Higher end areas in TN with Land?

[mattec]

Originally Posted by harbortime

These are some good suggestions thank you! Do you know of other areas maybe near Knoxville?



Cookeville could be a possibility but I'm not sure if there are enough stores and shopping?

For Knoxville, I'd checkout the area south of I40, from Westmoreland Heights to Farragut, north of the lake/river. You could also look a bit farther south towards Alcoa/Maryville, but that'd increase drive time.



For all the love Cookeville gets on here, I've never been impressed with it. It's mostly low to middle end chain stores/restaurants with a handful of local shops in their town square area. The university is nice, but other than that, it's not much different than any other small Tennessee city.

[JMT]

Originally Posted by mattec

For all the love Cookeville gets on here, I've never been impressed with it. It's mostly low to middle end chain stores/restaurants with a handful of local shops in their town square area. The university is nice, but other than that, it's not much different than any other small Tennessee city.

I definitely agree about the chain stores and restaurants which is certainly the case all over Tennessee except for pockets in just a few of the bigger counties. It's why I recommended that the OP look at Knoxville and Chattanooga.

But in the seven years I've been in Cookeville, the growth in wealth here has been jaw dropping. In 2013 there was about $1.5 billion in bank deposits here, ranking 15th in the state. In 2020 it's about $2.5 billion, ranking 12th. An additional $1 billion in Cookeville banks (a 70% increase) in just 7 years is nothing to sneeze at, and it catapulted Putnam County past Madison, Blount, and Sullivan counties and just a smidgeon behind Washington County, all counties that are much larger. In that same amount of time there's been an additional dozen or so wealth management consultants open up in Cookeville for people (like my mother) who don't keep their money in banks. (Cookeville is one of the smallest towns in America with a branch of the Swiss wealth management company UBS, and its office is one of the largest in Tennessee.)

Not too long ago the Wall Street Journal specifically mentioned Cookeville as one of the 4 most popular "Mayberry" towns in the country where millionaires are moving to. Not only has this brought a rash of very high-end housing to the area, it's brought shops, galleries, studios, breweries, and restaurants to downtown that are definitely not things found in "any other small Tennessee city." It's one thing that prompted some visiting business people from West Tennessee to tweet that Cookeville has a "model downtown."



The lack of a Whole Foods and Costco has certainly not stopped a lot of very wealthy people from moving to Cookeville these last few years, and judging by all the very large, very expensive homes being built all over this county, it's not slowing down anytime soon. Here's a sampling of homes in the $400-600k range on 2+ acres that have recently sold around Cookeville to give the OP an idea what this area is like:

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...1988378_zpid/?

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...3656574_zpid/?

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6...41989728_zpid/

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...41997903_zpid/

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3...3814569_zpid/?

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...41997273_zpid/