Visiting Cookeville this weekend:) (Hendersonville, Gallatin: for sale, real estate, mortgage) - Tennessee (TN) - City-Data Forum

jengal · 10-18-2007, 09:47 PM

Hi folks,
We're finally coming to visit Cookeville this weekend! Have a lot to do in a short amount of time. Is there anything exciting going on this weekend we should know about? We will be driving all over, eating out so as to check out restaurants of course

and visiting schools (Mon).
Does anyone know where we could pick up a local phone book to take back with us? We will possibly look at a few houses to get an idea of whats out there. I can't wait to check out the areas I've seen on here from JMT and others. If anyone has any suggestions on where we should look for housing please let me know. We have three dogs that are used to a few acres to run around but a big fenced in backyard could do if we're not right on top of neighbors. They are all nice friendly dogs. We have one daughter going into 7th grade next year. We will visit Avery Trace and Cornerstone Middle Schools. My husband needs to be near water so the closer to Center Hill Lake the better though we can't afford to live right on it. Within about 15 min would be good. We are self employed but don't want to be to far out of town. Right now we have a 30 minute drive to town - too much

. I would like to be in Cookeville or close enough to hop in the car and be to most places within 15 min. I want to be able to keep my daughter involved in things without having to drive so far like we do now. Any comments? Suggestions? Thanks.
Jengal

JMT · 10-19-2007, 07:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jengal

Hi folks,
We're finally coming to visit Cookeville this weekend! Have a lot to do in a short amount of time. Is there anything exciting going on this weekend we should know about? We will be driving all over, eating out so as to check out restaurants of course

and visiting schools (Mon).
Does anyone know where we could pick up a local phone book to take back with us? We will possibly look at a few houses to get an idea of whats out there. I can't wait to check out the areas I've seen on here from JMT and others. If anyone has any suggestions on where we should look for housing please let me know. We have three dogs that are used to a few acres to run around but a big fenced in backyard could do if we're not right on top of neighbors. They are all nice friendly dogs. We have one daughter going into 7th grade next year. We will visit Avery Trace and Cornerstone Middle Schools. My husband needs to be near water so the closer to Center Hill Lake the better though we can't afford to live right on it. Within about 15 min would be good. We are self employed but don't want to be to far out of town. Right now we have a 30 minute drive to town - too much

. I would like to be in Cookeville or close enough to hop in the car and be to most places within 15 min. I want to be able to keep my daughter involved in things without having to drive so far like we do now. Any comments? Suggestions? Thanks.
Jengal

Hey Jengal, welcome to Cookeville! I hope you have a wonderful visit.

The local phone company, Frontier Communications, has a retail store in the Kroger shopping center on South Jefferson, right next to Jersey Mike's. They have phone books, but I'm not sure if they're opened on weekends.

Since you want to be fairly close to Center Hill, which I understand completely, check out land in the SW part of town. Essentially, head down South Willow Ave which turns into Burgess Falls Road when it crosses I-40. If you take Burgess Falls Road, just wander. Ditty Road intersects Burgess Falls Road and will take back up to Baxter, past Southern Hills Golf Course and some other nice housing developments with lots of land.

As for what to do, you might want to go ahead and visit Burgess Falls if you're going to be headed in that direction anyway. It's a nice little park with some beautiful waterfalls (three of them, I think).

Saturday is Bark in the Park at Algood City Park from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is $1, and children 12 and under free. Contests, agility and lure courses, vendor booths, a pet photo contest for the first twenty-five 4"x6" photos entered, pet tricks demonstration by Jane Kline, and a flyball demonstration by the Music City Road Dogs Flyball Team. Dogs must be on a leash and current on vaccinations. Algood is adjacent to Cookeville on the NE part of town.

Saturday night at 8pm the Independence Community Center in Overton County is having a free bluegrass concert. It's just north of Livingston towards Dale Hollow Lake.

Sunday at 3 the symphony has its first concert of the season playing Mozart: Divertimento for Strings and Mahler: Symphony No. 1.

I don't know if you'll be there today, but at 11:30 is a free concert at the historic Depot downtown of the university's Sax Quartet.

Have a great trip!

jengal · 10-19-2007, 08:41 AM

Thanks so much for the info. It makes me wish I was bringing my daughter and golden retriever so we could go to the pet event. This trip though is more work than play.
We are taking our laptop so anyone out there with any input please don't hesitate to post.
Thanks so much.
Jengal

Wordy · 10-19-2007, 10:40 AM

How fun! I remember our first visit to Cookeville. It was November 2004, I think! You'll have a much prettier time than we did. The fall colors are about to hit their peak and the weather should be pretty mild.

It's hard to tell you where to look for a home without knowing your price range. There are a few in our subdivision, including one that is on an acre with an adjoining acre available next to it. I think it's around $269K or so, but it's a big old house, might be more than you are looking for. We live in the city limits. There is also another smaller, older house that's been for sale for a while and it too has an empty lot adjacent to it that's for sale. I can't remember how much but it's a lot less than the grander house. My subdivision is from the late 1970s, I think. It is a nice mix of large lots and smaller ones, and it's in the city limits. There is another subdivision nearby, Windrowe, and they also have some homes for sale. Both of these areas are in the south part of Cookeville, right off 111 (off south maple).

In general, I think you will find a large supply of homes to choose from, especially as compared to what we experienced when looking a few years ago. There were still several homes on the market that fit our needs, but I've been noticing a lot more for sale signs recently. I don't think the housing market here was in a bubble or anything like that so there probably won't be a decline in prices, really, but the mortgage industry/housing decline nationwide probably has had at least a tiny bit of ripple effect here.

We have a ton of phone books and you'd be welcome to one, so PM me if you have trouble with that and I'm sure we can meet you somewhere (just in case you are an internet killer cleverly luring us in with your phone book request...just kidding!) and happily hand one over. I don't think you'll have any trouble, though. Will you be meeting with a real estate agent to look at houses or is it more of an informal fact finding situation?

My daughters went to Avery Trace and liked it a lot. Now they are at Cookeville HS and they really like that. You are smart to think about having to drive to town for stuff for your daughter. We live probably 10 minutes from just about anything and it's great. 10 minutes to the high school, 10 minutes to Books A Million, 10 minutes to Cane Creek Park, 10 minutes to Poets, etc. My children are pretty social and there is a lot to do here for adolescents, so it's good we chose to buy and live in the city and not way outside of it (which we very nearly did, by the way). The girls tell me all the time how miserable they would have been isolated out in Buffalo Valley, which is where we were going to buy a house. The city limits is a bit more expensive but like everything else, it's a tradeoff. Our real estate agent was very pro-city limits and really pushed it even though we were not that interested in it, and it turns out he steered us right.

Have fun! PM me if you have any questions.

Barbiego · 10-19-2007, 09:23 PM

We picked up a phone book and lots of brochures at the Chamber of Commerce, 1 W. 1st St, near the downtown shopping area.

jengal · 10-20-2007, 03:16 PM

Thank you all for your input. We are still looking but are thinking again of checking out some other areas besides Cookeville. If we have time we may go over to Hendersonville/Gallatin area. If anyone has any input on that area let me know please (or I may just start another thread). We also were thinking again about somerset, KY where we had visited once before. I really do appreciate all the help. We are so confused right now and running out of time before we have to go home.
Jengal

jengal · 10-20-2007, 03:19 PM

Oh - and Wordy - No I'm not a clever internet killer. And no not a dumb one either. No - actually not one at all.

Thanks for all your info.
Jengal

TN Tin Man · 10-20-2007, 05:43 PM

Next County North of Cookeville... Overton County, Tennessee - Welcome to Overton County

mbmouse · 10-20-2007, 06:34 PM

Not sure how much time you have and what your plans are, but you could always take the 2 hour trip to the Tri-Cities and look around? Just a thought if Cookeville isn't what you were looking for.

Lucky Eddy · 10-20-2007, 07:50 PM

jengal, where are you staying at? We're in Cookeville this weekend too, and staying at the Alpine Lodge. There sure is a lot of ground to try to cover in a short time. Today, we ate at Spankie's, it was great. There was something going on at the University so Spankie's was packed with a lot of young ladies in white formal dresses. Add to that the big screen TV with TN-AL football, don't get much better than that. Like Barbiego said, the Chamber has phone books, a free simple map or relocation package, and a good detailed map for $3.