Looking for a good area for vacation property?? (Knoxville, Morristown: sale, foreclosure)

[kimhankhess]

My husband and I just love the Maryville area and east TN in general. We are only familar slightly with Maryville and not really anywhere else but we have driven all over the place within a hour or hour and a half of Maryville. We really can't afford what we want in Maryville itself. We are looking to buy a acre or so with a mobile home to use for vacationing 4 to 6 times a year. Eventually in 10 years or so we will relocate to our place in TN and build a house. Our finances are limited to about 50k or so right now. I just got back from looking at some places in the country like Harriman, jacksboro, Lenoir City, Morristown, Caryville etc. Schools and work will not be an issue as my chidren will be grown and my husband is retired and I don't mind driving to get to work. We want something with no restrictions so someday when we relocate we can have farm animals or a horse if we want to. So long story short, it seemed like every property we looked at had been vandalized in some way, broken windows, ripped up skirts on the homes, garbage dumped and thrown around and one place even had its furnace stolen. I guess my question is: what is a safe area to have vacation property that you don't have to worry about it being broken into when you are gone. How do people prevent that sort of thing? Is there some security system or service that people use? Or am I looking in the wrong areas? Is this a common problem? Any advice or info would be great. I am currently looking at a place in Seiverville (but is probably on the outer skirts of town), is this a safe area for vacation property?

[Beretta]

Oh boy. Lots to learn. You want it sugarcoated or straight up? By the way, what has your realtor had to say about this?

[Barking Spider]

I think it probably goes with the territory when you have a mobile home that is only occupied every 2 or 3 months, and part time at that. For someone driving by, it probably looks abandoned.

[kimhankhess]

Give it to my straight up! The realtor is someone that responded to a question I had online and he got stuck with me. I think he didn't realize that I wanted to look in a 1 to 1 1/2 hour radius of Maryville or Knoxville but he was kind enough to look up all my MLS numbers for me to see if they were still available and restriction free. All of this over the holiday weekend. He didn't say anything about the damage I was seeing as he wasn't with me, I was just checking properties out on my own. Its hard for a realtor to say "don't look in that area, its a bad neighborhood" in a positive, non-offensive way, so when I mentioned it, he didn't say anything. He made suggestions of places in his area, which is Seiverville I think. Now that I am back from the weekend and have a new batch of numbers to look up, I haven't heard from him. I can only come down there a few times as I am from Northeast Ohio and its over 8 hours to get there. How the heck do people buy a place when they live so far away? He did say that for 50K you are really going to have to look around, I know its not much but we don't need much, just a roof to sleep under (I guess a flushing toilet would be good too) while we enjoy our vacation in this beautiful state!

[Barking Spider]

That is a very large circle to work with. Harriman to Morristown is quite a haul, then throw in a trip to Jacksboro/Caryville. THAT'S a lot of gas.

You might be better of with local Realtors to give you the heads up on properties in "their" area. A Realtor in Harriman is not likely to know much of anything about what's going on in Morristown, or Jacksboro.

I have lived in Knoxville since 1994. I live in the Karns area. I know quite a bit about what's going on in West Knox, and areas you might want to steer away from. But I couldn't tell you much of anything about South Knoxville, or Fountain City. You get that kind of info from people that live there, and have for a while.

A couple years ago I was contracted by a national mortgage company to inspect foreclosed properties they owned. A good number of them were mobile homes on large parcels of land. I traveled to the areas you mentioned. Most of them were trashed, but that may also be the result of foreclosure. But I saw some pretty bad areas, and could see how the vandalism could happen easily.

Good luck with your quest, but you have a tough road ahead.

[kimhankhess]

well then maybe you are familiar with Loudon and Kingston then. There are a couple properties there that I like. I really enjoyed traveling through all those areas. What I did was check out whatever properties were along the route in along 75 and then picked a area to look in while staying in Maryville (which was Harriman one day, Morristown the next) then saw a couple more on the way out of Maryville to home. The ones I saw where empty and had been rentals I think. Lots of potential there in some if I was able to move now instead of in 10 years. I do have one question which is probably dumb but if you are in a rural area, what do you do with garbage? Didn't look like there was garbage pickup at some places.

[oldmanbob]

Agreed with Barkingspider, any property left unattended,will easily appear as target for vandals. I traveled all the areas for years, and can name several places that are safe and some not so. Loudon is way more rural than Kingston, and property in the outer areas, are possibly affordable. Garbage is homeowners to haul to one of the landfills. Good luck, and hope you find your mobil home and some land.

[kimhankhess]

I think I have narrowed my area down to Norris Lake area in Jacksboro. Does anyone know about this area? Subdivision Little Cove Creek.

[Barking Spider]

I've done a lot of inspections in the Jacksboro area. I'm surprised you can find something for your budget of $50K, but maybe a vacant lot. Since I don't always know the prices of the homes I inspect, I may not realize what the prices are. I guess I am surprised on how MUCH some of the homes are in that area (near the lake).

[kimhankhess]

its got a single wide in nice shape (or so they tell me). When I ran a analysis of average of comparible home sale prices within a mile radius of this property, it came back 35K to 55K. But across the street on the lake are 1/2 mill. homes.