Fairfield Glade against Tellico Village

Tellico Village costs more every month. Fairfield Glade costs more on the day you buy. Tellico Village sits about half an hour from Knoxville on a lake. Fairfield Glade sits about an hour and a half away, two thousand feet up on the Cumberland Plateau. The houses at Fairfield Glade are materially cheaper.

Demographically the two places are near twins. Median age 71.1 at Fairfield Glade and 70.8 at Tellico Village. 5 6 People choosing between them are choosing between a lake and a plateau, and between a bigger monthly bill and a bigger entry fee.

Assessment and fee figures: Fairfield Glade from its 2026 budget, Tellico Village from its own 2026 budget adoption slides. 1 2 Home values and median ages are American Community Survey five-year estimates. 5 6 Elevations from the United States Geological Survey. 17 Distances explained in section eight.

One caveat that matters. The Fairfield Glade figure is the rate for homes with sewer and trash service. The Tellico Village figure is levied per lot or living unit. They are close enough to compare and not quite the same object.

Asking prices tell a similar story to census values. The median single-family sale price in the Tellico Village postal code was $634,750 in June 2026, across 68 sales, with homes going at 99.6% of asking. 16 No comparable sale-price figure for Fairfield Glade could be pinned to a source worth citing, so none is printed here.

Fairfield Glade is the larger footprint and the larger population: more than 14,000 acres, around 5,600 homes, roughly 9,400 residents, and 120 miles of roads. 3 It has five eighteen-hole golf courses, eleven lakes and two marinas. 18 The 2024 census estimate puts the population at 9,487, with 68.5% of residents aged 65 or over. 5

Tellico Village is denser and smaller: about 6,816 lots across roughly 4,800 acres, spanning Loudon and Monroe counties, with about 770 lots in the Kahite neighborhood on the Monroe side. 4 Population is around 7,414. 6 Three golf courses. Its defining feature is water: the community is built along Tellico Lake.

Both are unincorporated. Neither has a municipal government, so neither pays a city property tax, and in both cases the association is the body that sets what you pay. 12

For 2026, Tellico Village charges $186.98 a month, or $2,243.76 across the year. That was a 3% increase, adopted by the board on November 19, 2025. 1 Fairfield Glade charges $137 a month, or $1,644 a year, after a $17 increase.

The difference is $49.98 a month, or $599.76 a year, in Fairfield Glade's favor. Hold onto that figure. It is about to be spent.

For scale: Tellico Village budgeted $15.5 million of assessment revenue for 2026 across 6,915 assessment-paying properties, which is 35% of its $43.5 million total revenue. 2

This is where the comparison turns. Fairfield Glade charges a one-time amenity reserve fee at closing, raised from $5,000 to $6,000 in its 2026 budget. Tellico Village charges nothing equivalent.

Not because it chose not to. Tennessee law makes transfer fee covenants unenforceable, and the Tellico Village association has twice gone to the legislature for permission to charge one. A 2023 bill would have required a $2,500 payment from buyers; it died in committee after residents characterized it as an exit tax. 8 7 A revised proposal for a flat $5,000 reserve funding fee was announced in December 2024 for the following legislative session.

So the absence of a fee at Tellico Village is a legal fact rather than a philosophical one, and it is a fact the association has been actively trying to change. A buyer should treat it as a current condition, not a permanent feature.

Tellico Village publishes its budget adoption slides publicly each November, which is why four years of its history can be set out here. 1 9 10

Three years of increases at 5%, 3% and 3%. The board's own guidance for 2026 capped rate and assessment increases at 3% without a supporting business case, and the adopted budget met that target. 2

Fairfield Glade's 2026 increase was $17 a month on a $120 base, which is a little over 14% in one year. That single figure is the sharpest contrast on this page. It also has a specific cause, set out on the Wyndham exit page: a partner worth about 11% of Community Club revenue left, and the budget had to absorb it in one year rather than three.

A steadier record is not automatically the better one, and one bad year is not a trend. But if you are trying to forecast what you will be paying in 2031, four years of 3% is a more useful thing to extrapolate from than two years, one of which was a shock.

Tellico Village also levied an $80 per month water and sewer infrastructure fee from September 2024, then suspended it from July 1, 2025. 11 That is worth knowing, because it shows the association is willing to add a separate line when infrastructure needs money, and willing to take it off again.

At Tellico Village, golf is not included in the assessment. It is a separate optional fee. For 2026, an individual taking the fully unlimited package with an association cart pays $5,295 for the year, up from $4,944 in 2025. A two-person household on the same terms pays $7,925. 2

Those are large numbers next to a $2,243.76 assessment, and they are the reason a headline comparison of monthly dues can mislead badly. A golfing couple at Tellico Village is looking at roughly $10,000 a year before property tax, utilities or insurance.

The equivalent Fairfield Glade figures are not published here, because this site has not yet sourced them. That gap is the single most important thing missing from this comparison, and pretending otherwise would make the page worse than useless to a golfer.

Cumberland County levies $1.1350 per $100 of assessed value, unchanged across 2024 and 2025. Loudon County levied $1.7683 outside Lenoir City across the same two years, and Monroe County, which contains the Kahite neighborhood, levied $1.5228. 12

Read straight, that says Loudon County taxes property at more than half again the Cumberland rate. Do not read it straight.

2026 is a reappraisal year in Loudon County, and the average property there is worth about 70% more than it was five years earlier. 14 When values jump, the rate is reset downward: the certified 2026 rate for Loudon County outside Lenoir City is $1.1034. 13 Cumberland County's next revaluation is 2027, so its rate is sitting on older values.

Comparing two counties in different years of their reappraisal cycles tells you very little. What tells you something is the actual bill on the actual house. In Tennessee, residential property is assessed at 25% of appraised value, so the arithmetic is the appraised value, times 0.25, times the rate, divided by 100. 12 Ask the county for the current bill on the specific address before you make anything of the headline rates.

On sales tax, Cumberland County's combined rate is 9.75%, being 7% state and 2.75% county, with no additional municipal rate in Crossville. 15 The equivalent Loudon County figure is not published here: the secondary sources contradict each other, and this is not a number worth guessing at.

Tellico Village lies about 35.8 miles from downtown Knoxville, roughly 51 minutes with mid-day traffic, and about 26.6 miles from McGhee Tyson Airport, roughly 34 minutes. 20 Fairfield Glade is 73.7 miles from downtown Knoxville and about an hour and a half in free-flowing conditions, and 10.2 miles from Crossville, its county seat, at about 20 minutes. 19

The two sets of drive times were measured by different methods, one with live traffic and one in free-flow conditions, so treat the minutes as indicative. The mileages are directly comparable, and the gap between 36 miles and 74 miles is not something a measurement method can close.

Elevation is the other real difference. Fairfield Glade sits at about 2,086 feet on the Cumberland Plateau, and the Community Club describes it as two thousand feet above sea level. 17 18 Tellico Village sits at about 892 feet. 17 Twelve hundred feet of elevation is the difference between two quite different winters, and a plateau winter is the part of the Fairfield Glade picture that ranking listicles most consistently leave out. Visit in February before you decide anything.

The nearest hospital to Tellico Village is Covenant Health Fort Loudoun in Lenoir City, about 11.6 miles away, a 50-bed facility with 12 emergency suites and an Advanced Primary Stroke Center designation. 21 20 It does not provide maternity or obstetric services. 22

Cumberland Medical Center in Crossville, roughly 10 miles from Fairfield Glade, is full-service and does provide maternity. 23 19 For a retirement-age buyer that specific service is unlikely to matter personally. It matters as a signal of what a hospital can sustain.

The bigger difference is what sits beyond the local hospital. From Tellico Village, Knoxville and its major medical centers are about 36 miles away. From Fairfield Glade, cardiology and orthopedics generally mean the drive to Knoxville or Cookeville. 25

Cumberland County figures from its 2025 community health needs assessment. 25 Loudon County figures from County Health Rankings, 2025 release. 24 The two sets come from different compilations, so read them as the right order of magnitude rather than as decimal-exact rivals.

Cumberland County does better on primary care. Loudon County does better on mental health and dental, and the mental health gap is substantial. Neither county is well supplied by national standards. The healthcare page covers the Cumberland County picture in full , including a rumor about the hospital closing that is not true.

This is the part almost nobody compares, and it is the part that decides whether you get a surprise bill in year seven.

Tellico Village publishes a reserve study. The 2026 study reports a starting reserve balance of $18.44 million against a fully funded level of $23.9 million, which is 77% funded, with $4.64 million in annual contributions held flat for fifteen years and no special assessments projected across its thirty-year horizon. 26 The association's own budget names failure to adequately fund reserves as its first-listed risk. 2

A special assessment at Tellico Village requires the assent of a majority of members voting at a meeting called for that purpose, under Article X of its declaration. 27 That is a meaningful protection, and it is written into the governing document rather than left to board practice.

The 2026 Tellico Village budget was not adopted unanimously. Two directors did not vote for the capital project and operating expense portions. 28 Fairfield Glade's 2026 budget was approved unanimously. Read that either way you like: consensus, or an absence of argument.

On member engagement, the Fairfield Glade board election in September 2025 drew 49.4% of eligible property owners, casting 6,765 ballots. 29 That is a high turnout for an association election, and it says something encouraging about the place.

Tellico Village suits a household that wants water rather than altitude, wants Knoxville and a major airport inside an hour, expects to stay less than a decade, or wants an association with a longer public record of small, predictable increases. It costs more every month and asks for nothing on the way in.

Fairfield Glade suits a household buying at a lower price point, planning to stay a long time, and willing to absorb $6,000 at closing to get a lower recurring bill. It is the larger community with more golf and more lakes, and it is further from everything.

Nobody should decide this on the strength of one page. The honest recommendation is the boring one: rent in each for a season, one of them in winter, and ask both associations the same list of questions. That list is here, and it is written to be printed and carried into a meeting.