Headline homes: Nashville's top sales, April 2008

Dave Ramsey pays cash for new pad, '90s V.U. grads return in style with $2.85M home, Bartholomews buy into Northumberland, big new house for Big Loud Shirt songwriter, and more...

Email | Print By E. Thomas Wood

Jonathan and Susan Dyke, buyers of this newly constructed home at 211 Lynnwood Blvd., come back to Nashville from D.C. after taking undergrad degrees from Vanderbilt in 1993 and 1995, respectively. Purchase price: $2.85 million

Like its 2008 predecessors, our April list of Middle Tennessee's priciest home sales yields notable names among the buyers and sellers.

A nationally known personal-finance guru, a Grammy Award-winning songwriter, one of Nashville's most prominent lawyers and the leader of the Nashville Predators' new ownership group are all settling into new houses. So are top officers from local payment-processing, cigar and biofuels businesses, along with a well-known Music Row figure.

Here they are — the 10 largest single-family home transactions recorded in Davidson and contiguous counties in April, ranked by dollar value — with No. 11 tacked on as something of an honorable mention:

1. 211 Lynnwood Blvd., 37205

Buyers: Jonathan & Susan Dyke
Sale price: $2.85 million
Builder/sellers: Teri & Brad Worthington
Seller's agent: Melanie Baker (Worth Properties)
Buyer's agent: Steve Fridrich (Fridrich & Clark)

The Dykes, both of whom graduated from Vanderbilt in the 1990s, move back to Nashville after more than a decade in Washington, D.C. Jonathan Dyke is chief operating officer of Edo Interactive, a firm headed by former Link2Gov honcho Ed Braswell that raised venture funding last fall to launch a payment system called FaceCard.

He was previously chief information officer of the Corporate Executive Board, the D.C.-based consulting firm that Nashvillian Rusty Siebert formerly headed.

Teri Worthington built this 8,800-square-foot Belle Meade home, with six bedrooms and five and a half bathrooms. She had a $2.45 million sale in February's "Headline homes." Dr. Brad Worthington is president of Neurosurgical Anesthesiologists PLC in Nashville.

2. 3 Chartwell Manor, 37215

Buyers: Sam & Vicki Bartholomew
Sale price: $1.9 million
Seller: Robert Schaedle
Agents: none on record

The Bartholomews are the newest neighbors of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban in Northumberland, a gated community in Forest Hills. With six bedrooms and six and a half baths, their home sits on just over an acre of land.

Attorney Sam Bartholomew has long been prominent in Nashville legal, political and economic development affairs. He co-founded the firm of Stokes & Bartholomew in 1986 and has practiced at Adams & Reese since the merger of the two firms in 2005.

Seller Schaedle is president of Chartwell Hospitality LLC, a hotel group he spun out from his former real estate development company, Schaedle Worthington Hyde, in 2003.

3 (tie). 2016 Sunset Hills Terrace, 37215

Buyers: Gary Hyams & Angela Greeley
Sale price: $1.75 million
Sellers: Sherry & Charlie Brinkley
Seller's agent: Velvet B. VanHoose (Zeitlin & Co. Realtors)
Buyer's agent: none

Scandinavian Tobacco Cigar Group, owner of Nashville-based cigar maker CAO International, made Hyams chairman of CAO in early 2007. He was previously in charge of another STGC subsidiary in the U.K. Charlie Brinkley, a veteran Florida banker who was with Fifth Third in Nashville in recent years, is now heading up a new community bank back in Florida.

Located off Tyne Blvd. in Forest Hills, this house has some 6,300 square feet of living space as well as a four-car garage. And there's more outside: Surrounding a large, heated pool are English-style gardens through which one might contemplatively stroll with a CAO Robusto Maduro on a fine spring evening.

3 (tie). 6121 Gardendale Drive, 37215

Buyers: Karen & Jody Williams
Sale price: $1.75 million
Builder/seller: Cook Builders LLC
Seller's agent: Sidney McAlister (BrokerSouth Real Estate Partners LLC)
Buyer's agent: Elaine Reed (Worth Properties)

Jody Williams is vice president for writer/publisher relations at licensing organization Broadcast Music Inc. Like many of the Row's movers and shakers, he comes from a family with multi-generational ties to the business of music in Nashville. The Williams clan owned the Martha White flour brand when it began sponsoring the Grand Ole Opry in 1948 — a sponsorship that has famously continued to this day.

Williams began his career at BMI and has come and gone from there a couple of times. He was president of the Nashville division of MCA Music Publishing in the 1990s and then had his own publishing company for several years.

This just-completed home in Forest Hills is built in Virginia-farmhouse style. It has about 6,100 heated and cooled square feet.

5. 4025 Sunnybrook Drive, 37205

Buyers: William & Emily Kurtz
Sale price: $1.718 million
Builder/seller: HR Properties of Tennessee LLC
Seller's agent: Whit Clark (Fridrich & Clark)
Buyer’s agent: Missy Rodriguez Brower (Zeitlin & Co. Realtors)

Double-income docs here. Dr. William B. Kurtz practices with the Tennessee Orthopaedic Alliance, having done a residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a fellowship in adult reconstructive joint surgery at New England Baptist in Boston. Dr. Emily Graham Kurtz is a fellow in cardiology at VUMC.

HR Properties, which closed a dozen sales of $1 million-plus Davidson County homes in 2007, makes the list of headline-home sellers for the second time this year after a $1.53 million sale recorded in January.

6. 1089 Vaughn Crest, Franklin, 37069

Buyer: David Beckwith
Sale price: $1.6 million
Builder/seller: Hancock Construction LLC
Seller’s agent: Tim Kelly (Southern Land Co.)
Buyer’s agent: John Lott (Main Street Realty)

Builder Bruce Hancock constructed this home in the gated LaurelBrooke development, off Sneed and Vaughn Roads. It sold after two months on the market.

Buyer David Beckwith is president of Eco-Energy Inc., based in Franklin. The company, which relocated from Los Angeles in 1998, is engaged in the distribution of ethanol, biodiesel and other alternative fuels. Its CEO is Larry Beckwith, David's brother, whose own LaurelBrooke home is tax-appraised at $2.1 million.

7. Lot 98 [address not given], Avalon subdivision, Franklin, 37064

Buyers: Dave & Sharon Ramsey
Sale price: $1.552 million
Seller: BP Avalon G.P.
Agents: none of record

Yup, it's that Dave Ramsey. He paid cash. Would you expect otherwise from such a famously debt-averse media personality?

Ramsey's radio and television shows, books, financial counseling businesses and other enterprises have brought him fame and, no doubt, fortune in the decade and a half since he started out with a locally broadcast financial advice show called "The Money Game" on Nashville's 99.7 WWTN.

This house is one of the higher-end properties built to date in the Avalon subdivision, which Tennessee Valley Homes is developing.

Correction: We had the wrong address for this one as originally posted.

8. 9252 Wardley Park Lane, Brentwood, 37027

Buyer: John P. Moyers
Sale price: $1.5 million
Builder/sellers: Jean & Charles E. Atkinson Jr.
Seller’s agents: Lisa Culp Taylor & Susan Gregory (Bob Parks Realty)
Buyer’s agent: none

Charles Atkinson built this home in the Annandale development for Dr. Moyers, a radiologist. It checks in at just under 6,200 square feet, with five bedrooms and five baths, plus two half-baths.

9. 1123 Nichol Lane, 37205

Buyers: Charles Robert Bone & Sacha Bone
Sale price: $1.431 million
Builder/agent/seller: Brian D. Glasser (Worth Properties)

Charles Robert Bone is a partner at Bone McAllester Norton and is active in Democratic politics. Builder Brian Glasser, who formerly owned the now-shuttered Belle Meade Buffet, closed on the sale of this 5,800-square-foot Belle Meade home 51 days after he put it on the market at $1.499 mil.

10. 4301 Wallace Lane, 37215

Buyers: Craig & K. K. Wiseman
Sale price: $1.425 million
Builder/seller: Sycamore Construction LLC
Seller’s agent: Laura Baugh (Worth Properties)

Songwriter and musical entrepreneur Wiseman may be best known for "Live Like You Were Dying," his cut for Tim McGraw that won the 2004 Grammy for best country song. Proprietor of the Big Loud Shirt group of companies that is headquartered in an office building he owns at 16th and Edgehill, Wiseman has written for the likes of Kenny Chesney, Brooks & Dunn and Faith Hill. The Nashville Songwriters' Association International named him songwriter of the year in 1997.

The Green Hills home he has bought, one of many mansions built to replace torn-down rancheroos in the Trimble-Wallace-Sneed area, has some 6,400 square feet of living space. Sycamore had the French manor-style property on the market for three months and came down about 9.5 percent from the original asking price.

And a bit of a bonus entry, just because the buyer has been so high-profile of late:

11. 835 Tyne Valley Court, 37220

Buyers: David S. Freeman & Melissa Ellis Freeman
Sale price: $1.375 million
Sellers: Trevana K. & P. Scott George
Seller’s agent: Vivian Brandon (Pilkerton Realtors)
Buyer’s agent: Dana Hasselbring (Bob Parks Realty)

David Freeman has emerged from near-anonymity in the past year to lead the successful (for now, at least) effort to keep the Nashville Predators hockey franchise in Nashville and under local ownership. He got involved in the Preds' cause shortly after selling his waste-management company, Commodore Medical Services, in May of 2007.

This property in Oak Hill's Treemont area spent six months on the market before it sold at a considerable discount to the original listing price of $1.65 million.

Know of a big home sale in April that we missed? Got info on people involved with any of these deals? Send a note via the byline link above, and we'll update this story.

Headline homes of prior months:

March 2008: Buyers include superstar couple, Preds forward and Adelicia penthouse buyers who range from horse trader to office developer to "Idol" creator.

February 2008: Buyers include the guy who treats the Preds' bruises, execs from Athlon and CHS, Amy Grant's Ma and Pa, a leading banker, Lonestar's ex-singer, and two new penthouse-dwellers in the Adelicia.

January 2008: Buyers include a leading pastor, a 24-year-old rock star, a renowned healthcare entrepreneur, a relocating restaurant company chief, and a former spouse whose new home came along with a $10 million divorce settlement.