Van Buren County Tn. (Cookeville, McMinnville: sale, crime, homes) - Tennessee (TN) - Page 4 - City-Data Forum

papa16 · 12-15-2007, 07:23 PM

Mrs1885
Thanks for the information and the pictures. I am also a retired LEO from Ft. Lauderdale 26 yrs. I'm working as a State of Florida LEO now. Glad to hear from a Florida x LEO about how life is.

I hope to start building in 2 years. I want to be up there by the time my 1 year old starts school.

Things here in Florida are getting so bad. A mother and her 8 year old daughter were found shot to death in their car at the Boca Town Mall. They were found bound in the car, it looks like robbery. 3 Broward deputies have been shot this year. Metro Dade had 4 shot in 1 incident.

It was a good call on your part to get out.

maryn · 12-17-2007, 11:24 AM

Papa,
Where is your property. My husband works in Boca, it was very sad about that mother and daughter. We have a log home in Hawks Bluff, and the husband is up there right now. had some snow yesterday!
let me know where your property is, maybe we will be neighbors!
Mary

papa16 · 12-17-2007, 11:57 AM

I spoke with your hubby on the phone about 6 months ago. I am in Golden Point Farms. Off of Golden Point Road. I have justs under 10 acres. I have not been up there in 2 years. I heard that a golf course might be going in off Denny Bend Road. I also saw that there is talk of condos in Spencer. I love the area, but with a new kid I just worried about activities for him. Florida might be a crime zone but there is no shortage of sport activities for kids.

I know you guys are in Hawks Bluff. How is your new home? Is shopping an issue for you when you are up there? My wife would love another womens perspective.

brcomm0 · 12-27-2007, 08:36 AM

My wife and I just got back from there. It was so nice. We went to Dunlap and Hixson shopping and have no problems, all of the stores in Hixson. The weather was nice and the people are great.

Betsy123 · 12-29-2007, 11:25 AM

Mrs1885

My name is betsy123 - we are coming to TN in one week. I am exhausted from looking at the internet trying to find a nice place for us to build a home on 5 acres or more. There seems to be too much info and not enough substance to make a good decision of where to look. I just stumbled across this forum and your statement in a post dated 10/26/06 at 3:336 was going to say something that was of interest but I can't locate it or how to locate it now. You were giving a reason of why your area is great. If you have any suggestion of where we can look that would be sooo wonderful. We live in Orlando, FL yep another FL person and are looking to slow down our life. We are both around 50 My husband 51 myself 48. We want to build a large log cabin type home with seperate workshop - have privacy - be in a good town with options - and open some type of business for we are not ready to retire. Thank you

brcomm0 · 12-29-2007, 12:23 PM

Betsy123, I think what you might want to do is look in the middle TN area. Van Buren County is in the middle and you could buy 5 or more ac with little problem. This County is big with not alot of stuff right now. If you looking to be near a shopping Center this is not it. My wife and I have a Log home in Spencer and Love it. We live right now in Fla and hope to move up there within the next 2 years. We help people right now buy renting our home to people building around us. I had a hard time finding places to stay and came up with that idea. I suggest you look all over and think or stay in the area you think you might choose for a couple of weeks before you make up your mind. Good luck

papa16 · 12-29-2007, 09:25 PM

Betsy123

To give you an idea about the people of Van Buren. I lost my poperty tax notice. I called and spoke to a real person. It wasn t push 1 for English. She let me know what I owed then went on to tell me about the local school. I heard they were bad and she said that was not true. She has 1 child who is going to law school and another who went to college both went to the local school. She spent 20 minutes letting me know what is going on in the area. It was so nice to deal with a nice person who is in government.

mrs1885 · 12-31-2007, 07:01 AM

Betsy, feel free to e-mail me. I'd be happy to give you any info you need and pictures. Honestly though, we got so very lucky. I didn't realize it at the time, but we stumbled upon the perfect place for us. The best advice I can give anyone is come visit different areas before you decide. We started an internet search by the NC border since that's the area my grandfather and parents were in. There were several reasons it wouldn't work for us, but mostly because my ex's sister bought a place there and he planned to move with her. Blech!!

So then we moved to mid-TN. We started in the Tullahoma area and just worked our way around. I spent a ton of time on realtor.com looking at houses for sale. I narrowed it down to what we could afford. Then I made a list of the things we must have and a list of things we'd like to have. I was really lucky to find a house that fit in every category for us. We drove up for a few days. Started in Tullahoma since that's where the RA had her office. She took us to look at a house and then I pulled out my super over organizer book!!

I'd made copies of over 50 homes listed for sale. For each town that I saw a house in that I was interested in, I made a copy of their city / town page from city-data. The biggest thing for us was the crime rate as we have kids. So, anything that had a high crime index got moved to the back. Then I just placed a point scale to things. THings that were must haves got 10 points. Things we wanted but didn't need got 5 points. Then the crime index got rated on a sliding scale according to how high / low it was.

The very first house I told the RA I wanted to see was the one we wound up buying. And talk about fate............ While we were there looking at it the second time with the inspector another couple came by with a friend of theirs to look at it. I volunteered info on all the work it would need. I was honest with them, but made sure they realized just exactly how much work had to be put into it.

And it did, but to us, we could do the work ourselves for the most part and with the low asking price and the fact that it had everything we wanted and needed, it was well worth the work.

Turns out, the couple that were there were being shown around by the attorney's paralegal that my husband just hired for his disability case! Freaky, huh? She recognized him right off. Was bizarre!

Anyway, Van Buren county, the resident's, the town, the schools - they are all everything we'd dreamed of. We got so very lucky. And as long as you are honest with yourself about wanting a slower pace of life and friendly neighbors, you'll probably love it too. But keep in mind, slower pace of life means when you go to order at a restaurant, the first 10 minutes consist of catching up with your waitress on how the kids are, how the family is, etc. The trip to the grocery store for a gallon of milk means it takes 20 minutes just to get there and 15 minutes to get through line after chatting with the cashier about her dog's latest escape and adventure chasing the cows. And stopping for gas means catching up on all the gossip you missed in church last Sunday and 20 questions about why you had to work and couldn't come to the evening service.

People are friendly. A slower pace of life means no one is in a hurry for anything. But it does also mean you don't have to press one for English, you actually get a human on the phone when you call the local store and you don't wait in line at the DMV. It's a trade off. For us, it was a perfect balance.

Again, if you want more info, e-mail me. I'd be happy to give you my phone number so we can talk, help you with any reservations if you decide to come up, etc.

mrs1885@aim.com

curlyfan · 01-02-2008, 01:56 PM

I have 15 acres on Laurelburg Rd., that I have had for 4 years! I liked it so much that 2 years ago I bought a house in Campaign, Warren Co, about 6 miles from the property. We had a camper that we towed up there but Hurricane Wilma took care of that, the house was the same price as a nice 5th wheel! I now stay in the house in Campaign when we go up and dream about the cabin we are going to build in a couple of years. I retire from Fla, Law Enforcement like everyone else, in a few months, but I have to wait for my Daughter to graduate from HS in 2009 to move. I found out about this area on Yahoo, did a search for land in Tn and it came up. The trip to McMinnville is not bad, groceries, movies, food, small stores, etc... I spent 3 weeks up there in June of 07 and hated to come home. Neighbors stopping by and just chatting, bringing over FRESH corn and veggies from their farms/gardens. The weather was hot but we didn't mind. Bill for electric, including AC, was about $60.00 for the 3 weeks!!! Beat that FPL!!!

mrs1885 · 01-02-2008, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by curlyfan

I have 15 acres on Laurelburg Rd., that I have had for 4 years! I liked it so much that 2 years ago I bought a house in Campaign, Warren Co, about 6 miles from the property. We had a camper that we towed up there but Hurricane Wilma took care of that, the house was the same price as a nice 5th wheel! I now stay in the house in Campaign when we go up and dream about the cabin we are going to build in a couple of years. I retire from Fla, Law Enforcement like everyone else, in a few months, but I have to wait for my Daughter to graduate from HS in 2009 to move. I found out about this area on Yahoo, did a search for land in Tn and it came up. The trip to McMinnville is not bad, groceries, movies, food, small stores, etc... I spent 3 weeks up there in June of 07 and hated to come home. Neighbors stopping by and just chatting, bringing over FRESH corn and veggies from their farms/gardens. The weather was hot but we didn't mind. Bill for electric, including AC, was about $60.00 for the 3 weeks!!! Beat that FPL!!!

LOL!! We'd been living up here a month at that time. Every time we went to the stores people were asking 'hot enough for ya'? And we'd just laugh. oh yeh, really boiler.

Ugh. TN summers have nothing on hot, humid, sticky, buggy FL summers.

Our electric bills in the summer stay under $100 and we have a pretty big house. Our winter bills however............... Well, this month was $459 and last winter we topped out at $550.

Owie.

Oh - the fresh veggies!! We had our garden this year and were in heaven. Being able to walk out to the 'back 40' to pick the veggies for dinner? Oh, is anything in life better than that??