Opinions sought on Nashville area living

[agfsteve]

Originally Posted by tinnitus

I know you said you might have to buy sight unseen. If at all possible, I'd recommend taking leave or whatever you need to investigate a prospective area/specific address. Perhaps learn a few important (IMHO) things like:

- How's the traffic, traffic noise?
I grew up in a sleepy little suburb, moved away and came back 25 years later. Gridlock, no place to park at the stores, lines at the filling stations, same little road now has non-stop highway noise all night, etc.

- How's the commute (both ways) at the actual times you'll be going?
At my last job before leaving California, google maps said I was 40 minutes from work (if I checked at night). Actual commute in the morning was 75-90 minutes, and 2 hours every afternoon.

- Access to the things you need?
Living out in the sticks meant at least 30 minutes to any decent restaurants, music stores, etc.

- How are your prospective neighbors?
I owned and rented in various NICE places with successful young neighbors who partied constantly, dozens of friends parked in front of my house, and dogs outside 24/7 to shriek and howl and wail. Are they nosey? Is there an intrusive HOA?

- Decent schools?
Even before the plague, many of my neighbors were enrolling their little ones in local private schools since the public warehouses here merely "train to the test." Some moved across the river to another city/state to escape ongoing govt-sanctioned mediocrity in their kids.

- Property taxes?
Will you even have a police force? Fire Dept?

Not sure if I'll ever move again (or where), but those are things I will certainly research before I spend several hundred thousand dollars on a place where I don't enjoy being at home.

We are moderately concerned about noise, so we are avoiding anything near busy roads. One of the realtor web sites that we are using has a map that shows noise levels.

Times to destinations, e.g. downtown Nashville, are also shown on realtor web sites (and google maps, of course), including times during rush hour, so hopefully they are reasonably accurate.

We won't move anywhere that is too remote. Our general yardstick is to not be more than about 15 minutes from a Lowes. Where we live right now is quite remote, and it is a pain. We also don't want to be too far from at least one Indian restaurant, as we love Indian food (also every other type of food!)

Noisy-neighbour potential is something we'd be taking a chance on.

We are not considering any houses requiring HOA membership.

Hadn't considered the possibility of not having police or fire dept, but I think everything we've looked at has those services.

Thanks for the detailed suggestions.

[agfsteve]

Thanks, everyone, for the help. So it looks like the best places to look at the moment are the ones beyond Franklin, like Thompson's Station and Spring Hill, although we might have to go a bit further, like Columbia.

Anyone have knowledge on places more to the east, like Pegram and White Bluff? We found a place in Dickson (a bit further out) that looked great, but the realtor that we're using said the crime rate was high there.

On a side note, some of the things we've seen whilst searching have been rather strange, like some kitchens that are so narrow that two people couldn't pass. One kitchen had floor space that was literally about two inches wider than the stove, i.e. when you opened the oven door it almost touched the cabinets each side of the kitchen. I've also seen a couple of bathrooms where you could wash your hands in the bathroom sink without getting up off the toilet.