Summary

Tennessee’s Horizontal Property Regime (HPR) law, originally enacted in 1963 to govern condominiums, has quietly become one of the most effective tools for enabling infill housing in Nashville. Unlike conventional subdivision law—which requires costly infrastructure dedications, public streets, and extensive regulatory review—the HPR framework allows developers to build fee-simple, individually owned homes on shared private land with minimal bureaucratic friction. The result has been a wave of compact, ownership-oriented housing in Nashville’s urban core.

By 2024, Nashville ranked second among the nation’s 50 largest metros for recently built single-family homes within five miles of downtown—a distinction driven largely by HPR development. These are not luxury condos or sprawling suburban subdivisions, but family-sized townhomes, cottage courts, and small-lot houses that fit into established neighborhoods. The HPR model has proven that infill housing can be market-rate, ownership-oriented, and built at scale without public subsidy.

This paper argues that the HPR framework is a replicable model for other states looking to address housing shortages in urban areas. By reducing regulatory barriers to small-scale, infill development, states can unlock significant housing production without the political battles that typically accompany zoning reform.

Author Contributions

Alex Pemberton — Quantitative Analysis & Historical Narrative

Pemberton led the quantitative research, analyzing more than 300,000 parcels in the Davidson County property assessor’s database and developing a novel method to identify and parse HPR developments from the broader universe of residential properties. Because Metro Nashville did not track or directly code HPR units in its property records at the time of this research, Pemberton devised an inferential approach—merging parcel records from Davidson County and a third-party data provider (ReGrid) with building data from the county assessor and the Multiple Listing Service, then parsing the results to distinguish HPR units from fee-simple and condominium units by subtype (two-on-ones, townhomes, detached clusters, and clustered duplexes). This methodology enabled the first comprehensive count of HPR-structured housing in Nashville. Pemberton also provided the historical narrative tracing how fragmented lot ownership, permissive zoning, and the HPR legal framework converged to create conditions for an infill housing boom, with neighborhood-level case studies and price comparisons illustrating the variety of housing types the HPR model has enabled.

Charles Gardner — Legal Analysis & Policy History

Gardner provided the legal and policy analysis that forms the paper’s analytical backbone. He examined the HPR statutory framework in detail, explaining how it diverges from conventional condominium and subdivision law to create a streamlined path for small-scale development. Gardner traced the legislative history of Tennessee’s HPR statute, compared it to property law frameworks in other states, and developed the policy recommendations for states seeking to adopt similar legislation. His analysis demonstrated why HPR’s legal structure—rather than zoning changes alone—is the critical enabler of Nashville’s housing production.

Key Findings

  • At least 20,125 homes were built under the HPR framework in Nashville from 2010 through 2023—representing 22 percent of total housing production in Davidson County and 52 percent of all single-family homes built in the county over the same period.
  • Nashville ranked #2 among the 50 largest U.S. metros for recently built single-family homes within five miles of the central business district, behind only Houston—and #1 per capita.
  • Within Nashville’s Urban Zoning Overlay, 76 percent of all single-family homes built from 2010 through 2023 were HPR homes.
  • HPR production breaks down into 8,675 two-on-one homes, 8,019 townhouses, 2,397 detached cluster homes, and 439 clustered duplexes.
  • Analysis of over 300,000 parcels in Davidson County—using a novel identification method, since no government database tracked HPR units at the time—produced the first comprehensive count of HPR-structured housing.
  • Filing an HPR can be completed in as little as one week at a cost of roughly $2,000; a conventional subdivision application requires a minimum of six weeks, a public hearing, and costs well into five figures.
  • HPR two-on-one homes sold for 45–49 percent less than fee-simple single-family homes in affluent neighborhoods like Green Hills and Belmont-Hillsboro.
  • Tennessee’s HPR law has been on the books since 1963, but its widespread application to infill housing is a recent innovation driven by a 1990 amendment and entrepreneurial builders.
  • Other states have analogous horizontal property statutes that could be adapted to replicate Nashville’s results—without the political battles that typically accompany zoning reform.
Read the Full Paper →
Mercatus Center Research Paper HPR Horizontal Property Regime Nashville Housing Infill Development Zoning Housing Policy Property Law Townhomes Fee-Simple Ownership Urban Development