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Field Guide · The method

How these guides are built

Matthew Marcus · October 9, 2026 · the rubric, the map, and what is left out on purpose
The short version

Every neighborhood match in the Field Guide is scored on the same eight things, every number carries a source and a date, and I read every match table against what I know from selling here before it goes up.

Nothing on these pages ranks people, schools or safety, and no price is ever a forecast. A dash means a number has not been pulled yet — the page says so rather than guessing.

A relocation guide on this site answers one question: “I live in this kind of place now — where in Nashville would I feel at home?” The answer is only useful if every comparison is made the same way, so here is the way.

The eight dimensions

Each origin area — Silver Lake, Logan Square, Decatur — is compared with the Nashville zones on these eight things. The first six are the match; the last two are the honesty.

DimensionWhat gets comparedWhere the number comes fromRefreshed
Price bandMedian sale price and price per square foot over the past 12 monthsRealTracs, the Nashville MLS, one pull per zone; public portal pages for the origin areaYearly
Housing stockEra and type — 1920s bungalows, 1960s ranches, new builds; single-family, townhome, condo; the typical lotRealTracs listing fields plus a walk-throughYearly
WalkabilityWalk Score, and whether there is a commercial strip you can walk to (12South, Five Points, Main Street in Franklin)walkscore.comYearly
CommuteMinutes at 8 a.m. to downtown, Oracle, Amazon at Nashville Yards, Vanderbilt Medical Center, HCA headquarters and Nissan in FranklinGoogle Maps, departing 8 a.m. on a Tuesday, measured once per zone and datedYearly, or when an employer moves
AmenitiesLive music, restaurants, parks and greenways, lake access, distance to the airportA factual list — never a ranking of the people who live thereYearly
TaxesThe county property tax rate, and no state income tax against the origin state’s rateCounty trustees’ published rates; the state revenue departmentsYearly
Price historyThe five-year change in the median price, stated as history onlyRealTracsYearly
What you’ll missThe honest gap — no ocean, no train, a smaller airport, summer humidityWritten once per origin cityDoesn’t change

Two things are true of every row: the same Nashville zone can be the answer for several origin areas (East Nashville is the answer for Silver Lake and for Logan Square, for different reasons), and a match is never one number — it is the six that line up, with the two gaps stated next to them.

Nashville in eight zones

Nashville neighborhoods change every five miles, not every five blocks, so the guides work at the size of a borough: eight zones, each with the sub-neighborhoods people search for listed under it. Where a zone has its own page, it goes deeper — East Nashville down to eight sub-neighborhoods, Franklin and Brentwood on their own.

  • East Nashville

    Across the river from downtown: 1920s–40s bungalows, the restaurant rows at Five Points and along Gallatin Pike, deeper lots and brick ranches further north, Shelby Park and the greenway along the Cumberland.

    Five Points, Lockeland Springs, Historic Edgefield, East End, Eastwood, Inglewood, Cleveland Park, McFerrin Park
    East Nashville guide →

  • Downtown and the core

    High-rises, lofts and new mid-rise condos where you walk to work, to the venues and to the ballpark; Germantown's brick rowhouses north of the river bend; Music Row and Midtown to the southwest.

    Downtown, SoBro, The Gulch, Germantown, Midtown, Music Row, Edgehill
    All neighborhoods →

  • In-town west

    Established single-family streets a short drive from everything: porch-and-sidewalk neighborhoods with a strip you walk to, the shopping and office hub at Green Hills, newer mixed-use along Charlotte Avenue.

    12South, Belmont-Hillsboro, Hillsboro Village, Green Hills, Sylvan Park, The Nations, Richland–West End
    All neighborhoods →

  • The estate belt

    Large lots, old trees and the highest prices inside the county, with Percy Warner Park and Radnor Lake as the outdoor anchors and Green Hills for shopping.

    Belle Meade, Forest Hills, Oak Hill, Hillwood
    All neighborhoods →

  • The creative south

    Converted-industrial blocks with galleries, breweries, studios and new apartments next to the soccer stadium, and the small, eclectic streets around Berry Hill and Melrose.

    Wedgewood-Houston, Berry Hill, Melrose, 8th Avenue South
    All neighborhoods →

  • North and the lake

    Mid-century ranches on big lots in Madison and Goodlettsville, then the Sumner County suburbs along Old Hickory Lake, where the water replaces the beach.

    Madison, Goodlettsville, Hendersonville, Gallatin, Old Hickory
    All neighborhoods →

  • Southeast and the airport side

    The shortest drives to the airport and Percy Priest Lake: mid-century subdivisions in Donelson and Hermitage, the city's most affordable detached homes along Nolensville Pike and I-24, then the Rutherford and Wilson County towns.

    Donelson, Hermitage, Crieve Hall, Antioch, Cane Ridge, Mt. Juliet, Smyrna, La Vergne, Murfreesboro
    All neighborhoods →

  • Williamson County, plus Bellevue

    A different county with its own tax rate and school districts: one-acre lots in Brentwood, a real Main Street in Franklin with Westhaven and Berry Farms around it, newer master-planned Nolensville and Spring Hill; Bellevue is the Davidson County neighbor past the Harpeth.

    Brentwood, Franklin, Westhaven, Berry Farms, Nolensville, Spring Hill, Bellevue
    Franklin guide → · Brentwood guide →

The zones and their parts are kept in one place and printed on every guide from it, so a change here changes every page the same day.

What a dash means

A dash in a price column or a drive-time column means that number has not been pulled or measured yet. The page is built to refuse to go live until every one of them is filled from its named source — I would rather show you a dash than a number borrowed from a portal. The date next to each figure is when it was pulled; a figure older than a year is due for a refresh.

What is left out, on purpose

  • No crime or safety rankings. Where crime data appears it is information, with a link to the source, never a reason to choose one place over another.
  • No descriptions of who lives somewhere. A neighborhood is described by its houses, its streets, its commute and what you can walk to.
  • No school ratings, no “good schools.” School zones do not follow neighborhood names, so the guides link you to the district’s own zoning lookup and leave the judgment to you.
  • No forecasts. Price history is history. Nobody on this site tells you what a house will be worth.
  • The identical rubric for every zone. Belle Meade and Antioch are scored on the same eight things in the same order.

How a guide gets made

  1. The numbers come first. The RealTracs pull for the eight zones, the drive times from Google Maps, the tax rates from the counties and the states, each with its date.
  2. The match table is written from the rubric — origin area, Nashville zone, the shared traits, the gap — and the eight zones are printed from the one shared list.
  3. I read it against the ground. I have sold in most of these zones; if a row does not match what I see on showings, the row changes. That is the step that makes a page mine rather than a spreadsheet.
  4. The sources go at the bottom, with links, and the “updated” date at the top is the date the content last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.
  5. Then the short video: the same answer, on camera, in about a minute, for anyone who would rather hear it.

Every guide also ends the same way: a button to book thirty minutes with me, because the pages answer the general question and the call answers yours.

Back to the Field Guide →

Matthew Marcus
Matthew Marcus
Affiliate Broker, Tennessee license 344339 · Team Principal at Compass · Belmont University

Nashville real estate since 2019 with a builder’s background: more than three dozen renovation and new-construction projects, the East Nashville home Dwell featured, and the house on HGTV’s Flip or Flop Nashville. Most of my work is on the east side.

About Matthew →In the press →

Sources the guides draw on

  1. RealTracs, the Middle Tennessee MLS — every price band, housing-stock field and price history on these pages, pulled by zone and dated.
  2. Walk Score — the walkability number for each zone and each origin area.
  3. Google Maps — drive times at 8 a.m. from each zone’s center point to the six job sites, measured once and dated.
  4. The Davidson County and Williamson County trustees — property tax rates, worked through on the property tax page; the Tennessee Department of Revenue and the origin state’s revenue department for income tax.
  5. IRS county-to-county migration data, tax year 2022–2023, rolled up by metro — which cities the origin guides are written for, and in what order.
  6. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Nashville metro and the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce — who is hiring, which decides the profession guides.
  7. My own transaction file — the closings listed on the neighborhood pages, from my records, not a portal.

The question the pages can’t answer is yours

Thirty minutes on the phone and you’ll have a shortlist of neighborhoods with what homes actually cost in each.

Let’s talk Start with the moving guide →