Buying Land in Fayette County, Tennessee

Zoning, subdivision rules, and a formal growth plan

Fayette County has adopted a countywide zoning resolution -- a 2017 version is posted directly on the county's own website -- along with a separate subdivision and land development ordinance governing how raw land can be divided, both administered through the county's Planning and Development department. That places Fayette in the zoned half of Tennessee's counties described on our state page. Beyond zoning itself, Fayette County has also adopted a formal growth plan under Tennessee's Public Chapter 1101, the 1998 state law that requires counties and their municipalities to jointly designate urban growth boundaries, planned growth areas, and rural areas -- a framework specifically meant to manage exactly the kind of Memphis-driven exurban expansion Fayette County has experienced.

For a land buyer, that combination means checking more than just the zoning district for a specific parcel: ask whether the parcel sits inside a designated urban growth boundary or planned growth area under the county's growth plan, since that designation shapes expectations for future infrastructure extension, likely annexation by a nearby town, and the pace of nearby development -- information that's just as relevant to a long-term land-value outlook as the zoning district itself.

A Memphis-metro exurb, with real growth pressure

Fayette County sits within the Memphis, TN-MS-AR Metropolitan Statistical Area and has functioned for years as one of the fastest-growing exurban counties on Memphis's eastern edge, as development that once stopped at the Shelby County line has increasingly pushed further out. That growth is real but uneven across the county: land closer to Shelby County and the county's more developed western towns has seen considerably more subdivision activity and price appreciation than Fayette's more rural, still largely agricultural eastern and southern reaches near Somerville and beyond. A buyer should treat 'Fayette County land' as covering two genuinely different markets depending on which end of the county a parcel sits in, and should confirm current zoning, growth-plan designation, and any pending rezoning activity specifically for that location rather than generalizing from the county as a whole.

A concrete, recent example of that pressure in action: in March 2024, Fayette County commissioners conditionally approved, by a 3-2 vote, a rezoning of 41.10 acres from agricultural-residential to single-family residential fronting Kenwood and Longview roads in northern Fayette County, to develop a subdivision capped at no more than 29 homes (with the developer indicating an expectation of building fewer). Rezoning requests like this one must comply with the county's Future Land Use Map and Comprehensive Plan, per the Planning and Development Director -- worth asking about directly if you're evaluating land anywhere near a similar agricultural-to-residential conversion, since a close 3-2 vote suggests these decisions aren't automatic even in a fast-growing part of the county.

Tent City: a genuine civil-rights and land-tenure story

Fayette County holds a distinctive and well-documented place in civil-rights history that's directly tied to land and tenancy. Beginning in 1959, local activist John McFerren and others led a grassroots voter-registration drive among the county's largely Black sharecropper population -- and as those sharecroppers registered to vote, many were evicted from the white-owned farms where they lived and worked. In response, Black landowners Shepard Towles and Gertrude Beasley offered space on their own farms for evicted families to live in Army-surplus tents, giving rise to what became known as Tent City; families lived in these tent encampments from December 1959 until April 1963. The University of Memphis maintains a dedicated archival project on the movement, and the episode is documented as well by BlackPast.org, culminating in a July 26, 1962 federal court ruling (U.S. District Judge Robert McRae) permanently enjoining the landowners responsible for the evictions from interfering with residents' voting rights.

This history isn't a zoning or permitting matter for a present-day land buyer, but it's genuine, well-documented local history worth knowing -- both as an important piece of the county's identity and as a reminder that land tenure, tenancy, and ownership in Fayette County carry real historical weight tied to the civil rights movement, distinct from the standard due-diligence checklist for any given parcel today.

Septic and the rest of the state framework

Septic permitting in Fayette County runs through the Fayette County Health Department in Somerville (90 Yum Yum Road, 901-465-5243) under the statewide TDEC Rule 0400-48-01 standard described on our Tennessee page. Confirm current processing times and site-specific requirements directly with that office, and as elsewhere in Tennessee, expect an established agricultural operation in the county's more rural areas to carry the Right to Farm Act's one-year nuisance-suit presumption.