Seeking advice for finding a home to rent in Nashville

[Josh Deeden]

So this post is only tangentially related to investing, but I'm hoping folks here can still offer some guidance on a few questions I have. For some background, like many people, we've decided to relocate from California to the Nashville area. We're doing this for all of the typical reasons one makes this move, but most of all, to save money and improve our financial position to the point where we're comfortable taking risks with investing in real estate. But we have some work to do in that department, and we're thinking it'd be smarter for us to rent for the first year or so, get to know the area, save as much cash as possible, and then eventually purchase our primary residence. At the price point we're targeting for the primary residence, the expected monthly PITI will be slightly more than half of the rent we're paying here in California. So the plan is to save for another year and then eventually use that money to invest using whatever strategy makes sense at that time.

In the meantime, we need to find a SFH rental to live in and I'm hoping folks here can recommend some good resources for doing so. I'm skeptical of listings on sites like rent.com, Zillow, Trulia, etc. It seems like many of the houses on these sites are listed by large property management companies such as Progress Residential and American Homes 4 Rent, and neither of these companies are well-reviewed on sites like TrustPilot or BBB, which gives me pause. Do folks here have any experience with or knowledge about these companies? In any event, we'd much prefer to rent from mom/pop owners or investors like yourselves who either self manage or use a quality local property management company. We're solid renters with high income and great credit and rental history, and our current landlord loves us and we think she's great too. We're hoping to find a comparable relationship in Nashville, so I'm hoping people here can maybe point me in the right direction.

For some additional context, we are looking for a dog-friendly (not breed restricted) 3/2 (or larger) with at least 1800 sq ft in a Nashville suburb. We only spent a few days there, but we visited Mt Juliet, Hendersonville, Franklin and Murfeesboro and all of those areas appealed to us. We also visited Thompson Station and decided that was a little too far out for us. But generally speaking, comparable areas within 30 minutes of the city are on the menu. Our monthly budget for rent is between $1,900-$2,500. We could conceivably go higher for the right place. We're picky and have a bunch of other requirements that don't make sense go into here, but if knowing those would be helpful, let me know and I can follow up with those details.

So yeah, any advice on where to look or who to contact in service of finding a quality rental in Nashville is very much appreciated.

Thanks!