Mahoney Knows Homes: Kingston Springs Has a Million-Dollar Problem

If you’ve looked at homes for sale around Kingston Springs lately, you may have noticed something unusual: there are a lot of million-dollar homes on the market.

Right now, roughly six homes are listed for more than $1 million in a town of about 2,700 people, where the median listing price still sits around $574,000.

At first glance, that seems a little alarming.

Naturally, I was curious to find answers and ran the numbers.

Over the past 12 months, seven homes have actually sold for more than $1 million in Kingston Springs. Combined, those sales totaled $13,782,000, averaging just under $2 million each. The highest sale closed at $3.75 million.

For a town the size of Kingston Springs, seven million-dollar sales in a year is significant. There is clearly a market for these properties.

But homes listed for over a million and homes actually selling for those prices are two different things.

So, Are They Actually Selling?

With roughly six million-dollar homes currently for sale and seven sales over the past year, we are sitting at around 10 months of inventory in that price range.

As a whole, Kingston Springs is currently sitting at just under five months of inventory, tracking with the rest of Middle TN. 

Generally speaking, somewhere around five to six months is considered a balanced market.

So yes, Kingston Springs has a lot of expensive homes for sale. But the million-dollar market isn’t completely disconnected from what is happening everywhere else. Homes are taking longer to sell, buyers have more choices, and sellers are competing harder for those buyers.

The higher the price, the smaller the pool of potential buyers becomes. Those buyers also tend to have the luxury of being patient.

The demand is there. It just isn’t in a hurry.

The Million-Dollar Homes Aren’t Really the Story

The million-dollar listings caught my attention because they stood out. But I think the more important story is what is happening throughout the rest of the Kingston Springs market.

Inventory has grown across the board.

We have active new construction feeding the $400,000 to $700,000 range, existing homeowners putting their properties on the market and more choices available to buyers than we have been accustomed to seeing over the past several years.

That $400,000 to $700,000 range is also where a much larger portion of Kingston Springs buyers are actually shopping.

Although the subject is million dollar homes, Kingston Springs isn’t suddenly becoming a town full of them. We’re seeing more inventory at both ends of the market at the same time.

A handful of $1 million to $4 million properties just makes that change much easier to notice.

It also explains why looking at an “average” home price in a small town like Kingston Springs can sometimes be misleading. A few multimillion-dollar properties can pull the average considerably higher even though the typical home is still priced much closer to the median.

What Does It Mean?

If you’re shopping in the $400,000 to $700,000 range, the increased inventory is generally good news. More homes to choose from means more competition among sellers and, in many cases, more room to negotiate.

If you’re shopping above $1 million, patience may be your friend. With roughly 10 months of inventory, buyers have options, particularly when looking at homes that have already spent several months on the market.

There are buyers in Kingston Springs willing to spend serious money. Seven million-dollar sales over the past year prove that. But those buyers have choices, and simply owning an expensive property doesn’t mean someone is going to pay an expensive price for it.

To those wondering: Kingston Springs isn’t turning into Brentwood overnight.

What we’re seeing is a small town working through the same increase in inventory happening across much of Middle Tennessee. It just happens to be doing it with a few very visible, very expensive homes sitting at the top of the list.

The million-dollar homes aren’t really the problem.

They’re just the easiest part of it to see.

Have a home you'd like to weigh in on, or questions about the local market? Send me an email at jmahoney.realestate@gmail.com