Tyler Brown and Chloe Ellis – to prepare the finest fare with each explaining their respective dishes to those who attended the affair at the Cannery. Mobile Loaves and Fishes and the Community Resource Center were the main beneficiaries.

Following the success of that endeavor and its successor the following year, Williams turned his energies to the Nashville Food Project (thenashvillefoodproject.org) and led the charge in the establishment of the Nourish benefit dinner that has raised nearly $1 million since its inception.

For his efforts, the organization has created an award in his honor, the Thomas Williams Golden Skillet Award. The phrase “The Thomas Williams Golden Skillet Award established in 2017 in honor of his heart of gold” is inscribed on the award. Margot McCormick was the first recipient.

Richard Courtney is a real estate broker with Christianson, Patterson, Courtney, and Associates and can be reached at [email protected].