Salaries in Williamson County (Franklin, Hendersonville: sales, apartment, car insurance)

[Sigequinox]

I am curious to see what household incomes are realized in Franklin, Brentwood, Thompsons Station etc. With home prices soaring into the 400-500k+ range, this area must be paying substantially more than the rest of the state. Obviously I could go on census, the point here is to get real information at the family level--averages hide so much detail!

The poll has some household income ranges (I set the poll to anonymous). Feel free to comment about professions, years of experience, single or double income house, number of kids, cost of house etc.

Of special interest to me would be anyone who is working in biotech or pharma.

[Sigequinox]

My wife and I are in mid 20s and make a little over 130k combined. We have no kids. We still don't feel like that's quite enough to live comfortably (not "slaving to bank") in a 500k home, even with the amazingly reasonable tax structure. We would love to get a feel for how others are making it work.

We currently live in a 320k house, pay relatively high property taxes on house AND CARS (combined 7500/year) and get hammered with state income taxes. We want to have kids when we move down there, so were hoping that money would be displaced, not spent on more expensive house, but there isn't too much stock in Frankling in low-mid 300 range

Looking forward to your posts and any discussions.

[bspray]

My family lives in Brentwood - home cost was $400kish and the current value according to Zillow is closer to $500k now. We bought at the absolute bottom of the recession prices, prices started going up almost immediately after we bought. You won't get much house for less than $400k in Brentwood these days. Our property taxes are just under $3,000 annually and we don't pay state income tax.

My wife and I both work in Midtown Nashvile - me as an IT project manager in healthcare, her as an executive in sales analytics. We are both 6 figure earners. My wife is in her late 30s I am in my mid 40s.

We have one young son.

What concerns me is, my wife and I make pretty healthy salaries... We live in a somewhat modest house for Brentwood. It genuinely makes me wonder how much more people in the Brentwood area are making to be able to afford all these $700k - $2 million homes. There are SO many homes that cost easily double what our house cost in Brentwood. I don't think we could afford to pay double what we're paying on our mortgage... so how much are these people making???

[N.Cal]

there are some relocateesvwho bring their salaries with them. The problem is, hiring people here for the same jobs, the salaries are generally much lower.

For the n=1 that I know of in WC: Sell NorCal house and sell Phoenix house means more than enough equity to buy nice Franklin house.

[Kristin85]

I live in Franklin in an apartment. My husband and I make about $110K combined with me working in finance and him in retail. I took a substantial pay cut moving to TN. We could get approved for a $400K+ home but there's no way we'd be sinking a ton of our income into a home of that price. We have no kids but still wouldn't feel comfortable spending that kind of money on a house. If we decide to stay in Franklin, we'd be looking at $300-350K homes. If we get better jobs, we'd be looking at the $400K+ range in Leiper's Fork (part of Franklin.)

Sigequinox, my husband and I moved from CT last year and haven't regretted the move. There may not be a huge supply of homes in Franklin/Brentwood in your price range, but there are some. You just have to make sure you're going to have a job with a comparable salary to what you made in CT or else you may feel like you shot yourself in the foot. Unfortunately, Williamson County is equivalent to lower Fairfield County, CT. If you want to live in the wealthiest county in the state you may need to accept that the best you're going to get is a ranch home on your salary. Not to mention that Williamson County is in the top 20 wealthiest counties in the country so homeowners can demand a lot for their homes and people will pay it. If you want more bang for your buck you can look at towns like Spring Hill, Hendersonville, or Mt. Juliet.

[septimus]

We kept our salaries when we left the northeast, but our standard of living went way up. Our car insurance went down even though we had to have 2 cars (that expense did go up), utilities were the same but house is twice as large (for 150k less than we sold our old house), we aren't paying $20k in state income tax anymore, etc. We did lose the appreciation on our home though. Our old house is now worth $400k more than we paid (prices never went down in our old town) and our home here is finally back to what we bought it for in 2007.