mortgage

Knoxville is an easy enough city in which to live. It’s cheap, most folks are nice and life is gen­er­ally relaxed. But whats it like find­ing a house in Sun­sphere City?

My wife and I, being home-buying n00bs, had the chance to find out with our (fingers-crossed) recent find in Foun­tain City, just north of down­town Knoxville.

Home-finding resources for Knoxville

I work for Scripps Inter­ac­tive Group, which means I know more than enough about home list­ings avail­able though the Web site of the Knoxville News-Sentinel. This online resource culls both mul­ti­ple list­ing ser­vice (MLS) list­ings and news­pa­per clas­si­fieds into a site that’s easy to use. I espe­cially like the way that you can fil­ter the list­ing cri­te­ria, which also adjusts the map display.

Another resource I used exten­sively was the Knoxville Area Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors’ (KAAR) Inter­net Data Exchange Pro­gram. This com­plex name really denotes a basic list­ing appli­ca­tion that pulls from the MLS data­base, and dis­plays data sim­i­lar to that of knoxnews’ service.

I espe­cially like the KAAR’s inter­ac­tive map, which dis­plays avail­able list­ings for the area of town you’re look­ing at. Also use­ful is the abil­ity to save your favorite list­ings, rate them, and write notes.

Unfor­tu­nately, as my wife and I learned the hard way, the avail­able list­ings are always cur­rent. And they don’t show whether an offer is pend­ing on the house.

We used KAAR ser­vice as a start­ing point for drive-bys.

Other resources include Real­tor Suzy Trotta, Zil­low, print clas­si­fieds and dri­ving around neighborhoods.

Here’s how I rank the resources used:

  1. KAAR
  2. Real­tor
  3. Dri­ving around neighborhoods
  4. News-Sentinel
  5. Zil­low
  6. Print clas­si­fieds

How to find a neighborhood

Knoxville’s lack of estab­lished neigh­bor­hoods is prob­a­bly its great­est flaw. For­tu­nately, there are a few great ones such as Sequoya Hills, Island Home, North Hills and Foun­tain City, all of which are located within bike-riding dis­tance to downtown.

West Knoxville is home to mostly mind­less sub­di­vi­sions and new con­struc­tion with lit­tle to no his­tory or char­ac­ter. There are dia­monds in the rough, but they’re few and far between.

My def­i­n­i­tion of a great neigh­bor­hood means the following:

  • Side­walks or streets with lit­tle through traffic
  • Walk­ing dis­tance to local eater­ies or other businesses
  • Walk­ing dis­tance to parks
  • Walk­ing dis­tance to schools
  • Homes with dis­tinct char­ac­ter­is­tics (not planned communities)
  • Con­nec­tions to other neigh­bor­hoods, not just iso­lated pock­ets of housing
  • His­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance (bonus)

Hon­estly, this was the hard­est part of the home search because there aren’t many resources avail­able for research­ing Knoxville neigh­bor­hoods other than talk­ing to long-time res­i­dents. For­tu­nately, our Real­tor Suzy Trotta has com­piled a num­ber of neigh­bor­hood reviews on both her blog All Around K-Town, and the Knoxville-centric group blog Knox­ify.

The real estate sec­tion of knoxnews also fea­tures a num­ber of neigh­bor­hood descriptions.

Sum­mary and other tips

If you’re look­ing to find a house in Knoxville, here are the resources I’d recommend:

If you want infor­ma­tion about my expe­ri­ences find­ing a home in Knoxville, or just have a ques­tion about any of the resources I men­tioned, please post a com­ment or con­tact me directly.

Note: This entry was orig­i­nally pub­lished on Patrick’s blog.

Creative Commons License Pho­tog­ra­phy by Rev Dan Catt