Some have designated the crane as the official bird of Nashville. The skyline is decorated with the machinery swinging through the heights of the city, now spreading their wings into Midtown, down West End and into SoBro.
The Oracle project has only just begun, as the late Karen Carpenter might croon. For the most part, investors are wise with their money and banks are slow to pour their funds into failing projects.
History reveals that both have erred in their zeal in chasing real estate rainbows, and there is enough distance between the most recent recession and this real estate boom to warrant memory lapses from either group or both.
As the late John Jay Hooker used to say, borrow so much money that the banks need you to succeed and become your partner.
Yet, the enormity of the projects and the injection of hundreds of millions in capital suggests the infusion is warranted and that businesses and their employees are on their way.
In outlying areas, there are thousands of acres of land with earth being moved to make way for commercial and residential use.
There is no end in sight. Other states continue to falter and raise taxes. As long as Tennessee continues to avoid individual income taxes, the masses will fly into the area.
In the 1970s, Columbia felt as distant from Nashville, in all regards, as it was from Chicago. Now it is practically a suburb.
Sale of the Week
Rick French is one of the most knowledgeable Realtors in Nashville with decades of experience selling upper-end homes. A student of architecture, construction, trends and marketing, this wizard of West End can describe a property as well as anyone.
811 Lynnbrook Road
For example, French recently sold a property at 811 Lynnbrook Road for $3.85 million, not a huge number for him but a big price tag for Lynnbrook. The neighbors are happy, or at least they will be until Metro reappraises their homes.
In describing the home, he rebuffed the standard Realtor lexicon often used for updating such houses.
Rather than resort to the words renovated, updated or the old-fashioned remodeled, French wrote the house was “revived” in 2015. He also referred to an outbuilding as an “activity barn.”
The house is 8,618 square feet with five bedrooms, six full bathrooms, two half bathrooms and a cabana spread across the compound. The package provided plenty of fodder to tax the vocabulary of the wordsmith. Rather than use a mundane term in describing the land behind the home as a backyard, French conjures emotions of cricket, soccer, football or baseball in the area he labeled a “playing field.”
As the world celebrated the 81st anniversary of the birth of John Lennon, French evoked some of Lennon’s better lines in the Beatles song “Across the Universe.” With French, “Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup” and “Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox/They tumble wildly as they make their way across the universe.”
Those relishing French’s prose will notice that the Lynnbrook house allows for “resort-style living” and who would not want to reside in a resort? A house might not be worth almost $4 million, but a resort can carry that weight.
Before the siege led by those migrating to Nashville, buyers would often cite the Metro tax appraisal as a means of determining the value of a property. Needless to say, yet, I shall anyway, the Metro employees have not set foot into the homes that appraise, knowing not if the range is an eight-burner Wolf or a 1965 harvest gold Amana. Shag carpets carry the same weight as imported cypress.
While it will incur a bump on the next appraisal, the Lynnbrook house carried a Metro appraisal of $2.873 million, more than the $2.4 million this house sold for in 2015, yet almost $1 million less than the sale last week.
The buyer’s broker in this transaction was none other than John Hendon of Coldwell Banker Barnes, no stranger to the big deal. Hendon has been selling homes in Nashville and has been recognized internationally for his work for many years.
He is a big fish in a rather large pond as Coldwell Banker is an organization spread worldwide and Hendon is a world-beater in their group and has been for over 25 years.
Richard Courtney is a licensed real estate broker with Fridrich & Clark Realty, LLC and can be reached at [email protected].