Living in Greeneville, TN

Greene County

Greeneville is Greene County's seat in East Tennessee, carrying a genuinely singular historic identity: it is the real, NPS-documented hometown of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States, whose Andrew Johnson National Historic Site -- 16 acres spanning his tailor shop and visitor complex, his homestead, and the national cemetery where he is buried -- sits directly in town. An estimated 16,258 residents lived in Greeneville as of 2026 (World Population Review), within a broader Greene County population of about 74,300. Housing here runs genuinely affordable relative to the nation -- a $279,848 median sale price (Redfin, June 2026, up 2.8% year over year) -- and the overall cost of living runs 17% below the national average per one cited index, though real, disclosed tradeoffs temper that affordability picture: a poverty rate cited between 18.2% and 18.5% across sources (well above the roughly 12.5% national average), a median household income cited between roughly $49,900 and $54,900 depending on source, and a citywide crime rate NeighborhoodScout describes as considerably above the national average (a 1-in-47 chance of victimization). Tennessee levies no state income tax, and Greene County's combined sales tax runs 9.75% -- consistent with Tennessee's statewide pattern of carrying the second-highest average combined state-and-local sales tax rate in the country, behind only Louisiana as of 2026 -- while the City of Greeneville's own property tax rate ($1.7071 per $100 assessed value for 2025) computes to a modest countywide effective rate near 0.43%. Greene County carries real, serious, documented tornado history: the April 27-28, 2011 Super Outbreak produced an EF-3 tornado through the Camp Creek community (5 deaths, 150 mph peak winds) and a separate EF-4 tornado through the Horse Creek community (160 mph peak winds), together killing 8 people in the county that day, part of a broader 26-tornado history within 25 miles of town since 1950. Local healthcare access carries a real, current, disclosed reduction: Ballad Health closed the emergency department at its Greeneville Community Hospital West campus (formerly Takoma Regional) on August 31, 2026, consolidating acute inpatient care at the East campus (formerly Laughlin Memorial). Sources also genuinely disagree on the local unemployment rate -- a city-level aggregator cites 8.2%-8.5%, meaningfully higher than Greene County's own BLS-sourced county rate of 4.2%-5.1% through 2026 -- a disagreement disclosed here rather than resolved by picking one figure.

Explore Greeneville in depth

• Cost of Living & Housing in Greeneville
• Moving to Greeneville: Pros, Cons & What to Know

Housing

Taxes

The tradeoffs

Who this fits

Best for: History-minded buyers and retirees drawn to a genuinely low-cost, small East Tennessee county-seat town with a singular presidential historic identity and no state income tax.

Maybe not for you if: Buyers prioritizing a low crime rate or maximum local emergency-care redundancy above other factors should weigh NeighborhoodScout's cited crime figures and the 2026 Greeneville Community Hospital West ER closure seriously, and verify current, address-specific data directly. Anyone highly averse to severe-thunderstorm/tornado risk should look elsewhere in this dataset -- Greene County's documented 2011 EF-3/EF-4 tornado history, which killed 8 people, is real and should not be assumed away simply because the town sits well inland.