Davidson County · Middle Tennessee
Living in Oak Hill
Oak Hill is a separately incorporated residential city of about 7.8 square miles and roughly 4,900 residents, incorporated in 1952, sitting south of downtown Nashville and containing most of Radnor Lake State Park. It charges no city property tax at all, funding itself from sales tax, street aid and building permit fees.
- County
- Davidson, satellite city
- Property tax
- Metro GSD $2.782 only, no city tax
- Zoning
- Six single-family zones, quarter acre to four acres
What’s actually there
- A city of about 7.8 square miles and roughly 4,900 residents, incorporated in 1952
- The majority of Radnor Lake State Park, one of the region’s few walking-only preserves
- Six residential zones, all single-family only, with minimum lots from 10,000 square feet up to four acres
- City hall at 5548 Franklin Pike, which is where building permits are issued
- No commercial district. The retail people use on Franklin Pike and in Green Hills is outside the city line
The housing stock
Single-family only, across six residential zones with sharply different minimum lot sizes: 10,000 square feet in zone A, 20,000 in zone B, then one, two, three and four acre minimums in zones C through F. Each zone carries its own setbacks, lot coverage and height limits. Two adjacent streets can be zoned differently, which changes what you can build far more than the listing will suggest. The zoning ordinance was amended in 2025, so use current documents only. Sales volume is low enough that published medians rest on a handful of transactions.
Getting around
Roughly seven to eight miles south of downtown, about fifteen to twenty minutes off-peak by Franklin Pike or I-65.
Things to do in Oak Hill
Places worth knowing before you decide whether you want to live here.
Radnor Lake State Park
Walking-only natural area, most of which lies inside Oak Hill. No boats, no bikes.
City of Oak Hill City Hall
At 5548 Franklin Pike, where the city issues its own building and zoning permits.
Barbara J. Mapp Aviary Education Center
Inside Radnor Lake at 1160 Otter Creek Road, where the resident raptors are.
Hill Center Green Hills
4015 to 4031 Hillsboro Pike, the open-air shopping and dining center.
The Mall at Green Hills
2126 Abbott Martin Road, the regional mall a few minutes north.
Green Hills Grille
2002 Richard Jones Road.
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 Oak 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.
Oak Hill Estates
The largest named subdivision inside the city, platted in four phases across a decade.
- Section 1 recorded April 19, 1967. Section Two followed September 17, 1971, Section 3 on December 30, 1974, and a Section 3 revision on December 8, 1977.
- About 161 parcels sit inside the city limits, more than any other single named subdivision in Oak Hill.
- Runs toward the Old Hickory Boulevard end of the city.
- Housing follows the plat dates, so late 1960s through the 1970s rather than the prewar estate stock elsewhere in Oak Hill.
Lealand Manor
Platted thirteen years before there was a city to put it in.
- Original plats recorded April 11 and April 18, 1939, with further additions in January 1950, August 1952 and a fifth addition in September 1954.
- Oak Hill was not incorporated until 1952, so the oldest houses here predate the city government by more than a decade.
- About 102 parcels inside the city limits.
- One of the two oldest platted subdivisions in what became Oak Hill, alongside Gateway Acres.
Gateway Acres
The earliest verified plat anywhere in present-day Oak Hill.
- Recorded April 1, 1939, ten days before Lealand Manor and on the facing page of the same plat book.
- A second wave followed on May 15, 1947, and a second addition on October 19, 1948.
- About 80 parcels inside the city limits.
- Prewar, wartime and immediate postwar housing sitting side by side, which is unusual and is a direct result of that nine year gap between the first plat and the second.
Forest Acres
Six sections recorded across eighteen years, the longest platting sequence in the city.
- Section 1 recorded January 13, 1947, Section 2 June 17, 1947, Section 3 June 1, 1948, then Section 4 in January 1957, Section 5 in July 1962 and Section 6 in January 1965.
- About 89 parcels inside the city limits.
- Still active as a plat. A resubdivision of Section 3 lots was recorded in 2026, so the paperwork on this one is not a closed book.
- That eighteen year spread means the housing stock changes noticeably as you move through it, from late 1940s to mid 1960s.
Bridle Path Estates
The big-acreage plat, and one that sits on both sides of the city line.
- Recorded May 6, 1939 across four consecutive plat pages, with a second edition in March 1952.
- Lots run from 1.71 acres to 15.26 acres, the widest spread of any plat in the city.
- It straddles the boundary. Some parcels carry Oak Hill’s city code and some carry Metro RS80 zoning, so two houses in the same subdivision can answer to different governments.
- About 35 parcels inside the city limits, with consolidation and resubdivision plats recorded in 2009, 2010 and 2012.
Inns of Granny White
The 1980s arrival, at the Granny White Pike edge of the city.
- Recorded in the mid 1980s. Metro’s two records for it carry dates that contradict each other within the same plat book, so I will give you the decade and not a day.
- About 48 parcels inside the city limits.
- A 1999 resubdivision tied it together with the neighboring Villa Estates.
- Sits at the Granny White Pike edge rather than the interior, so it reads differently from the estate lots deeper in.
Curtiswood Lane
Not a subdivision, a street, and the most consequential address in the city.
- Forty-nine parcels on Curtiswood Lane, all inside the city, ranging from just under an acre to 10.43 acres.
- The Tennessee Governor’s Residence sits at 882 Curtiswood Lane on 10.43 acres. The house next door at 867 sits on ten.
- Curtiswood Circle spurs off it as a tight ring of roughly one acre lots, a visibly different grain from the two to ten acre parcels on the lane itself.
- That mix is permanent, because Oak Hill’s zoning districts set minimum lot sizes as high as four acres and the city allows no business of any kind inside its limits.
Schools
Metro Nashville Public Schools
Look up an address with the district →
Oak Hill does not run its own school district. Addresses here are served by Metro Nashville Public Schools, and both Glendale Elementary and John Overton High School sit inside the city limits. Assignment follows the address. Metro also runs an application-based choice and magnet process on top of zoned assignment, and the two are not the same thing. Check the address in the district’s 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
The headline is the one nobody publishes: Oak Hill levies no city property tax. You pay the Metro general services rate, $2.782 per hundred of assessed value for the 2025 tax year, and nothing more. The city runs on sales tax, county street aid and permit fees, which is verifiable in its own audited financial statements. That is a genuine and underreported advantage over Belle Meade next door. What you do get is a separate permitting authority: your building permit comes from Oak Hill city hall rather than Metro Codes, and the city collected well over seven hundred thousand dollars in permit fees in a single year, so this is an active and funded codes operation with its own review and inspection timeline. Beyond that, lot size is the whole ballgame. Pull the specific zone before you write an offer that assumes a pool, a guest house or an addition, because the minimum jumps from a quarter acre to four acres across six zones, and all six are single-family only. One item I could not resolve: whether any part of Oak Hill is on septic rather than sewer. In Davidson County septic systems are approved by the health department for a specific bedroom count, and that count is a hard cap. If the house is on septic, that number is worth confirming before you buy it as a five-bedroom.
Common questions
Does Oak Hill charge a city property tax?
No. Oak Hill levies no city property tax. You pay Metro’s general services rate, $2.782 per hundred of assessed value for the 2025 tax year, and that is the whole bill. The city funds itself from sales tax, county street aid and building permit fees, which shows up plainly in its audited statements. Most people assume a satellite city means an extra tax bill, and here it does not.
How big a lot do I need in Oak Hill?
It depends entirely on the zone, and there are six. Zone A starts at 10,000 square feet, zone B at 20,000, and zones C through F run one, two, three and four acres. Neighboring streets can sit in different zones. Before you buy anything on the strength of a plan to add on, I would pull the zone and the bulk standards for that specific parcel.
Who issues building permits in Oak Hill?
The city does, from city hall at 5548 Franklin Pike, not Metro Codes. It is a separate office with its own reviewers, its own inspections and its own timeline. If your contractor is used to working through Metro, tell them early, because the process is genuinely different.
Thinking about Oak Hill?
What are some of your must haves to make it a perfect home for you in this neighborhood?