When a buyer tours a model home in Westhaven, the agent walking them through the kitchen island often works for the builder, not for them. Over the trailing 12 months of MLS-recorded sales, Westhaven Realty, the on-site brokerage built into the community's own sales office, held the listing side on 113 of Westhaven's 313 closed sales. That's more than a third of every home sold in Franklin's single most-searched neighborhood, moved through a listing agent whose paycheck comes from the same company that built the house. It's a detail that never shows up on a price sheet, and it says more about what "buying in Franklin" actually means than the median price ever will.
That median gets quoted constantly, and it disagrees with itself depending on who's doing the quoting. Redfin put Franklin's median sale price at $849,000 over the three months ending in May 2026, up 6.2 percent year over year. Zillow's home value index landed at $928,567 as of the end of June 2026. Resideline's six-month tracking through early August 2026 came in higher still, at $970,000, with the middle half of all Franklin transactions closing anywhere between $700,000 and $1,500,000. None of these sources are wrong. They're measuring different slices of a market that was never one market to begin with, and an $800,000 spread across the middle half of sales is not noise around a single price point. It's five separate products being sold under one city name.
Five Neighborhoods Wearing One Price Tag
Franklin's master-planned communities don't compete with each other so much as serve entirely different reasons for moving. A buyer choosing between them is rarely choosing on price alone. They're choosing which trade-off they're willing to live with.
| Community | Recent price signal | What the price is actually buying |
|---|---|---|
| Westhaven | $1,327,855 median sale price across 313 closings, trailing 12 months | A walkable town center, five community pools, private golf, and a builder-operated sales office |
| Ladd Park | $1,014,412 average asking price across 33 active listings, as of June 22, 2026 | Over 10 miles of trails, direct Harpeth River access, and roughly 240 acres of preserved greenspace |
| Poplar Farms | $829,185 median sale price across 80 closings in the under-$1.5M tier, trailing 12 months | The highest-volume new construction in west Franklin, in the $700K to $1M range |
| McKay's Mill and Fieldstone Farms | $738,684 average asking price across 16 active McKay's Mill listings, as of June 11, 2026 | Established, mature-tree lots and golf-course proximity, the most accessible entry point into a name-brand Franklin community |
| Franklin Ridge | new construction priced from $1,559,995 as of late July 2026 | Half-acre estate lots and up to 4,350 square feet, the newest product in the city |
Look at what's actually different across that table. It isn't just square footage. Westhaven's premium is buying a lifestyle infrastructure: a Town Center with restaurants like Puckett's, Coal Town Public House, Oscar's Taco Shop, Kokomo, and Coal Town Pizza, all within walking distance, plus a resort-style pool complex with an 8,000-square-foot deck and a 119-foot water slide. Ladd Park's buyer is paying a similar dollar amount for something almost opposite: distance from density, a river you can actually paddle, and a trail network that outclasses anything else in the city. Poplar Farms and the McKay's Mill and Fieldstone Farms corridor are selling volume and value, not amenity density. Franklin Ridge is selling newness and acreage at a price point that assumes you've already ruled out the other four.
Berry Farms deserves its own mention, because its listings show the widest range of any community in this comparison. As of mid-July 2026, active listings there included a new-construction three-bedroom at 4009 Forestside Drive priced at $747,850 and an existing three-bedroom at 2049 Oglethorpe Drive priced at $530,000, a gap that shows how differently new and existing inventory price out at comparable square footage in the same neighborhood. The bigger story in Berry Farms right now isn't the range, it's what's being built next door. In-N-Out Burger is constructing its Eastern Territory corporate headquarters, roughly 100,000 square feet, immediately adjacent to Berry Farms, according to local reporting on Williamson County's 2026 development pipeline. A corporate campus of that size next door changes the daily rhythm of a neighborhood in ways that don't show up in a median price until well after the fact.
The question a Franklin buyer should be asking was never "what's the median." It's which of five different products their budget happens to land them in.
The Newest Entrant Is Resetting the Top of the Market
Toll Brothers has opened its Franklin Ridge community for sales, and it's already the highest floor price in this comparison. The community sits near the McEwen interchange on I-65, offering 34 single-family homes on lots as large as half an acre, several with second-level balconies facing Roper's Knob. Floor plans run from four to six bedrooms and up to 4,350 square feet. As of late July 2026, pricing at Franklin Ridge started at $1,559,995. Toll Brothers has also structured its own sales process to cover buyer's agent compensation directly, which removes one common friction point in new construction deals but doesn't eliminate the underlying question every builder-sales-office transaction raises: whose interests does the person across the table actually represent.
That question matters at every price point in this market, not just Franklin Ridge. It's the same dynamic behind Westhaven's 113 builder-side listings. A new construction sale is not automatically a bad deal because the builder controls the listing side. It's a deal where a buyer needs their own independent representation more, not less, because the person selling the house works for the person who built it.
What This Means Depending on Why You're Moving
A relocating executive prioritizing walkability and an active social calendar is not shopping the same market as a developer client looking for land to build a custom estate, even if both have a $1.2 million budget. The first buyer is likely comparing Westhaven against Ladd Park, weighing a Town Center against a trail system. The second buyer is more likely looking at Franklin Ridge or one of College Grove's larger parcels, where the conversation is about acreage and privacy rather than proximity to a pool.
A family upsizing on a tighter number, in the high $600,000s to $800,000s, is shopping McKay's Mill, Fieldstone Farms, and Poplar Farms against each other, and the differences there come down to age of construction and how much of that value is already built into mature landscaping versus how much is still coming online. None of these three buyer profiles are really competing for the same house, even though a national portal will happily report all of them as evidence of "the Franklin market."
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Franklin's housing market still a seller's market in 2026? It depends on the segment. Citywide, Franklin's average days on market rose from 45 to 52 over the three months ending in May 2026, a sign the market has cooled from its hottest years without tipping into buyer's-market territory. Newer, amenity-dense communities like Westhaven still tend to move faster than that citywide average, while established value-tier neighborhoods trade at a more measured pace.
Does a lower price per square foot in Franklin always mean a better value? Not on its own. A lower price per square foot in McKay's Mill or Fieldstone Farms is buying mature trees and an established feel, not fewer amenities than Westhaven. The comparison only makes sense once you decide what you actually want the house to do for your daily life.
Should a buyer use a builder's on-site agent when purchasing new construction in Franklin? A builder's on-site agent represents the builder's interests in the transaction, even when they're personable and helpful throughout the process. Independent representation on the buyer's side exists specifically to balance that structure, and it costs a buyer nothing out of pocket in most new construction deals, since the builder typically funds it as part of the sale.
Franklin's real estate market rewards buyers and sellers who understand which of its five (soon to be more) sub-markets they're actually operating in, not the headline number attached to the whole city. Exceptional Living Group has spent years tracking these distinctions street by street across Williamson County. If you're weighing Westhaven against Ladd Park, watching Franklin Ridge's early pricing, or trying to understand what your specific budget buys in this market, Request a Confidential Consultation and get a read on the numbers that actually apply to you.
