Closing Attorney & Title Services in Davidson County, TN

Your offer on a house somewhere between Joelton and Antioch may already be accepted, or it may still be a draft. Either way, the contract gives the address and the price and stays silent on the question that sorts out everything else: whose ground is this? For the deed and the tax roll, Davidson County is a single place - one Register, one Trustee, one Assessor. For taxes, permits, schools and the water out back, it is Metro, six small towns, six bordering counties and two Corps of Engineers lakes, and any of them can reach your lot. This page covers what holds county-wide. Buying your first home? The road from offer to keys →

Begin with who governs the parcel, because in Davidson County the answer is usually, but not always, Metro. The 1963 merger took in most of what had been unincorporated county land, so outside the towns Metro writes the zoning and issues the building permits. The exceptions are Belle Meade, Berry Hill, Forest Hills and Oak Hill, plus the Davidson County parts of Goodlettsville and Ridgetop. The Assessor taxes a house in any of those six at Metro's General Services District rate plus the town's own rate, and the towns are not alike. Forest Hills and Oak Hill levy no property tax of their own, while Belle Meade and Goodlettsville each send a city bill separate from Metro's. Before you make the offer, pin down which government the house sits under; if the answer is a town, ask the seller for every tax bill the house received last year, not just Metro's. ^{‡‡‡‡‡‡‡}

Then make sure the house is in Davidson County at all. Six counties border it - Robertson, Sumner, Wilson, Rutherford, Williamson and Cheatham - and ZIP codes ignore every one of those lines. In the Census Bureau's 2020 file matching ZIP areas to counties, Joelton's 37080 spills into Cheatham and Robertson, Old Hickory's 37138 crosses into Wilson, and the Green Hills ZIP, 37215, takes in a sliver of Williamson; going the other way, the Ashland City, Nolensville and even Franklin ZIPs reach into Davidson. The county decides which Register records the deed, which trustee sends the tax bill and whether the public schools are Metro Nashville's or the neighbor's. Look the parcel up in the property records, not by its mailing address, before anyone orders the title search. ^‡‡‡‡

The number your tax bill starts from is the Assessor's appraisal, and it changes on a fixed rhythm. The office visits every parcel over three years and revalues the whole county in the fourth; the most recent revaluation took effect in 2025. Your house is taxed on a quarter of that appraised value, multiplied by the rate for its district. If you paid well under the appraisal, or the value simply looks wrong, there are two doors: an informal review with the Assessor each spring (for 2026 it closed April 17), and after that a formal appeal to the Metropolitan Board of Equalization, which starts meeting on the first business day of June. Put both in your calendar the week you close. ^‡‡‡‡

Sellers bring one tax question of their own to the table. The Metropolitan Trustee runs two programs for owners who live in their homes. Tax relief covers homeowners 65 or older, disabled homeowners, and disabled veterans or their surviving spouses. The tax freeze holds a qualifying owner 65 or older at the tax due in the year they qualified, even if rates rise. Both turn on the applicant's own age, income and principal residence, and enrolled owners mail in a voucher every year to stay on. So a seller's freeze or relief is the seller's. If the bill you were shown looks low, ask the Trustee's office how it was figured and budget for the full tax; if you qualify yourself, apply in your own name once the house is yours. ^‡‡‡‡

The lakes belong to the Corps of Engineers, and its two in Davidson County run under opposite rules. The Cumberland River crosses the county from east to west with Old Hickory Lock and Dam on it, and J. Percy Priest Dam holds back the Stones River. Percy Priest allows no private docks or private floating facilities at all. Old Hickory Lake is different. Under the Corps' 2020 shoreline plan for that lake, a private dock or mowing can be permitted, but only on the stretches the plan reserves for it, and the permit is tied to the person who holds it, not to the house. A sale ends it. The buyer then has 14 days to apply in their own name, or must take the dock out and put the shore back within 30 days of the transfer. Only the current owner can ask the Corps for a realtor letter, good for 90 days, saying how the shoreline beside the lot is classified, so make getting one the seller's job before you price a dock into your offer. ^{‡‡‡‡‡}

Out on the rural edges - Joelton's farms and steep hills in the northwest, for one - two more files matter. The first is greenbelt. Land in the program is taxed on its use rather than its market value: farmland generally needs at least 15 acres, managed forest 15 and open space 3. When land leaves the program, rollback taxes take back the savings - the current year and the two before it for farm and forest land, five years for open space - and the Assessor names a sale followed by a change of use, and a recorded subdivision plat, among the events that set it off. The Assessor's rules do not say who pays a rollback, so your contract has to. The second file is septic. Metro Public Health lets the public view its engineering files, so if the house is not on sewer, read the system's permit file before the inspection, not after it. ^‡‡‡