Davidson County · Middle Tennessee
Living in Berry Hill
Berry Hill is a separately incorporated city of less than one square mile inside Nashville, near 8th Avenue South and Thompson Lane, incorporated in 1950. It is largely commercial, full of recording studios and small businesses working out of converted mid-century bungalows, which earned it the nickname Music Hill.
- County
- Davidson, satellite city
- Size
- 0.91 square miles, about 2,100 residents
- Distance to downtown Nashville
- ~4.5 miles
What’s actually there
- A city of 0.91 square miles with about 2,100 residents, incorporated in 1950
- A dense cluster of recording studios, the reason for the Music Hill nickname
- Small offices, salons and restaurants operating out of converted 1940s and 1950s bungalows
- Its own police department, public works department and city court
- Recent townhome and multifamily construction, which took the population from about 537 in 2010 to about 2,100 in 2020
The housing stock
Predominantly 1940s and 1950s single-story brick and frame bungalows, a large share of which have been converted to commercial and office use, plus recent townhome and multifamily construction. The population jumping roughly fourfold between 2010 and 2020 tells that story better than any description. Because the city limits contain very few residential transactions, published medians for Berry Hill are extremely noisy: one source showed a nineteen percent year-over-year drop that almost certainly reflects which type of property happened to close rather than any real change in value. I would not price a Berry Hill house off a published median, and I would not let anyone else either.
Getting around
About four and a half miles south of downtown, roughly ten to thirteen minutes off-peak, sitting between 8th Avenue South, Thompson Lane and the Nolensville Pike corridor.
Things to do in Berry Hill
Places worth knowing before you decide whether you want to live here.
Blackbird Studio
Recording studio at 2806 Azalea Place, founded in 2002, with nine studios and one of the largest facilities in Nashville.
Big Machine Distillery & Tavern
Distillery and tavern at 2824 Bransford Avenue, open seven days with live music at weekend brunch.
Common Ground Bar and Eatery
The Berry Hill location, which remains open. Its Sylvan Park sibling closed in January 2026.
East Iris Studios
518 East Iris Drive, part of the recording cluster that gives this small city its character.
The Pfunky Griddle
2800 Bransford Avenue, where you cook your own pancakes at the table.
Baja Burrito
722 Thompson Lane.
Sam and Zoe’s
525 Heather Place, the neighborhood coffee house.
Berry Hill Community Center
404 East Iris Drive.
Checked against each business as of August 14, 2026. Nashville loses restaurants faster than most cities, so if something here has closed since, tell me and I’ll get it corrected.
Subdivisions and named developments in Berry Hill
Once you are actually looking, you stop searching by city and start searching by subdivision. These are the names that come up, and what is true about each one that will still be true in three years. No prices, no dues, no days on market, because those change and this page would go stale telling you about them.
Berry Hill is its own city, and Metro’s own map proves it
The fact that changes every other answer about this place.
- Run a zoning overlay query on a point inside Berry Hill and Metro returns zero features. Not a conservation overlay, not a historic overlay, not even the countywide Urban Zoning Overlay. Metro’s overlay map stops at the city line.
- Metro’s parcel layer carries a placeholder value in the zoning field on about 914 Berry Hill parcels rather than a Metro zoning district, because Metro does not zone this ground.
- Bransford Avenue crosses the line mid-street. The 2461 to 2833 block carries the placeholder. The 1902 to 2301 block carries Metro codes: R6, SP, CS and IR. Same street name, two governments, two permit desks.
- Berry Hill kept its charter through the 1963 Metro consolidation and runs its own commission-manager government. If you are buying here, the city is your permit authority, not Metro.
Berry Hill Gardens
The plat that carries most of the residential ground inside the city.
- Recorded in plat book 1130 at page 36. About 233 parcels carry a Berry Hill Gardens legal description.
- Every one of those 233 parcels carries the non-Metro zoning placeholder, so on this ground the plat line and the city line agree exactly. That is a rare and checkable thing.
- Berry Hill Sub is a separate and much smaller plat, recorded in book 3300 at page 20, carrying about 17 parcels.
- A Berry Hill consolidation plat was recorded in 2022, so lots here are still being combined.
The houses that are legally offices
The land-use pattern that makes this square mile what it is.
- About 32 parcels inside Berry Hill are classed by the assessor as RECORDING STUDIO. Countywide there are about 107 such parcels.
- So roughly three in every ten recording-studio parcels in all of Davidson County sit inside this one small city. That is concentration, not saturation: 32 out of 914 Berry Hill parcels.
- Other classes on Bransford Avenue alone include office building, medical office, small service shop, restaurant, strip shopping center and light manufacturing, all of it inside house-scale buildings.
- 2805 Bransford Avenue is classed a recording studio and held by Blackbird Studio-Nashville LLC, which also holds 2801 and 2803. That is what an assembled studio campus looks like in the parcel records.
Short-term rental, and why the Metro answer is the wrong answer
The single most expensive assumption a buyer can make here.
- Berry Hill administers its own short-term rental permit. I have confirmed the separate permit exists. Metro’s short-term rental ordinance does not govern here and a Metro permit is not valid here.
- That means every rule you have read about Nashville short-term rentals, owner-occupancy, the residential-versus-commercial split, the permit caps, is the wrong body of law for this address.
- I have not published the city’s terms because I could not retrieve them from a primary source, and I will not print rules I have not read. The city itself is the authority on its own permit.
- Same goes for codes, zoning districts and building permits. Before you price a project or a rental thesis on a Berry Hill address, the call is to Berry Hill City Hall.
Browns Creek and the flood question
Real exposure, and the published numbers cannot answer it for you.
- FEMA mapping across the Berry Hill area returns zone AE, the 100-year floodplain, AE floodway, zone X at the 500-year level, and zone X minimal. All four are present within a short distance of each other.
- Zip 37204 recorded about 446 parcels with structure damage in the May 2010 flood. That zip also contains Melrose, 12 South and Woodmont, so 446 is an upper bound for Berry Hill rather than a Berry Hill figure.
- Metro’s flood damage layer records every parcel’s city as Nashville, so it cannot isolate Berry Hill at all. There is no clean published number for this city.
- Which means the only honest answer here is the parcel-level one. Pull the FEMA panel on the specific address before you write, because the zones change within a block on this creek.
Schools
Metro Nashville Public Schools
Look up an address with the district →
Berry Hill does not run its own school district. Tennessee satellite cities do not operate school districts, so addresses here are served by Metro Nashville Public Schools. Metro zones by address, so two houses on the same block can differ. There is also a separate choice and magnet application. Verify the address in the district’s own Zone Finder.
I publish district and school zoning as published fact and nothing more. No ratings, no rankings, no comparisons. School zones are set by the district, assigned by address rather than by subdivision or city name, and they change. Confirm any address with the district itself, and evaluate the schools yourself against what matters to your family.
What a buyer needs to know here
Berry Hill is a city, not a Nashville neighborhood, and that changes four practical things. It runs its own zoning ordinance and its own building department, so permits, variances and zoning letters come from Berry Hill city hall on Thompson Lane rather than from Metro Codes. It has its own police department, its own public works and its own city court. It levies its own property tax on top of the Metro general services rate of $2.782 per hundred of assessed value, and I am not going to publish a figure for the city portion, because it is genuinely not published anywhere I could verify. That number has to come from the city or the assessor directly, and I will get it for you in writing before you run your numbers. And critically for anyone thinking about rental income, Metro’s short-term rental ordinance does not govern Berry Hill. The city runs its own permit program with its own rules, so nothing you have read about Metro permit types applies inside the city line. Ask before you assume. The character point worth adding: this is a working commercial district with studios and small businesses in converted houses, so a residential buyer here is buying into an active, mixed environment rather than a quiet street.
Common questions
Is Berry Hill part of Nashville?
Geographically yes, legally no. Berry Hill is a separately incorporated city of less than a square mile, entirely surrounded by Nashville, incorporated in 1950. It has its own mayor and city manager, its own police department, its own public works, its own city court and its own building department. Schools are still Metro, because Tennessee satellite cities do not run school districts.
How much is the Berry Hill city property tax?
I will not quote you a figure, because it is not published anywhere I could verify, and a wrong number here changes your payment. What I can tell you for certain is that Berry Hill levies its own rate on top of Metro’s general services rate of $2.782 per hundred of assessed value, and that the city assesses using Metro’s own valuations. Ask me and I will get the current city rate from the city or the assessor in writing.
Can I short-term rent in Berry Hill?
Possibly, but nothing you have read about Metro’s rules applies here. Berry Hill runs its own short-term rental permit program with its own application and its own rules, and Metro’s ordinance does not govern the city. Before you buy anything here on a rental thesis, we call the city and get the current rules in writing. This is exactly the kind of place where an assumption costs real money.
Thinking about Berry Hill?
What are some of your must haves to make it a perfect home for you in this neighborhood?