Any Affordable Places To Rent In The Nashville Area

[WolfJames]

Originally Posted by creeksitter

You will find that in Knoxville and possibly Chattanooga. Also Louisville KY.

Where is your work base? Barge traffic, I presume?

Not in Louisville, except a really bad area. Possibly in Indiana or well south, or east, of the city.

[steindle]

Originally Posted by WolfJames

Not in Louisville, except a really bad area. Possibly in Indiana or well south, or east, of the city.

Is this your idea of a really bad area? Cool and nice renovated apartment

[creeksitter]

I think that is kind of a rough area. But I see plenty of apartments under $700 in more popular districts. Maybe not as nice as the slickly renovated one in link.

[850_branded]

Let me offer an alternative perspective here....

First of all, the thing you should do first (the OP here) is research whether or not there's any jobs related to your industry in this area. Now i don't know for sure if there's any barge-related jobs around here, but since the Cumberland River does cut through here I'd have to think that there'd at least be something somewhere along that river--shoot my job is right on the bank and has both a railhead AND barge dock, not to mention a full-scale apparatus for loading and unloading the barges we do get. (I work for a wire plant.) If you find something, research whether or not you can get a toehold in that way--because as with anything, you definitely want to have a viable job, or even job opportunity, lined up before you make the move.

Second thing...location. Two things here. I'm not sure how much of Nashville has stuff like this, but I know when I was living in both Pittsburgh and Baltimore, people (we) got really creative with trying to find affordable living close to "stuff"--to the point of researching how many downtown or close to downtown business (or in the case of Pittsburgh, other central business districts) have multi-levels, as some that do tend to have studio or one-bedroom units in the upper floors they rent out to people. Those may have limited commodities--smaller kitchens/bathrooms/living rooms or whatever--but they may also be much cheaper than seeking out something from an actual apartment complex. Of course the drawback to that deals with how well the landlord(s) maintain their buildings/units, and then of course utilities. I don't know if any of downtown Nashville has any of that but it'd be worth looking into if you really wanna live "in the thick of it all". And of course, the other thing with that deals with your tolerance level--what seems like a trashy, dumpy sub-par shoebox to one person may be more than suitable for another...all in what you're willing to put up with.

Which leads me into this next part...some people will think of a particular area and automatically broadstroke label an entire area, oftentimes without knowing a thing about the place personally, just via word of mouth (and even that can be called into question based on just whose mouth those words came out and what THEIR tolerance level is.) For example, I just moved out here about two months ago, and I (& my roommate) live down in Antioch. Now, you mention "Antioch" to enough people and you may get a range of responses from "decently okay" to "sketchy/seedy" to whatever more colorful adjectives you'd ascribe to "undesirable". All of that is peppered by personal perception, and a lot of that is formed by people's tolerance levels. In my case, I live in an apartment complex that definitely isn't the best by any means, but also isn't a total dump or a roach motel, either. Most of the problems we have are little naggy annoying things--but tolerable, to us, in light of all the good things, like the split floor plan we have, not to mention the convenience of it to just about every basic necessity (There's a grocery store right across the street, about five or six if nkt seven restaurants within a five minute walk--we even have the bus line practically right outside the gate, which is great for me as right now I don't have a vehicle so I bus it to and from work (i even have the benefit of one of the two routes that come past being a BRT line), and it works out perfectly fine for me--i can walk to everything i need, which allows me to save the money I'm not spending on gas (!), insurance, and whatever auto repairs come up--just $84 per month for my 31-day bus pass. (I also lucked out in that my job is also on that same bus line--but i also chose it specifically for that reason, to make life easier on me.) Oh and to get back to the main reason I brough that up: our unit is less than $900/month. There's another one or two complexes further up that may be less than that. (That being said, let me ley you know right now that Nashville's rental rates are kinda weird in that they can fluctuate, pretty much like the stock market or currency rate, pretty much on a daily basis.

The point of all that is this: it's all in what you make of it. Everybody can't afford to live in the more desirable, lively, and/or (i hate this word but) "hip" areas such as West End, The Gulch (especially), or pieces of East Nashville (which I'm quickly finding out may as well be the Nashville Newcomer Haven, though I obviously missed that boat, lol). That said, I'm also told that part of town in general and at least Germantown in particular still has some pretty affordable rentals interspersed throughout. (Also, so as not to confuse you, East Nashville is the actual name of that neighborhood, not to be confused with "the eastern part of the city" if that makes any sense--and its right across the river from downtown.) Anyway, if this means you have to branch out a little further to find something suitable, so be it, especially as a newcomer, even more so if you're moving single. Just don't look TOO far depending on where you find work at around here--you don't want half your day tied up in commuting! Thankfully Antioch is maybe 7 or 8 miles from downtown (at any rate less than ten, I believe), and my commute by bus is barely 35 minutes (of course I work in the shadow of downtown, though, not directly in it).

Hope this helps you out some, and if this is the place you wanna head to, best of luck in your endeavors!