Help! (Knoxville, Johnson City, Kingsport: for sale, real estate, buying a house)

[BilleeMc]

Hey ya'll I need some help. I'm researching TN trying to find a nice place in the country. The main thing is a job for my husband. He works in construction (HVAC, heating & air, sheet metal) but only commercial work, no residential. The second thing is the school system, we have 2 kids.. 2 years and 3 months. He's the only one that works, I'm a housewife for now.. until the kids go to school! So basically that means we don't have a lot of money to work with as far as buying a house goes, but I won't live in the ghetto haha . I'd like a place with some land away from the city and the crowds.. I've been looking online and I seem to find the only reliable source of info is this forum!! lol So, here are the places I've considered.
Oak Ridge
Cookeville
Blountville
Greene County / Greeneville

[jmarkey]

The two most useful sites we found for real estate shopping were The Knoxville News Sentinel classifieds at knoxnews.com and thelakeman.com

For the latter, go to the site, click on Search the MLS, pick your county, enter your requirements and off you go. Lots of pictures, which come in handy if you're out of state.

For the Knoxville paper, go to classifieds, real estate for sale, then enter your requirements. I don't think it's quite as comprehensive as lakeman, but it's also a good tool to use. There's a lot for sale right now, in all price ranges.

Hope this helps and good luck!

[JMT]

Originally Posted by BilleeMc

Hey ya'll I need some help. I'm researching TN trying to find a nice place in the country. The main thing is a job for my husband. He works in construction (HVAC, heating & air, sheet metal) but only commercial work, no residential. The second thing is the school system, we have 2 kids.. 2 years and 3 months. He's the only one that works, I'm a housewife for now.. until the kids go to school! So basically that means we don't have a lot of money to work with as far as buying a house goes, but I won't live in the ghetto haha . I'd like a place with some land away from the city and the crowds.. I've been looking online and I seem to find the only reliable source of info is this forum!! lol So, here are the places I've considered.
Oak Ridge
Cookeville
Blountville
Greene County / Greeneville

All of those places you mentioned are lovely areas. Oak Ridge is right next to Knoxville, so your husband might have better luck finding a job in commercial construction in Knoxville. Oak Ridge has excellent schools, but it also has very high property taxes, and it's not known for affordable housing. And if you live outside the city for cheaper housing and cheaper property taxes, your kids won't go to Oak Ridge city schools.

Blountville is also nice. It's a small town with an historic downtown, and it's right in the middle of a metropolitan area of more than 500,000 people. So your husband might have luck finding a job there, too. There's a lot more construction going on in Johnson City (Washington County) than in Sullivan County (where Blountville, Bristol and Kingsport are located). I've heard that Washington County has the better schools, too, but I could be mistaken.

I'm personally partial to Cookeville, it's a medium-sized town that's growing like wildfire, lots of construction, and it has some of the best public schools in the Southeast. The university and hospital are currently undergoing something like $200 million in construction right now between the two places, and a couple of new shopping centers are springing up in town. And the last time I was there, I counted no fewer than four new banks being built, too.

Greeneville is also a very, very nice town, although it doesn't have a whole lot of commercial construction going on.

Good luck to you. I sure hope that you and your family find what you're looking for. There are a bunch of people in this forum who understand what you're going through.

[BilleeMc]

Thanks for the info!!