Memphis is a city of neighborhoods with all kinds of houses. You can find historic mansions, roomy new homes, charming bungalows, ranch houses, and cottages, not to mention apartments, town houses, and, in the outlying areas, farms. Plus, there’s a pleasant surprise in store for people who move here from high-cost areas such as the East Coast or West Coast: You can get a lot of house for your money in Memphis. In fact, you can live well in Memphis for much less than in many other cities. The cost of living here is low, about 93 percent of the national average in 2006, according to the American Chamber of Commerce Researchers Association. Plus, there’s no state income tax.
But that’s not all Memphis has to offer. In a sense, the whole city is one big neighborhood, where people tend to be friendly and welcoming. It’s easy to fall in with the spirit of things, whether that means rooting for the Grizzlies, griping about the weather, participating in a volunteer effort, or swapping celebrity-sighting stories while a Hollywood movie is being filmed around town. Many who have relocated here from high-stress lifestyles in larger cities find the living is easy in Memphis, and the commutes are shorter.
Memphis also has excellent health-care facilities, plenty of housing options and resources for retirees, colleges and universities with classes to accommodate any schedule, and hundreds of churches and other places of worship. In addition to the many fine schools in both the City of Memphis and Shelby County school districts, there’s a variety of private and parochial schools. It’s easy to stay informed, since the market is well served by newspapers, magazines, and electronic media. See the chapters that follow for details on health care and wellness, education, retirement, media, and worship.
Overview
One reason Memphis is so affordable is that home prices hold pretty steady here, so you can still find a good home in the upper $100,000 range, or of course you can pay more than $1 million. More recent figures show that the average sales price for a home inside the city was $171,000 in 2007, according to the Memphis Area Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service. For the Shelby County suburbs outside the city, that figure ranges from $146,000 in Millington to $361,000 in Germantown.
The City of Memphis includes downtown Memphis, midtown, and East Memphis, as well as neighborhoods in north Memphis, including Raleigh, and south Memphis neighborhoods that include Hickory Hill and Whitehaven. The city is ringed by bedroom communities, including Millington, Bartlett, Cordova, Germantown, and the DeSoto County, Mississippi, suburbs of Southaven and Olive Branch. Beyond Germantown is Collierville, the town named by Money magazine in 2004 as one of the top-10 best places to live in among cities with populations of less than 100,000 in the eastern United States. And in 2007, Bartlett was in Money’s top 100. Outside this ring of suburbs, you’ll find additional housing options in Tipton County, Arlington and elsewhere in northeast Shelby County, and Fayette County.
The most energetic new construction activity is taking place in downtown Memphis, which is enjoying an unprecedented revitalization; east Shelby County; north across the county line into Tipton County; and in DeSoto County, Mississippi. Much of this development is taking place along new major roads such as Highway 385, and other roads as they are widened into major arteries.
The city’s population continues to grow, following 13 percent growth in the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) population during the 1990s to 1,135,614 in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
As for property taxes, they vary greatly by county and by municipality. Property tax in Shelby County (www.assessor.shelby.tn.us) is $4.09 per $100 of assessed value ($4.04 within the Memphis city limits). If you live in Memphis proper or another municipality, there’s city tax on top of that. Property tax in the City of Memphis is $3.43 per $100 of assessed value, whereas it’s less than $2.00 per $100 of assessed value in the other municipalities.
Each municipality has room to grow under a comprehensive plan that gives each certain annexation reserves. These are areas of the county not currently within a city or town that may be annexed in the future by a designated municipality. That means if you own a home that’s in an annexation reserve, you could be obligated at some point in the future to pay city taxes on top of county taxes should the area be annexed.
Property taxes in Fayette County, Tipton County, and DeSoto County are generally lower than in Shelby County. In Tennessee there is no state income tax, and although Mississippi does have a state income tax, that’s somewhat offset for homeowners by the state’s homestead exemption program.