Asheville NC

[skyking1]

We visited friends there several years ago and loved it. We don't care for the heat and Asheville was significantly cooler than just a few miles away in GA.

 

[KenZ71]

Bought a house south of Greensboro NC few months ago.

Worked with a fantastic local agent PM for name if looking in Greensboro area. Asheville would be too far.

 

[ncbill]

You've got many options to go considering moving to the Smoky Mountains. Asheville's nice with fine restaurants and a bunch of breweries, but it's got a wide variance of people and things to do. I hear good and bad.

To the west of there, you've got mountain resort towns that are very popular with the Atlanta elites like Highland-Cashiers with golf/tennis communities that are just lovely.

85 miles north of Asheville, you've got Boone, NC which is a lovely small college town and Banner-Elk which is where Beech Mountain and Sugar Mountain ski resorts are. B-E can get a little expensive, but there are condos and cabins all over that mountain. Most homeowners go home in the winter, however and it's pretty quiet there. The region is lovely with places like Grandfather's Mountain and other small towns.

An hour north of Asheville, you've got Johnson City and the Tri Cities which fairly populated. I especially like Johesborough and the area surrounding it. Tennessee is substantially less expensive on housing and taxation than North Carolina.

We keep a place in the Northeast Georgia Mountains. I'm especially fond of the counties along the NC border like Blue Ridge, Blairsville, Young Harris and Hiawassee. It's less expensive to live and every bit as beautiful as much of Western NC.

But one of the retirement hotspots is Cookeville, Tennessee--85 miles east of Nashville. It has everything you're looking for with Tennessee Tech University for culture, two magnificent huge lakes, incredible hiking and virgin whitewater streams. It's got a fine hospital too. But with I-40, you can be in Nashville or Chattanooga within an hour and Knoxville's just over an hour. It's far less expensive to live in than NC or SC or even GA.

I live near Greensboro, NC, spend a lot of time around Banner Elk, but were I to retire to the mountains I'd probably pick the Tri-Cities area (Bristol, Kingsport, Johnson City) of NE Tennessee instead of anywhere in NC.

 

[BoodaGazelle]

In-laws lived in Hendersonville for 14 years... we really liked it there, but have never lived there. We liked the downtown there much better than Brevard. There are many towns surrounding Asheville that would be worth a look.

 

[FreeBear]

I wish DW and I enjoyed or at least tolerated humid weather. This part of the world sounds wonderful otherwise. We ended up in SE AZ for the sunny, dry weather, but it's far more expensive then TN or the Carolinas.