A buyer closed on a new home at Fairington in Nolensville last year. The HOA line on the closing statement was clear enough: $250 a month, plus a one-time transfer fee just over $3,000. What wasn't as clear from the sales trailer conversation was that the clubhouse, pool, and fitness studios those dues are meant to support hadn't been built yet. Site work on Fairington Club, the amenity center at the heart of Southern Land Company's 373-acre master plan, didn't break ground until early 2026, and it isn't projected to open until 2027. A buyer moving in this year is paying today for something they may not use for another year or more.
That gap between the dues check and the ribbon cutting is the detail worth understanding before you sign anything in Nolensville's new-construction market. It isn't a red flag. It's how master-planned communities work in their early phases, and it plays out differently at every builder currently active in town. Once you see the pattern, comparing communities gets a lot easier, because the number that matters isn't just the monthly fee. It's what stage of construction that fee is buying into.
What $250 a Month Is Actually Funding This Year
Southern Land Company's Fairington is the largest and most visible new-build community in Nolensville right now, with more than 700 homes planned across single-family lots, townhomes, and bungalows once it's finished. Sales opened in 2025, and homeowners started moving in not long after. The HOA structure is a flat $250 per month, covering maintenance of the neighborhood's green spaces and trails now, and the amenity package later: a 10,000-plus-square-foot clubhouse split across two buildings, a separate pool structure with a water slide, tennis and pickleball courts, a basketball court, fire pits, and a dog park, all sitting on more than four acres. Choate Construction is the general contractor, and Southern Land Company has said the club is scheduled to open in 2027.
Compare that to what's happening a few miles away. Willow Ridge, built under PulteGroup's John Wieland Homes brand, takes the opposite approach: a 42-acre, lower-density community with 44 homes on lots as large as 1.1 acres. It reads as a boutique alternative to Fairington's scale, and its dues structure reflects a smaller shared footprint rather than a resort-style amenity buildout still under construction.
Then there's Sagebrook, Toll Brothers' first Nolensville community, planned for just 26 single-family lots on Clovercroft Road less than a mile from downtown. As of this writing, the community's own materials note no HOA fee at all, though that's worth confirming again once the community actually opens for sale, which Toll Brothers has said will happen this fall. Home prices there are expected to start in the $1.3 million range for floor plans running up to nearly 4,900 square feet.
| Community | Builder | Scale | HOA Now | What It's Funding | Sales Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fairington | Southern Land Company | 373 acres, 700+ homes planned | $250/month flat, plus one-time transfer fee at closing | Green space and trails now; clubhouse, pool, courts projected 2027 | Open, homes closing since 2025 |
| Willow Ridge | PulteGroup / John Wieland Homes | 42 acres, 44 homes | Lower, tied to smaller shared footprint | Neighborhood upkeep on a boutique scale | Open |
| Sagebrook | Toll Brothers | 26 lots | None noted as of early 2026 | Not yet applicable | Opening fall 2026 |
The takeaway isn't that one structure is better than another. It's that the fee you see quoted on day one tells you almost nothing about what you'll actually be able to use on day one.
The Builder Behind the Name Changes the Math
Part of why these communities feel so different from each other comes down to how each builder operates. Southern Land Company runs a vertically integrated model in Fairington: its own architecture team designs the homes, its own homebuilding division, SLC Homes, builds them, and its own landscape architecture team handles the grounds. That's the same playbook the company used at Westhaven in Franklin, a community now twenty-plus years into its build-out with a fully operational Residents Club, five pools, nine miles of finished trails, a championship golf course, and its own grocery store. Fairington is meant to follow that same arc. It just hasn't caught up yet.
Toll Brothers, by contrast, is leaning on its Design Studio model at Sagebrook, where buyers choose from four floor plans and three exterior elevation styles and work with design consultants to personalize finishes before the home is built. It's a smaller, more curated release, 26 lots total, which changes the calculus entirely. A buyer at Sagebrook isn't weighing years of amenity buildout. They're weighing whether they can get into one of a genuinely limited number of homes before the community sells out.
Willow Ridge splits the difference. Larger lots, fewer homes, and a builder pedigree, John Wieland Homes, that's built a reputation in Nashville on more custom-feeling execution rather than resort-scale amenity packages. None of these approaches is wrong. They're just different bets on what a buyer actually wants from a new-construction purchase in Nolensville right now.
Why the Median Price Gap Isn't About Craftsmanship
Trailing twenty-four-month closed sale data through early July 2026 puts Fairington's median sale price at roughly $920,000, well below Westhaven's median in the $1.39 million range. It's tempting to read that gap as a quality difference. It isn't. Both communities come from the same developer with the same design team and the same homebuilding division. The gap is almost entirely about maturity. Westhaven buyers are paying for two decades of finished infrastructure, established resale comps, and amenities that have been open and in daily use for years. Fairington buyers are paying less because they're buying earlier in that same story, before most of the amenity package exists and before the surrounding retail, including the planned 15,000-square-foot Village Commons next to the clubhouse, has opened.
That distinction matters for how you think about value. A lower price at Fairington isn't a discount on the house. It's compensation for taking on construction-phase uncertainty that a Westhaven buyer no longer has to think about. Zip-code-wide, Nolensville's broader market has been moving fast too. Over the three months ending in May 2026, homes in the 37135 zip code sold at a median price up more than 30 percent year over year, though the average time on market also stretched to roughly 94 days, compared with 56 days the year before. Read together, that's a market where price growth and slower absorption are both happening at once, which tracks with a wave of new inventory across several master-planned communities landing in the same window.
Before You Sign: Four Questions Worth Asking at the Sales Trailer
If you're seriously comparing new construction in Nolensville, a few questions will tell you more than any brochure.
- What exactly is my HOA fee funding this year, separate from what it will fund once the amenity center opens?
- Is there a one-time transfer or initiation fee at closing, and how much is it, on top of the monthly dues?
- What is the actual projected completion date for any amenity still under construction, and is that date coming from the builder or from a third party?
- How does this community's HOA structure compare to a more established one nearby, not just in dollar amount but in what's currently open and usable?
None of these questions require confrontation. Builders and their sales teams answer them routinely. The point is to ask before you're emotionally attached to a floor plan, not after.
A Few Common Questions
Is it a bad sign that Fairington's amenities aren't finished yet? No. Large master-planned communities almost always sell homes well ahead of finishing shared amenities. It's a normal sequencing issue, not evidence of a problem with the builder or the community.
Does a lower HOA fee always mean less value? Not necessarily. Sagebrook's early no-fee status reflects a community that hasn't opened for sale yet, not a permanent policy, and a lower fee at a lower-density community like Willow Ridge can simply mean a smaller shared footprint to maintain.
Should I wait for the amenities to open before buying? That depends on what you're optimizing for. Buying earlier in a community's life cycle often means a lower price relative to what a mature version of that same community eventually commands, in exchange for living through the construction period. Buying later means paying more for certainty.
Nolensville's new-construction market rewards buyers who read past the sales brochure, and the difference between one community and the next often comes down to details like these rather than square footage or countertop finishes. If you're weighing Fairington against Willow Ridge or Sagebrook, or trying to figure out what a specific HOA structure actually means for your closing costs and your first year of ownership, Jackie Roth Karr can walk through the current contracts side by side with you. Let's Connect before you sign anything.
