Northwest Arkansas, Second half 2020

• Local sales-tax receipts across 21 NWA cities (excluding 7 with a likely new or changed local tax) rose 9.1% versus the same period a year earlier. Receipts totaled $113.6M across all 30 reporting cities.
• Among the Core cities, Bentonville led at +16.2% and Rogers trailed at +2.2%.
• The fastest register growth was outside the Core: Elm Springs at +39.0%.
• 7 cities show moves large enough to reflect a new or changed local tax rather than spending (Springtown, Cave Springs, Bella Vista, Goshen…); they are marked in the table and left out of the rankings above.
• Builders pulled permits for 3,749 residential units region-wide, down 5.2% year over year.
• The 30-year mortgage rate averaged 2.85% in the period, 83 basis points lower than a year earlier.
• Employed residents in the NWA metro averaged 257,367 in the period, down 2.1% from a year earlier.
• Momentum at period end (12-month sales-tax growth vs a year earlier): speeding up in Bella Vista, Springdale, Fayetteville; slowing in Bentonville, Rogers.
• The metro counted 256,200 jobs in December 2020, down 4,200 from December 2019; mining, logging & construction added the most (+1,000), leisure & hospitality shed the most (-3,100) (BLS, preliminary for recent months).

Every sentence above is a fixed template filled with computed values; no figure is typed by hand. Trend arrows compare this period with the three before it of the same length: they describe, they don't forecast. Market commentary, not advice.

Census Building Permits Survey, residential units authorized (all building sizes). Places with zero units in the period are omitted; changes off fewer than 10 units show as "small base".

Bentonville's permit records in this project begin 2026-04-01. For earlier periods, the Census homes-permitted table (left) covers every city.

City of Bentonville permits-issued reports (public record). Valuation as printed by the city. Rogers, Springdale and Fayetteville join as their records load.

BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics and FHFA All-Transactions HPI via FRED. Metro = Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO (includes Madison Co. AR and McDonald Co. MO).

Freddie Mac PMMS, U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve (H.8; charge-off and delinquency rates) via FRED. National series: the cost and availability of the money that buys NWA property.

Census Business Formation Statistics: IRS employer-ID applications. Arkansas monthly, seasonally adjusted, compared with the same months a year earlier; county counts are published yearly. Applications are intent, not openings. More on new businesses

Local sales tax

What the state distributes back to each city from its local sales and use tax, by distribution month (about two months after the sale). Changes compare the same cities in both periods.

Tax change?

A city whose receipts moved 40% or more in one period, or 15% a year over several, usually adopted or changed a local tax. It's shown, and left out of rankings and region totals.

Homes permitted

Residential units authorized by building permits, all building sizes (Census Building Permits Survey, place level).

4-period trend

Direction of this period and the three before it of the same length (least-squares slope with a small tolerance). Describes what happened; not a forecast.

Metro

Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO metropolitan area (CBSA 22220).

The 479 Report, "Northwest Arkansas Semi-annual Report: Second half 2020," https://the479report.com/reports/semiannual/2020-h2/ (data through 2020-12; generated 2026-10-06).

Free to reuse with that credit. This report as JSON.

Who publishes this. The 479 Report is written by Andrew Elsass, a licensed Arkansas real estate broker (Elsass & Co Real Estate Team, Lindsey & Associates). The numbers come from public agencies; commentary is market commentary, not investment, legal or tax advice.