In Franklin, "Walkable" Is Selling You Two Different Neighborhoods

Drive through Berry Farms on a Tuesday at noon and you will find a parking lot half full of company badges. Ramsey Solutions employees grabbing lunch. Aetna staff walking back from Tito's Mexican Restaurant. A line forming at the In-N-Out that opened here in February 2026, right next to the burger chain's new 100,000-square-foot Eastern Territory operations center, its fourth location in Middle Tennessee after Antioch, Lebanon, and Murfreesboro.

Drive through Westhaven at the same hour and the loudest thing you will hear is a golf cart crossing Front Street. The Town Center is quiet until school lets out. The energy belongs to residents, not employees.

Both communities describe themselves as walkable. Both use the language of New Urbanism: front porches, no cul-de-sacs, a village center you can reach on foot. If you are cross-shopping Franklin's two flagship master-planned neighborhoods, that overlapping vocabulary makes them sound like variations on the same idea. They are not. One was built as a residential neighborhood that added retail to serve its own residents. The other was built as an economic development district that added housing to fill in around its offices and retail. The word "walkable" is doing two completely different jobs, and which job it is doing should matter more to your decision than either price tag.

Westhaven Built the Village First

Southern Land Company started Westhaven in 2003 as a Traditional Neighborhood Development, roughly three miles west of downtown Franklin off New Highway 96 in the 37064 zip code, spanning somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 acres depending on how the boundary is measured. The design brief was residential from the first phase: front porches facing sidewalks, garages tucked onto rear alleys, a Publix-anchored Town Center, an 18-hole golf club, a 15,000-square-foot Residents Club, five pools including a lazy river and a 119-foot waterslide, and nine miles of trails. Pearre Creek Elementary School sits inside the neighborhood boundary. There is an active-adult section built around the Astor Club, and an annual Porchfest that turns the sidewalks into a block party.

The commercial square footage in Westhaven exists because 1,200-plus acres of rooftops need a grocery store, a coffee shop, and a few restaurants within walking distance. Retail followed residents. That ordering shows up in the price data. Redfin recorded a median sale price of $1.1 million over the three months ending in September 2025, down 1.3 percent year over year, with price per square foot at $462, up 2.9 percent. Broader trailing 12-month MLS figures through May 2026 put the median closer to $1.33 million to $1.39 million depending on the exact window, with price per square foot running $462 to $495, well above a broader Franklin-wide average near $394. New construction made up 43 percent of Westhaven's trailing 12-month closings through that May 2026 window, at a median around $1.39 million. As of early August 2026, active listings in the neighborhood spanned roughly $900,000 to $5.75 million.

The tradeoff for that residential-first design is highway access. Reaching I-65 from Westhaven means routing through Mack Hatcher Parkway or the Cool Springs corridor, a few extra minutes that buyers accept in exchange for not needing the car most days.

Berry Farms Built the District First

Boyle Investment Company took the opposite approach starting in the 2010s. Berry Farms sits on 600 acres directly at the Interstate 65 and Peytonsville Road interchange, known locally as the Goose Creek Bypass, on Franklin's southern edge. The stated buildout includes more than 3 million square feet of office space and up to 1.8 million square feet of retail. This is not a neighborhood with a corner store bolted on. It is a commercial and office district that added condos, townhomes, and a limited run of single-family lots to keep the sidewalks populated after 5 p.m.

The tenant roster reads like a business park directory: Aetna, Ramsey Solutions, Lee Company, Trexis Insurance, and the headquarters for EMF, the parent company of Christian radio broadcasters K-LOVE and Air1. The In-N-Out that opened in February 2026 at 1951 Double Double Drive did not arrive because residents asked for a burger option. It arrived because the company was already building its regional operations hub next door and needed a restaurant to anchor the site, according to reporting from Hoodline.

Housing here splits into narrow bands by product type. Condos have traded between $401,000 and $585,000, with median pricing up about 12.5 percent over the trailing year as of early 2026. Townhomes run $600,000 to $845,000 on a thin sample of recent sales. Single-family homes span $1.03 million to $1.95 million, though only seven changed hands in the trailing year compared to twelve the year before, a sign that the single-family slice of Berry Farms is a much smaller, slower-moving market than its condo and townhome inventory. Blended across every property type, the community's median sale price sat near $710,000 as of early 2026, a full half million dollars below Westhaven's, even though the two communities share overlapping upper price bands in single-family product.

The tradeoff runs in reverse here. Berry Farms sits directly on the interstate interchange, arguably faster to I-65 than Westhaven despite carrying the same "walkable" branding. What you trade for that convenience is daytime density that comes from office workers and drive-thru traffic rather than neighbors.

What Each Community Actually Trades You

The HOA Bill Reflects the Same Split

Because Westhaven is large enough to require multiple associations, buyers can end up paying into both a master association that covers community-wide amenities and a neighborhood or sub-association that covers a smaller cluster of homes. The total is rarely printed as one number on a listing sheet, which means the fee a buyer sees during a showing may not be the fee they pay after closing. Confirming whether a specific address falls under one association or two is worth doing before writing an offer, not after.

Berry Farms keeps its structure simpler on paper, with dues running $272 to $408 a month depending on property type. Condo owners pay toward the higher end because that fee includes exterior building maintenance. Single-family owners pay less because their fee mostly covers lawn care and common-area upkeep. The number is more legible, but it is funding a fundamentally different kind of shared space: sidewalks that connect residential blocks to office towers and a retail spine, rather than a golf course and a resident-only club.

Schools Overlap More Than the Branding Suggests

Despite the different product each community sells, they are not zoned into entirely separate school worlds. Berry Farms feeds Oak View Elementary, Legacy Middle School, and Independence High School. Westhaven's high school zoning varies by section, with some addresses feeding Independence and others feeding Franklin High School, which means two buyers who both toured Westhaven last weekend could end up with different high schools depending on which street they chose. Anyone weighing either community should confirm the specific zoning for a given address directly with Williamson County Schools rather than relying on the neighborhood's general reputation.

Before You Choose One Over the Other

• If your priority is a quiet evening walk, a golf membership, and a Town Center that empties out by early evening, Westhaven's residential-first design is built for that.
• If your priority is faster highway access and you do not mind sharing sidewalks with office workers and a drive-thru during the day, Berry Farms delivers convenience Westhaven's longer drive to I-65 does not.
• If you are budget-constrained and want a walkable Franklin address for under $600,000, Berry Farms' condo and townhome tiers are the more realistic entry point. Westhaven's floor sits closer to $900,000 in current active inventory.
• If you want a single-family home in the $1 million to $2 million range, both communities technically compete for that buyer, but Berry Farms has far fewer single-family sales to compare against, which makes pricing a specific home there a thinner exercise than it is in Westhaven's deeper comp set.

A Few Questions Worth Asking

Do Westhaven and Berry Farms share any schools? Yes. Independence High School draws students from parts of both communities, even though the neighborhoods themselves serve very different daily rhythms.

Is Berry Farms noisier than Westhaven? The two communities have different daytime activity patterns by design. Berry Farms sits next to office campuses and a drive-thru restaurant, so weekday foot and vehicle traffic differs from a purely residential Town Center. Anyone sensitive to that difference should visit both at midday and again in the evening before deciding.

Which community holds its value better? There is not enough long-run public data to declare a winner, and the comparison may be the wrong one to make. These two communities rarely compete for the same buyer. A relocating executive weighing walkability against a golf membership is shopping Westhaven against a different set of neighborhoods entirely, while a buyer prioritizing highway access and a lower entry price is shopping Berry Farms against its own set of alternatives. Judge each against what you would actually buy instead, not against each other.

Franklin's master-planned communities keep reusing the same marketing vocabulary, but the buildings underneath tell a more specific story about who each one was built for. If you are trying to figure out which version of "walkable" actually fits how you want to live, Janelle Waggener can walk both comp sets with you and help you read past the branding to the number that matters for your situation. Let's connect and start your Franklin search.