It looks like a move to the Nashville, TN area may be imminent and I’m looking at my housing options. My goal for a long time has been to have a small farm of my own. There are still some plots of land to be had that are reasonably priced and already cleared (one of my main priorities, don’t really want to establish pasture if I don’t have to) but no house. I’m not opposed to a nice manufactured home or site built, and I am looking to keep the house modest (under 2000 sq feet) and add a small shedrow barn to start. Looking to have a 5 year plan of adding horse facilities as we go if I can’t find what I want already built.
Has anyone gone the manufactured housing route? What’s the timing like? How much can you customize (paint colors and materials, not floorplans)? Any hints, tips or tricks?
I live just outside Knoxville. Nashville is one of THE fastest growing areas in the U.S. That’s good if you already own a place; not so much if you’re trying to buy one.
Building on bare ground, anywhere, is a challenge. If you’ve not been there you should make a quick trip and before you go spend some time on Zillow or some other web site and get a “quick and dirty” feel for what’s where. It seems the equine friendly areas lie to the south and southeast. There are some Nashville area folks who hang out around here; they can give you a better idea about where to start looking.
be sure to check impact fees, here it can be tens of thousands for connection fees to water/sewer…and if electrical power is not to the building site it by the foot to run the lines
Get a good sense in your mind about why it is this parcel does not have a house on it now.
This is important. People pick the most desirable home sites first. There’s a reason bare land doesn’t have a house on it. It’s not necessarily a bad reason. But it could be.
It might be that it was part of a larger parcel with a better homesite. It might be it was owned by a little old lady who never built her dream house and never let go of the parcel. It might be that it floods on a big rain, that no one ever drilled a well, that it won’t perc for septic, that it is miles from the nearest power.
Look at the plants, look at the neighbors, really assess what it is that kept this part of the land clear.
And check zoning of the property. if we are specifically talking Davidson County, not all large plots (say over 5 acres) are automatically zoned for ag/horses/livestock. And if the property is in a “community” (like where they split up a large farm into many smaller plots), closely look at the HOA rules regarding animals. Many strictly regulate # of horses and forbid “nuisance animals” - donkeys, chickens, goats, mules, etc. and very tightly control dog breeds that are allowed.
Nashville is Davidson County. I am an hour SE and can’t say for sure, but IMHO I would NOT be looking for horse property in Davidson county. I don’t think there is any and if there is, it will be small and an absolute bloody fortune.
You would be better served to look in Sumner, Williamson, Rutherford, and possibly Wilson Counties if you need to stick close to Nashville for work.
No, no and NO to a manufactured home. Definitely consider a modular home. And don’t let someone try to sell you a double wide trailer house under the guise of it being a modular home. There a huge differences between the two.
3.1. You would also have to see what the county/township requirements are for such homes.
We have a modular home I designed and had built by R-Anell homes in 2003; I picked one of their base homes and built from there. We are still very happy with it.
We were retiring to Tennessee and were not familiar with who the reliable builders were, in the area we had bought land. If possible, build in an Ag county; less permits and less money:)
I lived in Nashville until 2015. I would STRONGLY encourage you to rent at least a year before committing to a purchase. Tennessee is very conservative, politically and socially, especially outside urban areas. The high sales tax has more of a budget impact than you might imagine. If your husband gets a job distant from your home, the congested traffic could make the commute more than an hour. It s hard to get connected to the horse community if you are isolated on your own property.
I’m for sure looking at surrounding counties, we do not want to live in Nashville city (obviously) I just need to live within one hour of the Nashville airport. Where the hubby gets a job will help determine which side of the city we live on.
Can you elaborate on the solid NO of a doublewide? There are some properties that have a doublewide on it already that we may be interested in – I would love some insight into what was the dealbreaker?
I do plan on renting first, as we need to sell our current home and move down. We likely won’t have found something in that time frame. Because of that, I will be boarding my horse until we find the right place to buy. If I can’t find what we want, I’m not opposed to buying a house and continuing to board, as long as I can find a barn that I am happy with. I’d love to find a place that would be open to me giving some lessons on the weekend to offset boarding costs.
(Only commenting because I spent 2006-2017 living all over middle TN.)
There are a lot of places in middle Tennessee where you can still find land within an hour of the airport.
The bigger question is what kind of lifestyle are you seeking for you and your horses? Because life in Westmoreland is a lot different than life in Shelbyville, which are both going to be a lot different than life in Nashville proper or Franklin. Yes, you can still find relatively affordable 5 acre parcels zoned for livestock within Nashville Metropolitan Davidson County.
One big reason to stay away from doublewides is tornadoes. They are also insured and mortgaged differently than stick-built or modular homes.
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Yes ^^^ exceptI did not know one could still buy zoned-for-livestock property within Nashville Metro.
Reasons to avoid trailer homes:
Homeowner insurance is higher than a on a modular or traditional home.
They depreciate and insurance goes up. Modular homes appreciate at a near-equal rate to site built homes.
Had we put a trailer home on our property, the power company would have only paid for one electric pole – we needed three. They considered the modular home the same as a site built home, and paid for two poles. At $700 a pole in 2003, we were happy to only pay for one.
HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE:
A trailer home, whether single, double, or triple wide comes in on wheels and a trailer frame that are permanently attached to the home. You can take the wheels off but the axles remain forever attached to the home. <----- THIS is the biggest way to trap some lying salesman before you buy and your homeowner insurance company says "sorry but you bought a manufactured home not a modular home.
1.1. Our modular came in on two trailers, was REMOVED from those trailers and assembled with a gigundus crane. The roof was unhooked from its hinges and lifted up with the crane., then regular shingles were put on the roof on-site.
Trailer Homes have a metal tag tacked somewhere on the outside of the trailer. Modular homes do not.
2.1. Both have HUD stickers, in some cupboard inside the home, BUT the HUD sticker for a modular has different verbiage than the sticker for a trailer home.
The pic is our 2003 R-Anell home. I’m sorry, it’s all I have on this IPad. If you expand the picture you can see the home better.
Things I changed externally:
Roof pitch to 12.
Width and style if vinyl siding.
Shudder style.
Added transom above picture windows.
Attached a 2-1/2 car garage on north end by contractor who assembled the house. R-Anell sent siding, roofing, and window shudders for uniformity.
Home is 24’ X 60’ with an attic that could easily be converted to living space.
6.1. The type of strapping and the method as to HOW the modular is lagged down is really critical, if you want want blown away in the first tornado that comes along.
I heard thru the grapevine that may have been the issue with the modular home that was literally flipped on its side in a tornado last Fall and the lady lost her life:(
The SW end of our home has seen some brutal winds over the years but the contractors really did lag it down to “California Earthquake standards” because the walls have not cracked no the foundation is still solid:)
Total cost for home and garage in 2003 was 138K and the best money I ever spent on a home. We replaced the hot water heater in 2017, and had to replace the HVAC unit in November, 2018. Basements are not common in TN so HVAC units sit outside exposed to all sorts of weather; the HVAC people were amazed we got 15 years out of it.
Knock-on-wood everything else is still chuggin’ along – even the gas fireplace insert which we use the dickens out of during the cold months:)
BTW I am in the lower end of Bedford County, which is a tch too far to drive to Nashivlle, or even the airport in a daily basis. A few have tried and they eventually sold out – they had nice horse properties too.
Oh Mercy – that reminds me, there is a drop-dead gorgeous brand new horse property for sale around the corner from me. I’m guessing 15-20 acres. I do not know what happened because it’s obvious these people did not build the place from raw land to flip it. Whatever happened in their life had to be seriously awful. I can get the MLS number if you’d like but it would be a head banger driving to Nashville every day. DH says from our house, we can get to the airport in less than an hour, provided there aren’t any accidents in the way.
@walkinthewalk Sure, Davidson County is all technically metro Nashville and is a BIG county. The far western/northwestern portions still are quite rural- Joelton, Millersville, Ridgetop, Whites Creek, Pegram, etc. All of those towns straddle the county lines. There’s a lot of acreage, the problem is most of it isn’t horse friendly thanks to trees and rocky cliffs (not development friendly either for the same reasons). Also not much of a horse scene. Prices have gone up considerably just like everywhere else in the area, but there are still good deals to be had.
The Neely’s Bend area of Madison is another reasonably priced section of Davidson County quite close to the city with a good bit of land. There’s even a park back there with horse trails. Problem is, it’s essentially a peninsula surrounded by the Cumberland on 3 sides. There’s only one road in/out, which takes you through some impoverished, high crime areas of Madison. We put offers on a few properties in that area, but we’re glad we didn’t get them because in some ways, those properties were the worst of both worlds in terms of urban and rural challenges.
@walkinthewalk Thank you for the answer!! I appreciate the insight from someone who has done what I’d like to do! Do you have horses on site?
It looks like R-Anell doesn’t have builders in the area (anymore?) but it looks like there are some options in my price range. I certainly will choose modular over manufactured, the price difference is not that big!
An odd question – WHY no basements? Isn’t that a nice option in the event of a tornado??? From a New Englander, it just makes sense! :yes:
If you have the MLS # (or street address for Zillow) I am always down for oogling horse properties!!
Every house I ever lived in or owned in Nashville always had a basement. And all my friends homes had basements. So maybe the no basement thing is for newer construction? After all, its cheaper to just put a slab down or a basic foundation, rather than digging down and adding a true basement that’s a decent size.
But I will add, I’m old and that would make all those houses old - as in built before 1970.
No basements in my area at least because there is too much glacier type rock to drill thru. It costs a bloody fortune to put a basement in.
We have 25 acres and there only two possibly three perk sites on the entire 25 acres due to all the rock underground. The acreage is all lush pasture and tillable but there’s rocks under there.
there’s a 98 acre ex Walking Horse training stable, a few miles from me, that has changed hands a few times. A developer wanted to buy it up but NONE OF IT will perk, which suits me fine, lol. If it won’t perk for a septic site, that means it’s also too rocky to try and dig for basements.
What a couple of homeowners have done on my road is to set the houses on a hill side, then dig out a partial basement/garage into the hill.
I will get the real estate info on the farm I mentioned tomorrow. I’m also going to call the guy who sold the property. It was always cow pasture. He sold it off For the extra money, as it was separate from where his home and barn sit. I want to ask him if something happened with the property (like a sink hole) or if it was a personal human issue that caused them to leave. The place is only 2-3 years old, they had beautiful horses, and now the people are gone and so are the horses.
If something is wrong with the land, he will tell me – I would never recommend something if the land were an issue.
I still have horses. I laid my two elders to rest a few years ago. I still have a 23+ and a coming 25 year old – both Tennessee Walkers and broke to death go anywhere trail horses — well they were until I had to stop riding and I nearly lost my 23+ fella (he is insulin resistant) to founder in 2012.
***Anyway, I will see what I can learn about the empty property from my cattle neighbor:).
Here’s another one within two miles of the first one that I forgot about. This couple raised Spotted Saddle Horses and cattle. He is 78 and wants a smaller piece of property. He built this house and the barn. I love the barn because the entire fronts of the stalls are on a slide track with stall doors built into each wall.
