Question 1

Do you lend in Nashville and the surrounding counties?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We are a Texas-based direct lender and we fund deals across the Nashville metro. That covers Nashville and Davidson County plus the collar counties, including Williamson (Franklin, Brentwood), Rutherford (Murfreesboro, Smyrna, La Vergne), Sumner (Hendersonville, Gallatin), Wilson (Mt. Juliet), and Maury (Spring Hill, Columbia). The federal Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin MSA is 14 counties, and Clarksville and Montgomery County are not among them, so if your deal sits up that way, tell us and we will look at it on its own terms. Rutherford County is where the single-family volume has moved: it authorized 1,680 single-family units in the first half of 2026, up 17.6% year over year and about a quarter of the metro total, while Davidson was down 35.1%. Every loan is business-purpose only, on investment property, and terms are subject to underwriting. See loan programs or talk to us.

Question 2

How fast can you close, and how fast does a Tennessee foreclosure actually run?

Accepted Answer

Same-day term sheet, and funding in as few as 5-7 days once title and insurance come together, subject to underwriting. The other clock worth knowing is the one on the back end, because it is the calendar a Tennessee note actually runs on. Tennessee foreclosures are non-judicial, by power of sale under TCA 35-5-101 and following. The statute requires three newspaper publications in the county where the property sits, the first at least 20 days before the sale, with a copy of the notice mailed to the debtor and any co-debtor by registered or certified mail on or before that first publication. A sale can be postponed without republishing for up to a year if it is announced at each scheduled date, and a postponement of more than 30 days needs 10 days' mailed notice. Statutory redemption runs two years under TCA 66-8-101, but it is expressly waivable in the deed of trust. We are not going to tell you what a typical default-to-sale timeline looks like in Davidson County, because we could not source one. Ask your Tennessee attorney about your own documents. Apply now.

Question 3

I want to buy a Nashville short-term rental. Does the seller's permit come with it?

Accepted Answer

No. A Davidson County short-term rental permit does not transfer, and on most residential parcels the buyer cannot get a new one. This is the single most consequential local fact we know, so read it twice. Metro Code section 6.28 recognizes two permit types: owner-occupied and not owner-occupied. The investor permit is the not-owner-occupied one, and new NOOSTR permits are prohibited outright in AR2A, R, RS, and RM zoning, which is the entire conventional residential stack. They issue only as a use permitted with conditions in mixed-use, office, commercial, downtown DTC, and shopping-center districts. Reporting indicates no new NOOSTR permits have issued in residentially zoned areas since January 1, 2022. The ordinance language on transfer is flat: a permit "shall not be transferred or assigned to another individual, person, entity, or address." Tennessee's own Short-Term Rental Unit Act, at TCA section 13-7-601 and following, points the same way, since grandfathered status ends when the property is sold or transferred, when it goes 30 continuous months without short-term rental use, or after three separate violations of generally applicable local law. So a Nashville acquisition underwritten on the seller's permit and the seller's short-term revenue is underwriting income the buyer will not inherit, and we will not lend against it. If you do qualify on a whitelisted parcel, the checklist is real work: a $313 permit fee, annual renewal, liability coverage of at least $1,000,000 per occurrence, a responsible party within 25 miles, a certified floor plan, adjacent-owner notification, an HOA compliance statement, and the permit number printed on every listing. Enforcement is active rather than nominal, and Metro Codes has moved to recall permits on duplex and tall-skinny properties sharing a lot, a dispute that was still unresolved as of August 2026. An owner-occupied permit is not a workaround for an entity, either, because it requires a natural person permanently residing at the property and LLCs, corporations, trusts, and partnerships are ineligible. The suburbs are their own question. We could not verify the ordinances in Franklin, Brentwood, Murfreesboro, Hendersonville, Gallatin, Mt. Juliet, or Smyrna, so treat everything above as Davidson County only and check the city before you sign. See the DSCR program.

Question 4

Does the new 2.5-story cap kill the tall-skinny play?

Accepted Answer

It shortens the building outside the interstate loop and leaves it intact inside. At the same time, Metro made two-family permitting much easier. BL2025-1006 passed third reading on December 16, 2025 and took effect December 26, 2025, with the height table delayed to February 27, 2026. It cuts maximum height from 3 stories to 2.5 across the single-family and two-family bulk table, adds a half-story definition that counts a half story as a full one when the top wall plates on two opposite exterior walls sit more than 4 feet above that story's floor, and sets 24 feet to the eave or parapet and 35 feet to the ridge. The tall-skinny rule proper survives as Note 4: two detached units on one lot cannot exceed a ratio of 1.0 horizontal to 1.5 vertical for each structure. Two-family structures legally built before the effective date may remove the connector. There is a carve-out that matters: inside the area bounded by I-65 on the north and west, I-40 on the west and south, and I-24 on the east, the maximum is still 3 stories in 45 feet and the eave and ridge caps do not apply. Running the other direction, the old five-part conditions test for two-family dwellings was deleted in full and replaced with a simple rule, two-family permitted on any lot legally created under state law or inside an approved final plat that meets the district minimum lot size. The mechanism underneath all of it is the Tennessee Horizontal Property Act, TCA Title 66 Chapter 27 Part 1, where the definition of a unit expressly includes a separate free-standing building. That is how two detached houses convey separately on one lot without a subdivision, and it drives your comps, your title work, and your release mechanics when unit one sells. The practical read for underwriting: a deal penciled before 2026 to a 3-story tall-skinny outside the loop does not pencil the same way now, so bring us the current envelope, not last year's. See the ground-up program.

Question 5

What do taxes really cost on a Nashville investment property?

Accepted Answer

Less than most states on income, and not what the headline millage rate looks like on property. Tennessee imposes no tax on wage or salary income, and the Hall income tax on interest and dividends was fully repealed for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2021, so for an individual the answer is now unqualified. Property tax is where people get the math wrong. Tennessee assesses residential and farm property at 25% of appraised value and commercial and industrial at 40%, and Davidson County's 2025 rates are $2.814 per $100 of assessed value in the Urban Services District and $2.782 in the General Services District. Work it through: a $500,000 house in the GSD is assessed at $125,000, which is $3,477.50 a year, or about 0.70% of market value. The same $500,000 as a commercial building is assessed at $200,000 and runs about $5,564, roughly 1.11%. Commercial carry is about 1.6 times residential carry on identical value, so a change of use is a tax event even when the value does not move. We do not have verified current rates for Williamson, Rutherford, Sumner, or Wilson counties, so pull those from the county trustee before you model a suburban hold. At closing, Tennessee charges realty transfer tax of $0.37 per $100, and the statute puts it on the grantee, meaning the buyer pays it, on the greater of consideration or property value. The mortgage recording, or indebtedness, tax is 11.5 cents per $100 of debt with the first $2,000 exempt, paid by the borrower, and every recorded debt instrument carries a legend stating the maximum principal indebtedness for Tennessee recording tax purposes. On a revolving line, the tax is charged once on the stated maximum and re-draws are not taxed again. One trap for out-of-state investors: no income tax does not mean no entity-level tax. Tennessee's franchise and excise tax applies to LLCs, LPs and corporations doing business here, at 6.5% of Tennessee net earnings for excise and 0.25% of net worth for franchise, with a $100 minimum. The exemption investors ask about most, the family-owned non-corporate entity exemption, is narrow: at least 95% family ownership and at least 66.67% of receipts from passive investment income, where residential rent qualifies only on properties of four or fewer units, commercial rent does not qualify at all, and gain on a property sale is not passive. Talk to a Tennessee CPA about how your structure is treated before you set it up, not after.

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