Say you are choosing between a porch-front house two blocks off the Public Square and a new build in Westhaven with a warranty still stapled to the cabinet door. Most buyers treat this as a choice about square footage, commute, or how much yard they want to mow. It is actually a choice about who gets final say over your own front door after you close.
In Downtown Franklin, that authority sits with a public body: the city's Historic Zoning Commission. In Westhaven, it sits with a private one: the community's Architectural Review Committee. Both will tell you no at some point. But they answer to different rules, different appeal paths, and different price tags for saying yes. That distinction, not the number on the listing, is the one worth understanding before you write an offer.
Two Boards, Two Rulebooks
Franklin's historic core is not one district but five, recognized on the National Register: the Franklin Historic District, Hincheyville, Lewisburg Avenue, Adams Street, and Natchez Street, together covering more than 1,060 buildings. Any exterior change or demolition inside those boundaries goes through the Historic Zoning Commission, which weighs the request against adopted design guidelines, the city's zoning ordinance, and the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation before issuing what the city calls a Certificate of Appropriateness. If you are planning work in the overlay, the city's own contact for that conversation is Emily Huffer, the Preservation Planner, reachable at 615-550-6795. That is a public meeting, a public record, and a public standard.
Westhaven runs on a different track entirely. Exterior changes there go through the community's own Architectural Review Committee, governed not by a city ordinance but by the neighborhood's CC&Rs and design guidelines. It moves faster in most cases, because it is not weighing national historic preservation standards, only internal consistency with what Southern Land Company built starting in 2003. But it is a private contract you agreed to at closing, not a public process you can appeal to an elected body.
Neither system is better. They are simply different bets on how much control you are willing to trade, and to whom.
What the Public Board Actually Costs You
The city rewrote its entire zoning ordinance this year, effective January 13, 2026, with a full chapter dedicated to historic resources and the review bodies that enforce them. Alongside that, Franklin finished a rewrite of its Historic District Design Guidelines, aimed at making a genuinely technical document easier for an ordinary homeowner to read before hiring a contractor. That is a meaningful signal: the rules that govern half of Franklin's most photographed streets just changed, and the fine print is worth reading before you assume your renovation plan will sail through unchanged from what a neighbor did five years ago.
The practical cost shows up in three places. First, timeline: any exterior work needs Certificate of Appropriateness review before a permit is issued, which adds a step (and a meeting cycle) that a subdivision renovation does not require. Second, financing: older homes purchased with renovation dollars attached typically use FHA 203(k) or Fannie Mae HomeStyle loans, both of which add contractor documentation, an appraisal based on the completed project rather than the current one, and draw inspections as work progresses. That is not a paperwork inconvenience so much as a closing timeline that runs longer than a conventional purchase. Third, if the home predates 1978, any work disturbing painted surfaces falls under the EPA's Renovation, Repair, and Painting rule, which governs how lead paint is handled and adds real cost to what looks like a simple trim replacement.
The Tax Break Most Buyers Assume Exists
Buyers frequently assume a historic Franklin home comes with a federal tax credit for restoration work. It does not, unless the property produces income. The 20 percent federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit applies to certified historic buildings used for income-producing purposes. An owner-occupied single-family home in one of Franklin's five historic districts does not qualify, no matter how carefully the renovation follows the Secretary of the Interior's Standards.
That single fact changes the math on a lot of "charming fixer" conversations. The Tennessee Historical Commission is the right first call if you are exploring incentives, but the assumption that historic status pays you back at tax time is the single most common misunderstanding buyers carry into these purchases.
What the Private Board Actually Costs You
Westhaven's HOA fee structure is tiered, running roughly $107 to $800 or more a month depending on section and home type, with maintenance-free and active-adult sections priced higher to cover exterior upkeep. On top of that, every purchase carries a one-time capital transfer fee of 0.3 percent of the sales price, paid at closing, funding long-term infrastructure. Those dues buy real things: the 15,000-square-foot Residents Club, the Skube Swim Center, the Great Lawn's concert and movie programming, walking trails, and a working village center.
What the dues do not buy is golf.
The HOA fee covers pools, trails, fitness, and the Residents Club. It does not cover Westhaven Golf Club, the 18-hole Arthur Hills course that opened in 2010. Membership there requires a separate initiation fee starting around $50,000, plus annual dues near $5,000, billed independently of anything on your closing disclosure.
That is the line item buyers miss when a listing photo shows a fairway. The course exists inside the community. The right to play it is a separate transaction entirely.
Three Numbers Wearing One Median
Ask three different sources what a home costs "in Franklin" right now and you will get three different answers, and the gap is not really about the market moving fast. It is about what each source is counting. For the three months ending June 2026, one widely cited dataset put Franklin's citywide median sale price at $864,000, up 5.3 percent year over year. A separate tracker measuring the trailing six months through August 2026 put the citywide median closer to $970,000. Neither number is wrong. They are measuring different windows and different mixes of what happened to close.
Neither number, though, tells you much about either end of the market this piece is actually about. Recent MLS data placed Westhaven's median sale price near $1.33 million in mid-2026, a clear premium over the citywide figure. Over roughly the same period, the historic core immediately around the Public Square carried a trailing twelve-month median closer to $675,000, reflecting smaller in-town lots and older housing stock rather than weaker demand. The citywide median is real, but it is an average of two neighborhoods that do not behave like each other, priced by two boards that do not answer to each other.
So Which Fork Should You Take
If predictability of process matters more to you than speed, the historic core is not a harder path, it is a differently documented one. Every decision the Historic Zoning Commission makes is a public record, reviewed against a written standard, with a preservation planner you can call before you submit anything. If speed and amenity access matter more than heritage, Westhaven's private review moves faster, but budget the golf initiation and the capital transfer fee as real numbers, not incidental fine print, before you fall in love with the fairway view.
Either way, the number that should drive your decision is not the citywide median. It is the one attached to the specific street, the specific board, and the specific renovation you actually plan to make.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does buying a historic home in Franklin come with a tax credit for restoration work? Only if the property is income-producing. The federal 20 percent Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit does not apply to an owner-occupied single-family home, even one that meets every standard the Historic Zoning Commission requires.
Who do I contact before starting exterior work on a historic Franklin property? The city's Preservation Planner, Emily Huffer, at 615-550-6795, is the first call. Any exterior alteration or demolition inside one of Franklin's five historic districts requires review against the city's design guidelines before a permit is issued.
Are HOA dues the same for every home in Westhaven? No. Dues are tiered by section and home type, running roughly $107 to $800 or more monthly, with maintenance-free and active-adult sections priced higher. Golf club membership is billed entirely separately from HOA dues.
Whichever fork fits your plans, the details above are the kind that only surface once you are under contract, which is exactly when you want them already answered. The Starling Davis Group works both sides of this market regularly and can walk you through what a specific address in Franklin actually requires before you make an offer. Buy a Home / Sell a Home.
