Fairfield Glade

Fairfield Glade is governed by the Fairfield Glade Community Club, and the Club charges its members an assessment. That assessment, plus a one-time fee the buyer pays at closing, is the part of the cost of living here that has nothing to do with your mortgage and does not appear in a listing price. 1 2

• Community Club assessment, monthly $137 Homes with sewer and trash service, 2026. Up $17 from 2025.
• The same assessment across a year $1,644
• Amenity reserve fee, once, at closing $6,000 Paid by the buyer. Raised from $5,000 in the 2026 budget.
• Tennessee state income tax None A real and permanent advantage for a retired household.
• Cumberland County property tax $1.1350 per $100 Of assessed value. Tennessee assesses homes at 25% of appraised value, so a $350,000 house works out at roughly $993 a year.
• Combined sales tax 9.75% 7% state plus 2.75% county. Crossville adds nothing on top. This is where some of the income-tax advantage goes back.
• Average rent in Crossville $848 a month July 2025 data, after a rise of 8.2% over one year. Useful if you plan to rent before you buy.

The two tax lines come from the state, not from the Club: the property rate from the Tennessee Comptroller's annual tax report, 7 the sales rate from the state's published local rate schedule. 8 Ask the county assessor for the bill on a specific address before you rely on the arithmetic above; a rate is not a bill.

The rent figure is there for one reason: renting a season before you commit is the single best piece of advice anyone gives about moving to a retirement destination, and it helps to know roughly what that costs. 5

For scale: Fairfield Glade covers more than 14,000 acres, with about 5,600 homes, roughly about 9,400 residents and 120 miles of roads. 9 Downtown Knoxville is 73.7 miles away, about an hour and a half when the road is clear. 10

Those are the figures this site can source today. Several important ones are still missing, and they are listed plainly at the foot of this page rather than estimated.

In 2025 Wyndham and eight timeshare associations left, removing $2.55 million a year from Community Club revenue, roughly 11% of the total. 3 The 2026 budget, approved unanimously on December 1, 2025, answered that with a higher monthly assessment, a higher fee at closing, and the end of the member discount at Club food and beverage outlets. 2

This is the single most useful thing to understand before buying here, because it tells you something the current figure alone does not: where the money comes from, and what happens when a source of it goes away. The full account runs through the timeline and the board's reasoning.

Fairfield Glade sits inside Cumberland County, and the county is older than almost anywhere else in Tennessee. That shapes everything from how long it takes to get a dental appointment to who is available to staff a restaurant on a Tuesday.

• Cumberland County population 64,480
• Median age, county 54 Tennessee is 40.3. The United States is 39.1.
• Median age, Fairfield Glade census tracts 67 to 73
• Share of county residents aged 65 and over 34.8% Around 18% nationally.
• Median household income, county $60,632 The national figure is $75,149.

There are effectively two populations sharing one county: a comfortable retired third, and a lower-wage service workforce that keeps the county running. Poverty stands at 14.6%, and a further 29% of households are above the poverty line yet cannot reliably afford basics. 4

This is not a moral point. It is a practical one, and it shows up as staffing, wait times, and how much of local life runs on volunteers. If you move here, some of those volunteers will be your neighbors, and eventually one of them will be you.

Cumberland Medical Center is open and full-service, including maternity. Any claim that it is closing is false. What is true is thinner and less dramatic: the county is a federally designated shortage area for primary care, mental health and dental care, there are 2,762 residents for every dentist, and cardiology and orthopedics generally mean a drive to Knoxville or Cookeville. 4

The healthcare page sets out the whole picture , including the county EMS funding dispute and a short list of things worth checking before you move rather than after.

Four findings from the county's own 2025 health needs assessment, without commentary.

• 36% of adults report loneliness, against 33% nationally. A gated community with a full activity calendar is not automatically protection against this, particularly after a spouse dies or stops driving.
• Reliable, affordable transportation scored 1.29 out of 5 in the county's community survey, one of the worst-rated items on it. Book-ahead weekday rides exist, and residents rate them inadequate.
• Food insecurity runs at 16%, above the 14% recorded nationally and statewide, in a county widely described as a retirement paradise. Focus groups recorded residents choosing between medication, food and utilities.
• County EMS ran a $2.2 million loss in fiscal 2024-25, and how ambulance service gets funded here is unresolved. 6

4 None of this makes Fairfield Glade a bad place to live. A great many people are happy here, including roughly about 2,000 veterans. It does mean the brochure version is incomplete in predictable directions, and the incompleteness always runs the same way.

The honest version is that Fairfield Glade suits a household that wants amenities, has the income to absorb an association that can raise its assessment, drives comfortably, and does not need frequent specialist care. It suits people who will join things.

It suits less well a household on a fixed income with no slack, one where a specialist appointment happens monthly, or one where driving is already becoming a question. Those are not reasons not to come. They are reasons to plan first, and the planning is the part people skip.

Rather than estimate, the gaps are marked. Each one is a question worth putting to the Club, a realtor or the county directly, and each will be filled here as it is sourced.