Living in Forest Hills, TN: The Honest Guide to Nashville's Quiet Luxury Enclave

Forest Hills is the kind of place you can drive through without realizing you did it. There's no gate, no fountain, no sign that lights up and tells you you've arrived somewhere. The road just gets quieter, the lots get bigger, the trees close in over the asphalt, and at some point you've crossed a city limit you never saw. I've watched buyers do a full loop of it on the way to a showing somewhere with a bigger name, and then ask me where Forest Hills is. They were in it. They'd been in it for ten minutes.

That's most of the appeal, honestly. It's a separately incorporated city tucked into the southwest corner of Davidson County, southwest of downtown Nashville, and it has spent its whole existence not announcing itself. We end up explaining Forest Hills more than just about any other corner of this side of town, partly because nobody's marketing it to you, and partly because the thing that makes it good — the quiet — is also the thing that makes it easy to miss.

If you're moving here from out of state

Start with the geography, because the name 'Forest Hills' is doing real work. The hills are real and the forest is real. This is rolling, wooded terrain on the southwest edge of Davidson County, roughly nine and a third square miles, all of it land, most of it spoken for by large estate-style lots. It borders Radnor Lake State Park to the west and sits a short drive from Percy Warner Park to the northeast. If your mental picture of Nashville is honky-tonks and a downtown skyline, this is the opposite end of the volume knob.

Here's the part that surprises people from out of state: Forest Hills is its own city, with its own mayor and commissioners, even though it's completely surrounded by Nashville. It incorporated in 1957, and when Nashville and Davidson County merged into a single Metro government in 1963, Forest Hills kept its own charter and stayed independent. So you're physically inside Nashville's footprint, you have a Nashville mailing feel and Nashville access, but you're technically in a different city government. That's not a trivia answer — it's why the streets feel the way they feel, which I'll get to.

What's daily life actually like? Slow, residential, and car-based. You will drive everywhere. There is essentially no commercial strip inside the city — no grocery store you can walk to, no coffee shop on the corner, no retail pressed up against the houses. What you get instead is space and stillness, and a very short hop to where the errands live. The grocery and shopping anchors sit just north along Hillsboro Pike in Green Hills, which I'll lay out below, and Brentwood's retail is a few minutes east. You're close to everything and surrounded by almost nothing. For some people that's the dream. For others it's a slow-motion realization that they actually like being able to walk to a bagel.

Who does it fit? Buyers who want acreage, mature tree canopy, and a quiet street far more than they want a walkable block — and who are buying at a price point that supports a big lot. The honest trade-off is the one I just named twice because it matters: you trade walkability and convenience for space, privacy, and trees. If you'd be frustrated that the nearest gallon of milk is a drive instead of a stroll, this is the wrong fit, and I'd rather you know that in week one than month six.

Where Forest Hills actually sits

Forest Hills occupies the wedge of southwest Davidson County between Green Hills to the north and the Brentwood/Williamson County line to the south. The boundaries are approximate the way old city boundaries always are, but the rough box is Old Hickory Boulevard on the south, Granny White Pike on the east, Harding Place and Battery Lane on the north, and Chickering Road and the City of Belle Meade on the west. Hillsboro Pike runs the corridor that connects you north toward Green Hills and the shops.

To the west, Radnor Lake State Park — a 1,200-acre natural area — forms a big green edge to the city. That matters more than it sounds like it should. It means a chunk of your western boundary is protected hiking-and-wildlife land that will never become a subdivision or a strip mall, which is part of why the whole area stays wooded and low-density. Percy Warner Park sits off to the northeast as another large Metro Nashville green anchor. You are, in a real sense, living wedged between two of the biggest stretches of trees in the county.

The texture — what's actually around you

The oldest thing in Forest Hills is the McCrory-Mayfield House, a two-story log dwelling that dates to roughly 1798 and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982. It's a good reminder that this land was settled long before it was a quiet luxury enclave — the broader area has ties going back to the Natchez Trace, the historic colonial-era route, and that history is part of why the road network here meanders instead of running on a grid. The streets weren't planned by a developer with a ruler. They followed the hills.

Just outside the city you've got Cheekwood Estate & Gardens — a historic estate that's now a botanical garden and art museum — which functions as the cultural backyard for this whole pocket of southwest Nashville. Between Cheekwood, Radnor Lake, and Percy Warner, your 'amenities' lean heavily toward the kind you walk through in good shoes rather than the kind with a checkout line. I have spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of time talking to buyers about which trail at Radnor is the good one, and I'm not even sorry, because for the people who belong here that's exactly the conversation they wanted to be having.

For the errands, here's the real map. The nearest full grocery anchor is the Whole Foods Market at 4021 Hillsboro Pike in Green Hills, with a Trader Joe's a couple doors up at 3909 Hillsboro Pike — both a short drive north on Hillsboro. The Mall at Green Hills, a regional shopping center with fifteen-plus dining options and a deep retail roster, is about five miles north up Hillsboro Pike. Additional grocers like Publix and The Fresh Market fill in around the Green Hills and Brentwood retail areas. And the Brentwood retail corridor — restaurants, shops, grocers — sits roughly five miles east along Old Hickory Boulevard. So the pattern is: live in the quiet, drive ten-ish minutes in any direction, hit the stores, drive back into the quiet.

What 'separately incorporated' actually means for you

Because Forest Hills runs its own city government, it has its own charter, its own elected officials, and its own zoning and code controls layered on top of Davidson County. The practical effect most buyers feel is the zoning — low-density, large-lot, residential-protective rules are a big reason the place looks the way it does and isn't getting a gas station next door. There can also be a small city-level tax component on top of the county. None of that should scare you; it's the same model Belle Meade and Oak Hill use. But it's the kind of thing you want spelled out for a specific address before you fall in love, and our team can pull the current effective rate and the zoning picture for any property you're considering.

Quick Questions

How long is the commute to downtown Nashville?

Short, for a place this quiet — generally in the 15-to-25-minute range to downtown depending on which corner of Forest Hills you're in and what the day's traffic is doing. You're close-in. This isn't a far-flung exurb; it just feels like one once you're on the street.

Is Forest Hills walkable?

Honestly, no, and I'd be lying to you if I dressed it up. There's essentially no commercial development inside the city, so there's nowhere to walk to in the errand sense. What you can walk is the parks — Radnor Lake's trails are right there, and Percy Warner is close. If 'walkable' to you means trails and tree canopy, you'll be thrilled. If it means a coffee shop on the corner, you'll be driving to Green Hills.

What is Forest Hills near?

Green Hills to the north (the Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and The Mall at Green Hills sit up Hillsboro Pike), Belle Meade to the west, Brentwood and the Williamson County line to the south, and Radnor Lake State Park, Percy Warner Park, and Cheekwood all within easy reach. Downtown Nashville is a 15-to-25-minute drive.

Does it feel expensive?

It's a large-lot luxury submarket, so yes, the price of entry is real — this is estate-lot territory, not starter-home territory. We don't publish a median number here because the marketing figures floating around the internet aren't verified and price talk dates fast; what we'll do instead is pull current comparable sales from the public record for your specific budget so you're deciding from real numbers and not a Zillow guess at midnight. Tear-down-and-rebuild deals — buying an older home for the lot — are part of this market too, which can scramble the comps if you're reading them cold.

Is it part of Nashville or its own thing?

Both, in a way only Tennessee could pull off. It's geographically inside Nashville/Davidson County but it's a separately incorporated city with its own government, dating to 1957 and preserved through the 1963 Metro consolidation. You get Nashville access with a small-city layer of local control.

What about schools?

School zones in Middle Tennessee are tied to specific addresses, not to the city name. Share an address you're considering and our team will pull the assigned schools plus the GreatSchools.org and TN Department of Education report cards so you can read the official record and decide for yourself.

Forest Hills vs Oak Hill — a fit comparison, not a ranking

The nearest alternative most buyers weigh against Forest Hills is Oak Hill, the other separately incorporated, large-lot, quiet city sitting just to the east and south. They rhyme. Both are estate-lot, tree-canopied, car-dependent, separately governed pockets of Davidson County with almost no commercial development inside them. If you like one for its quiet and its space, you'll probably like the other for the same reasons.

The differences are about feel and orientation more than quality. Forest Hills leans west toward Radnor Lake, Belle Meade, and the Hillsboro Pike corridor up into Green Hills. Oak Hill leans east toward the Granny White and Franklin Pike side. Inventory in both moves slowly because people hold these homes for a long time, so the right answer usually comes down to which side of this quiet wedge of the county puts you closer to your daily orbit — your office, your gym, the grocery run you'll actually make. That's a conversation worth having out loud with someone who works both. Neither is 'better.' They're different doors into the same kind of life.

Who should look elsewhere

• •Buyers who want walkability. Forest Hills is genuinely car-dependent — there's no walkable retail inside the city. If you want to leave the car parked and walk to dinner, Green Hills, 12 South, or the urban core fit far better.
• •Buyers who want a smaller lot or lower entry price. This is a large-lot luxury submarket. If you don't need the acreage, you'll find more options and a lower floor in surrounding Green Hills or Davidson County neighborhoods.
• •Buyers who need a lot of inventory to choose from quickly. Homes here turn over slowly because owners hold them. If you need to be in a house in three weeks with ten options on the table, this market will test your patience.

Read next

• •Best of Forest Hills: where locals actually go — Radnor Lake trails, Cheekwood, the Green Hills and Brentwood errand runs, and how people who live here actually spend a Saturday.
• •Buying in Forest Hills: price bands and gotchas — what different budgets actually buy in a large-lot, slow-turnover, separately incorporated city, plus the tear-down-and-rebuild math and the city-tax and zoning details to check before you offer.