Is Sparta worth the extra money? (Knoxville, Cookeville: for sale, real estate, foreclosure)

[bucky2611]

We found a couple farms in Sparta for sale and one in Adamsville. The Adamsville one is a lot nicer for 100k less but the area I have heard is not as good as Sparta. Does anyone know the Adamsville area? Is Sparta really worth the 100k more? We homeschool so school district is not a problem. We are looking for a safe area for our kids, a good farm community as well as church community. We would like to have Pediatricians and hospitals close by ( 4 kids 8 and under). We need to have a market to sell our farm goods to as well as my Fiancée is a licensed electrician and he will need work. We love to hunt, fish and ATV. Any help would be great! We are flying down next Friday to look at properties and do not want to waste time on areas that will not work.Thank you!

[JMT]

Originally Posted by bucky2611

We found a couple farms in Sparta for sale and one in Adamsville. The Adamsville one is a lot nicer for 100k less but the area I have heard is not as good as Sparta. Does anyone know the Adamsville area? Is Sparta really worth the 100k more? We homeschool so school district is not a problem. We are looking for a safe area for our kids, a good farm community as well as church community. We would like to have Pediatricians and hospitals close by ( 4 kids 8 and under). We need to have a market to sell our farm goods to as well as my Fiancée is a licensed electrician and he will need work. We love to hunt, fish and ATV. Any help would be great! We are flying down next Friday to look at properties and do not want to waste time on areas that will not work.Thank you!

The economy in Sparta-Cookeville is much better than in Adamsville-Savannah so your husband would probably have a better chance finding a job in Sparta. Likewise, medical care in Sparta, which has a hospital, is much better than in Adamsville, which doesn't. And Sparta is only 10 minutes from Cookeville which has a large, regional hospital, while Adamsville is 10 minutes from Savannah which has a small community hospital. Sparta and the surrounding area has a very active, thriving farming community with several farmers markets including a year-round all-organic farmers market in Cookeville.

Whether that's worth the extra $100k is totally subjective. I don't know what your over-all budget is, but that is a lot of money. Both are beautiful areas. Asking internet strangers to tell you to spend an extra $100k is quite a gamble. If you have the time, you really need to visit both places.

[P_Clark]

Since you didn't say where you are moving from it is hard to make the determination whether the difference in price is worth it. Having moved to Sparta 2 years ago from out of the area, allow me to throw my 2 cents worth in. Also, having driven through the area that Adamsville is in recently, (though not having stayed there any length of time), I'll add some comments about that neck of the woods as well.



1.) Tennessee is an interesting state when it comes to real estate. The quality of any given piece of property varies greatly as far as how it was originally built, how it was maintained, (if at all), and what sort of neighbors are in the area. Here in Sparta you have modular homes of all levels of quality on parcels next to site-built mcmansions, without any rhyme or reason.


2.) I personally would not buy a house sight-unseen anywhere, but especially in Tennessee. We bought here in an area about 7 miles west of Sparta proper known as Cassville but only because I had a set of eyes I trusted already in the area. We perused well over 100 properties from Smith county in the west to Knox county in the east and all counties north of I-40 before buying. We found a site-built 3br/1ba with a 30x20 garage, an 8x10 greenhouse on 1.35 acres of flat to slightly sloping ground for $61,500. It was a bank-owned foreclosure which we bought as-is. It needed a gaspack, new kitchen appliances and some infrastructure modifications, including a septic tank pumping and more nat-gas lines extended which I did myself.



3.) There are RE auctions going on here all the time. There are so many variables to consider that I would not venture to guess what your specific ones are, but you can get a heck of a lot of home for very little money if you are willing to invest some sweat equity into it. As JMT points out, the areas are not that similar. Adamsville is mostly flat land whereas Sparta is at the foot of the Cumberland plateau.



4.) White County is full, almost to an embarrassing level, of freakishly kind, polite and generous people. That's not to say there aren't any buttheads here, but they are the exception not the rule. There are three grocery stores, (Walmart, Sav-a-lot and Floyd's, (an independent grocer), not talking about the farmer's market that runs here from spring to fall. As mentioned above, Cookeville is our regional go-to shopping area with more options than can be listed here, but it also hosts a great college in Tenn Tech. It's a hour by car to either Nashville or Knoxville from here, (give or take 15 minutes).



If you are determined to live in the area I would definitely plan to first rent here before plunking down hard-earned money and lock yourself into a property that could be a money pit. To do this you will have to make a list of a) things you want from a property that you will not negotiate on; b) the things that you'd like to have but aren't a deal-killer if you don't get them and c) hard set deal-killers that you have to avoid for any reason, like having to redo plumbing, put a new roof on, have meth addicts in the house down the block, and so on. And no, I have no methheads on my block! ;-)