How housing prices jumped in NWA
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Northwest Arkansas, historically a relatively inexpensive place to live, has quickly caught up with larger metropolitan areas like Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta, a national housing expert said at a fall housing summit.
Why it matters: The region's housing decisions will majorly affect its and the state's trajectory in terms of growth, residents, and communities, said J.H. Cullum Clark, director of the George W. Bush Institute SMU Economic Growth Initiative, at an event hosted by Groundwork, the housing arm of the Northwest Arkansas Council.
The big picture: Despite projections that NWA's population will reach 1 million by 2050, it's not a given that enough people will move here to meet all localities' growth plans, especially if it becomes too unaffordable or commutes become too long, he said.
- Advocates have pointed out that prospective teachers have already had to back out of jobs in NWA because of housing costs, and the area needs housing for people who perform jobs like firefighting or hospitality.
State of play: "I think our region is moving in a positive direction on housing, but the pace with which it is moving at times I find concerning," Groundwork executive director Duke McLarty told Axios. He added that sometimes leaders make small changes and wait to see results before taking more needed steps.
By the numbers: The average home price in NWA grew from $201,000 in 2019 to $359,000 in 2025, according to data Clark shared.
- And in Bentonville, the average home price has nearly doubled, rising from $251,000 in 2019 to $483,000 in 2025.
- The combined population of Benton and Washington counties increased by about 11% from about 530,000 in 2020 to about 588,000 in 2024, according to census estimates.
- Average rent in NWA climbed to about $1,100 a month in 2025, Mervin Jebaraj, director at the Walton College's Center for Business and Economic Research, shared at an event to discuss the latest State of the Northwest Arkansas Region report. That number was under $800 in 2021 and under $600 in 2015.
What happened: Housing affordability is a national problem, with the average age of first-time homebuyers increasing to a record high of 40 and labor and material costs at an all-time high. Clark said estimates of how many more housing units the country should have built in the first part of the 21st century range from 3 million to 8 million. NWA, especially, saw a perfect storm of several factors that quickly drove up housing costs, McLarty said.
- "We did a good job at building a place people want to live, but did it quietly," he said. But then NWA was discovered around the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic, when many people moved here looking for new opportunities.
- One reason the region wasn't better prepared to absorb the increase in housing demand is that small developers and real estate professionals changed careers during 2008's recession. There wasn't a robust development community to keep up with a sudden uptick.
The bottom line: Housing is intimately linked with opportunity and prosperity, and the people who suffer the most when it's not done well tend to be low-income and vulnerable residents, Clark said.
- And while the market will likely deliver the demand regardless, the region won't necessarily maintain its quality of life with its connectivity and greenspace and "could look like any bland suburb anywhere in America," McLarty said.