The quest for a Dan Kappus world headquarters remains underway. As I wrote, I believe that I will be able to live in housing that better reflects my preferences and/or significantly reduce my housing costs by leaving Nashville. Housing costs in Nashville have become a lot higher relative to other places since I moved here. This is a project of geographical arbitrage in which I can do achieve some combination of better housing and greater economic security.
So far, leading contenders are Cincinnati and Knoxville, followed closely by Chattanooga, Pittsburgh, Nashville, and “that holler over yonder.” These are all in Appalachia or are Appalachia-adjacent, and all are geographically related to the Ohio Valley. There are many places elsewhere that would be even better choices for someone like me, like the northeast corridor, the desert Southwest, or Cascadia, but staying relatively close to the regions I’m familiar with and where I have social contacts feels important right now. I’m not anxious to start with an entirely blank slate.
I spent a recent week in Cincinnati. I helped a friend with his remodeling business. I did some sightseeing. I visited with my friend Jennifer and her family, who were my gracious and most patient hosts in their house in the eastern Cincinnati suburbs. I had the great pleasure of working with a devoted and attentive real estate agent, Anna Trebbi.
My trip to Cincinnati affirmed that the amount I spend on housing in Nashville would certainly get me housing that was altogether more in line with my preferences. It also showed that I could spend significantly less in that city than I do now in Nashville, and still have housing that meets my needs. While there are only a handful of properties listed for sale in Nashville that would cost the same or less to live in than income from the sale or rental of my current residence, Cincinnati metro is replete with a stunning variety of properties and options that meet this criteria.
In Cincinnati, for the price of my current housing in Nashville, I can live in a historic townhome, a one acre hidden urban retreat, an Italianate shotgun, a downtown condo, or a bungalow all within my means. The possibilities for income-producing rental property appear similarly broad. The sheer number of options in Cincinnati metro is heady, from a $45k six bedroom cottage in need of repair, an apartment in a Victorian Castle next to a beautiful park for $130k, to a stunningly-maintained 2,000 square foot Italianate single family residence with a detatched two car garage and basement woodworking studio for $190k. The variety of shapes, sizes, and prices of housing in Cincinnati far exceeds that of Nashville. Anna gave me a grand tour of some twenty single family residencies that would meet my cost criteria; I have concluded that such a tour in Nashville is not possible.
I didn’t get to visit as many of the multiplex properties as I wished because coordinating access to occupied rentals with my visit of uncertain length to the city proved difficult. In a similar vein, I missed out on several properties that came and went in the span of a day because I was not ready to act. Finally, because Anna is only licensed in Ohio, I did not get to see some of the appealing properties on the south side of the river in Kentucky. Nonetheless, I saw with my own eyes that my project of geographical arbitrage is possible if I move to Cincinnati.
Meanwhile, in Knoxville, my choices are fewer and not as attractive as those in Cincinnati. Most Knoxville housing structures are smaller relative to their lots than are those in Cincinnati, and unlike the Queen City, Knoxville has developed with rules requiring that construction be set back from the street. Knoxville does not have the dense late-19th century pedestrian-oriented development found in Cincinnati neighborhoods like Over The Rhine or Mount Auburn. The result is that Knoxville on the whole is not as pedestrian-oriented in its center-parts, and were I to buy there, I would likely end up with a front yard to begrudgingly mow.
But Knoxville is closer to Nashville. It is equidistant to the metropolitan areas, Cleveland and Atlanta, where the greatest number of my remaining family members live. Of all my various choices, it’s also closest to the familiar natural areas, like the Great Smoky Mountains, I’d like to explore. In some ways, it’s the least radical move of all the places I’ve considered.
So far, I have visited several bungalows, ranging from $110,000 to $185,000. Several of these were in various parts of North Knoxville. Another one was in Park City. I became so enamored with a remodeled tiny shotgun of some 500 square feet in Mechanicsville that I would have already moved there were I only endowed with only 500 square feet of personal property. I also have seen and considered a duplex in Fourth & Gill; I was sad both at its overall disrepair, and agents’ claims that even with horrible paint and hoary mechanicals, it would rent immediately in what they described as an “incredibly hot market” for rentals.
So far, if I could combine in a dream city the location, climate, and familiarity of Knoxville with the variety and availability of housing of Cincinnati, I would move immediately to that city of my imagination, especially if that imagined city had an airport the size of Northern Kentucky International Airport that was connected to it via a intracity bus system like Cincinnati’s.
I still wish to spend some time exploring the possibilities in Pittsburgh and Chattanooga. For the former, I need to find a place to stay for a while so I can poke around. Pittsburgh has some great housing options, though housing prices have risen significantly in Pittsburgh since the time a decade ago when I first considered moving there. It has a Buddhist practice place that belongs to the tradition I have previously immersed myself in. Thanks to benefactors from its early 20th century boom, it has a surfeit of lovely museums, parks, and cultural institutions. Of all the cities I’m considering, it has the most immediate intercity public transit to the population centers of the northeastern seaboard I’d like to visit. All these things are balanced for me against its markedly colder climate, its distance from where I currently live, and my somewhat sparser network of social contacts there.
Chattanooga is quite accessible from Nashville as a day trip. I have a number of social contacts there. Chattanooga is a small mountain city like Knoxville, but with slightly fewer cultural and consumer amenities. It certainly has some of the beauty of the mountains, but it is further from the wild parts I’d most like to roam. It seems like a fine choice for price and for the friendships I might extend there.
Meanwhile, I continue to ready the Nashville house to be a rental. The work needed to make this house into a rental seems to be the biggest hurdle to making a choice. Shopping for homes is gleeful and light, but imagining repainting the interior of this house, perhaps in colors that I don’t care for, having painted it entirely just a few years ago is heavy and daunting to consider. But it shall be done, and much to my pleasure, my research performed in my recent visits to Cincinnati and Knoxville shows that leasing or selling this property is certain to yield some results towards my goals of improving my housing and my economic security.
