Cookeville VS Crossville (Jackson: RV parks, for sale, cheap apartment)

[cowpat5]

Hello. Looking for a place to live in east TN. I have basically decided it'll be either Crossville or Cookeville. I am self-employed (service business). I will need to rent somewhere for about a yr. If things go as planned then I'd be looking to buy. Can anyone give me some insights on the area? I'm coming from Florida. How much is a reasonable price for rent in these areas? Where I live currently, it's not uncommon for studio or 1 bedroom apartments to go for $1,000+ a month not including any utilities. And these are going to be pretty bottom of the barrel apartment complexes... nothing luxurious.

Rough plan: live like a scrounger for 1 year or so in a very cheap BUT SAFE apartment, save up money, build back clientele for my business, and then buy a small place (like a 2 bedroom/1 bath kind of small) on a few acres (hopefully for around 150k or less). Enjoy nature and country living...

[JMT]

Originally Posted by cowpat5

Hello. Looking for a place to live in east TN. I have basically decided it'll be either Crossville or Cookeville. I am self-employed (service business). I will need to rent somewhere for about a yr. If things go as planned then I'd be looking to buy. Can anyone give me some insights on the area? I'm coming from Florida. How much is a reasonable price for rent in these areas? Where I live currently, it's not uncommon for studio or 1 bedroom apartments to go for $1,000+ a month not including any utilities. And these are going to be pretty bottom of the barrel apartment complexes... nothing luxurious.

Rough plan: live like a scrounger for 1 year or so in a very cheap BUT SAFE apartment, save up money, build back clientele for my business, and then buy a small place (like a 2 bedroom/1 bath kind of small) on a few acres (hopefully for around 150k or less). Enjoy nature and country living...

Cookeville and Crossville have been "discovered" and are both growing quickly; Crossville attracts lots of retirees and has the manicured retirement communities to show for it, while Cookeville attracts lots of families as well as retirees. Cookeville is much larger and, being home to the state's flagship tech university has a lot more rental options. New apartments do go for $1000+, but if you don't mind living in an older building you can find 1BR apartments for much less. I have friends who moved to Cookeville from Asheville NC and live in an older building and pay less than $1000 for 3 bedrooms. If you don't have much of an income you would probably qualify for cheaper, income-based communities which, around here at least, are nicer than what you would find in bigger cities and don't have the negative stigmas often associated with lower-income housing.

Your bigger problem will be finding a home on a few acres for less than $150k. From an earlier post you made, you said you were willing to live in an RV on a few acres which is much more reasonable. You can maybe find a small house, most likely a fixer-upper or even an old trailer, on a couple of acres in some of the outlying counties (Jackson, Overton, Fentress, maybe also White) but then you'll be farther away from your Cookeville-Crossville customer base. Check zillow or realtor.com to see what you can find.

I can totally understand why you want to leave Florida. I'm an ex-Floridian myself. Lots of us up here. When Publix opened in Cookeville, just about all the employees I talked to said they were also former Floridians, many (most?) of whom transferred here with Publix as soon as it opened.

[JRR]

I'm not up on what a very cheap apartment would run in Cookeville. But you may have to reassess what a house would cost. I've got some friends who have been trying to buy a house in the $150k price range for the last year or so and have just given up for now. Anything decent has been snapped up very quickly, usually at more than the asking price. Many times they would see one listed that they were interested in and find it was sold before they could even look at it. And wanting a few acres makes it even harder to find anything in that price range

[I Luv Chins]

Originally Posted by cowpat5

Rough plan: live like a scrounger for 1 year or so in a very cheap BUT SAFE apartment, save up money, build back clientele for my business, and then buy a small place (like a 2 bedroom/1 bath kind of small) on a few acres (hopefully for around 150k or less). Enjoy nature and country living...

You may be hard-pressed to find that kind of property in the immediate Cookeville-Crossville area by the time you have the savings. I think we got in under the wire, buying a small condo in Crossville in late spring 2019. Today, looking at the sales of other properties like ours, we'd have to pay roughly 85% more for our place.

Where it's not a matter of price, it can be control or what kind of neighbors you'll have. Driving around the counties, away from town, it is clearly illustrated that this has been a poverty-suffering area before the retirees and Floridians began moving in.

All that can really be said is visit and look around. This is an astounding area in beauty and the climate is nice, but you may be boxed out of your wishes for a home place close in to town.

[peppersdad]

Crossville has several RV parks that have very reasonable monthly rates. We stayed at Deer Run Rv park in our fifth wheel while we house-hunted in 2018. It had walking trails and a beautiful lake and was quiet and friendly. They had a few RV's for sale that were already set up.