NASHVILLE—What's going on in Nashville? Recovery. And more than recovery. According to a story in the Real Estate From penned by Brian Rogal, Nashville has moved past its recession and ascended into the top tier of US real estate markets.

“We've always been a conservative market,” Doug Brandon, the Nashville-based regional managing principal of Cassidy Turley, told Rogal. “Unlike many cities, we did not overbuild during boom times, so people did not have to resort to fire sales five years ago when things were tough.” Therefore, with a real recovery under way, “people are now realizing that Nashville is not a tier-two city.”

Rogal points to statistics to help Brandon prove his point. For example, Nashville ranked 12^th among US cities for overall real estate prospects, according to the Urban Land Institute. That's a six spot rise from the year-ago period. The study reports, “Nashville is quickly moving onto the national investment radar.”

“We had not seen rental rates jump the way they did in other cities like Atlanta, Charlotte and Austin,” Brandon says. “Rates were flat until last year.”

Nashville's commercial real estate market is showing momentum on (almost) all fronts. Xceligent's Nashville 2nd Quarter 2014 Market Reports detail strong metrics that should turn industry watchers' heads.

For example, Nashville's office market continues its upswing with another 273,601 square feet of absorption in the second quarter. That puts Nashville's office market at over 375,000 square feet of absorption so far this year.

Xceligent reports Nashville reached the mid-year mark on a “downward slope” with 233,000 square feet of negative absorption for the quarter and nearly the same for the year. Three spaces over 80,000 square feet became vacant, bringing the overall vacancy rate up to 5.6%.

Good news on the industrial side. Although Nashville's industrial market had a rocky start this year, Xceligent reports it has reached the mid-year mark with nearly 1.8 million square feet of positive absorption for the quarter and nearly 900,000 square feet year-to-date.