Looking to escape from Illinois with the family and my wife has narrowed down her looking  to the Clarksville and Knoxville area.

I am a mostly commercial, industrial electrician with some residential experience. Prefer not to do Residential again

Can anyone down here give me some info on the job market? Housing costs, taxes, Etc.

Clarksville and Knoxville are quite different. Knoxville is much larger than Clarksville for one.

Those are some extremely general questions that are pretty hard to answer.

I think you will get more info if you answer theses questions.

Do you have school age kids?

What’s your housing budget?

What’s your housing preference? Rural with acreage, neighborhood, etc.?

Industry is really booming in Clarksville, you would probably find a job easily in one of our factories. My uncle is an electrician with the school system  9-5 and can get all the side work he wants and then some for extra income if he desires.

The kids are 14, 12 and 7.  150 to 225K.  I would LOVE enough land to set up my own range.  I'm thinking not too far from civilization as the kids need some sort of social life.

I love the industrial side of the field with commercial being a second.

No offense, but that budget will not get you enough land to shoot on in Knoxville. Even outside of Knoxville will be difficult. The market is hot right now on the sellers side.

I cannot speak for Clarksville, but I bet that would be a tight budget there as well.

I would also assume that schools are a consideration and in Knoxville it’s all about location as to what schools are better and you can figure out what that means money wise.

ETA: Stepping out on a limb here, but looks like you’re probably looking for at least a 3 bedroom if not 4 bedroom house. Now everyone’s idea of what constitutes a “nice” house is different, but I can tell you that a house of that size with that budget will be difficult in Knoxville, at least what I imagine you’re looking for as far as “nice” neighborhood, etc. Maybe Clarksville is different, but as hot as the markets are here, you have your work cut out for you. And you might as well forget enough property to shoot on.

225 would get you a little something with a couple of acres in the north western part of Montgomery co. If you go just a little further west into Stewart County your dollar will go further. Schools zoned for northwestern Montgomery co are a little lackluster though. Stewart is rural and has pretty decent schools. I’m not sure where you coming from in IL so Montgomery co schools would probably be a huge step up from say Chicago. I’m just across the line in Stewart co and it’s rural peace with a 30 drive to downtown Clarksville or a 45 min drive to the industrial park.

My wife zeroed in on clarksville because it's a 45 minute drive to nashville.   We are located about 45 to 60 minutes west of chiraq.

Some days my drive to a jobsite is 10 minutes, others days I leave at 0430 to arrive by 0600.

ETA: Houses are much more expensive in the knoxville area compared to clarksville.  Does anyone know of a realtor in the area we can talk to ?

I do.  Sending you a PM.

The further away from Ashland City, the better. Fort Kickass has an AC mailing address but is closer to Pleasant View or Joelton, and we like it that way. AC is still a little booger-town in many ways, and overrun with tweakers. Our next door neighbor grew up in AC and refuses to go into town unless absolutely necessary.

We like the small town vibe save the tweakers.

We found a website called neighborhood scout and it lists our area as having a crime rate of 30, chiraq is an 8 and clarksville is a 16.

That came across as a bit of a shock.  Is crime that big of a problem there?

FYI, Knoxville was a 2.

Websites such as what you are describing need to be taken with a grain of salt in my opinion.

Too many of them have other agendas.

Where do they get their stats? What is their formula for computing theses so called crime numbers?

I am very suspect of these sites.