Headline homes: Nashville's top sales, May 2008

One local CEO sells to another, luxury car dealer trades up after cashing out, Gore aide buys Hillwood spread, and plenty of jingle in songwriters' sale -- plus a farewell to Aaron Neville

Email | Print By E. Thomas Wood

The new Holden place at 203 Lynnwood conceals within its wooded profile a surprising 9,500 square feet of living area.

Better late than never, as your humble headline-home-hunting scribe has been working in extreme triage mode for the past few weeks, we present our May list of Middle Tennessee's priciest home sales.

Here they are — the 10 largest single-family home transactions recorded in Davidson and contiguous counties in May, ranked by dollar value. And as we did last month, we tack on one more as something of an honorable mention:

1. 203 Lynnwood Blvd., 37205

Buyers: Chris & Carla Holden
Sale price: $3.5 million
Sellers: Barbara & Greg Burns
Seller's agent: Steve Fridrich (Fridrich & Clark)
Buyer's agent: Sue Chilton (Zeitlin & Co. Realtors)

One public-company CEO sells to another here. Chris Holden took over the top spot at surgery center developer AmSurg last October, moving from the Dallas area where he held a senior post at Triad Hospitals. Greg Burns has been at the helm of restaurant chain O'Charley's since 1994.

This month's top home is just a few doors down from last month's, on a secluded and traffic-calmed stretch of Lynnwood. You wouldn't guess, looking from the street, that it's a 9,500-square-foot structure, with four bedrooms and six baths.

It's hard to think of moving into the ultra-luxury Northumberland community as downsizing, but as you can calculate from the listing below, the Burns family cleared one and a half mil on its housing transactions in May.

2. 18 Bancroft, 37215

Buyers: Martin & Linda Bennett
Sale price: $3.25 million
Sellers: Rick & Linda Keister
Seller's agent: Rick French (French Christianson Patterson)
Buyer's agent: Steve Fridrich (Fridrich & Clark)

In April, Martin Bennett sold the luxury auto dealership that he had run for many years, Thoroughbred Motor Cars. Such transactions can tend to make one's existing $1.95 million abode feel somehow insufficient. And so — again, see below — one cedes the old bungalow to a public-company CEO and trades up for a four-bedroom, six-bathroom pied-à-terre on two acres in Bancroft, a gated Forest Hills development.

Home sales, like stock sales, tell us the price of everything and the value of nothing. But it seems worth noting that Rick & Linda Keister got into this home, custom-built by The Hilton Co., for $2.6 million only eight months before they sold it for a profit of $654,000. They made 25 percent on this short-term investment, which was probably never intended to be so temporary.

Rick Keister was president and chief executive officer of Keystone Automotive Industries when that California company moved its executive team to Nashville in 2006. The purchase of Keystone for about $811 million by Chicago-based LKQ Corp. was actually announced six weeks before he and his wife closed in August 2007 on the house being built for them in Bancroft.

Several multi-million-dollar transactions have taken place in Bancroft during the past year. Most notable, perhaps, was the sale by Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman of 15 Bancroft for $2.36 million late last year.

This reporter grew up near the site of what is now Bancroft. The only residents of that rugged acreage, circa 1970, lived in what must surely have been the last mobile home to grace Forest Hills.

3. 6 Crooked Stick Lane, Brentwood, 37027

Buyers: Son & Lynn Le
Sale price: $2.15 million
Seller: Kristin E. Dagostino Trust
Seller's agent: Debbie Jaeger (Main Street Real Estate)
Buyer's agent: Alicia Lundquist (ERA Pacesetter Partners)

Six bedrooms, six full baths, 9,400 square feet: This place might be a B&B if the Governors Club would let it,

Dr. Son Le practices with the Center for Spine, Joint & Neuromuscular Rehabilitation in Hermitage.

4. 108 Brook Hollow Road, 37205

Buyers: Roy Neel & Jenny Clad
Sale price: $1.96 million
Sellers: Dwaine Anderson & Leilani Boulware
Seller's agent: Melanie Baker (Worth Properties)
Buyer's agent: Missy Rodriguez Brower (Zeitlin & Co. Realtors)

Legions of NashvillePost.com readers will see Roy Neel's name and think: "Oh yeah, he wrote that Vanderbilt basketball history I have." As a young Nashville Banner reporter, Neel did gain considerable local attention in 1975 for writing Dynamite! 75 Years of Vanderbilt Basketball.

But political insiders nationwide know him as the operative who went on to serve as chief of staff to Senator, and then Vice President, Al Gore. Neel was in charge of the transition team that, but for a certain inconvenience, would have handled the handover of power to the Gore administration in 2001. He went on to head a major telecommunications lobby for seven years.

Today Neel is once more chief of staff to Gore, as the Nobel-Prize-winning private citizen does his thing around the globe. Wife Jenny Clad, a veteran Washington, D.C. attorney, serves as executive director of Gore's Climate Project.

Boulware is a former general counsel of Meharry Medical College, and Anderson is a real estate agent.

5. 3 Buckland Abbey, 37215

Buyers: Barbara & Greg Burns
Sale price: $1.95 million
Sellers: Martin & Linda Bennett
Agent: Steve Fridrich (Fridrich & Clark) for both parties

As noted above, veteran O'Charley's CEO Greg Burns and wife manage to make the purchase of a $2 mil house in Northumberland a tradedown, while the Bennetts, beneficiaries of the Thoroughbred Motor Cars merger, move on up.

The real estate agent's listing on this one gushed: "Totally renovated kitchen with top of line everything... Incredible throughout."

6. 100 Mission Court, Franklin, 37067

Buyer: 100 Mission Court LLC
Sale price: $1.85 million
Sellers: James and Hye Kyung Shin
Agents: none of record

The registered agent of the LLC here is Mark Smith, who heads up American Hermetics of Tennessee Inc., an air conditioning compressor remanufacturer in Nashville.

Beyond those facts, we're in the dark. Someone fill us in on the buyer and seller, if you will, and we'll update the story.

7. 1716 Talbot Trail, Franklin, 37069

Buyer: Kevin C. Elnicki
Sale price: $1.73 million
Sellers: Keith & Adrienne Follese
Seller's agent: Sheila S. Stern (Keller Williams Realty)
Buyer's agent: Jeff Pate (Keller Williams Realty)

The Folleses are a power couple in Nashville's songwriting community.

Keith Follese, ASCAP’s Songwriter Of The Year in 2001, has penned hits for Randy Travis, Faith Hill, Martina McBride and Lonestar. He and Adrienne have co-written for McBride, Jessica Simpson and others.

Elnicki's company, an environmental remediation firm from Rutland, Vt., could shed no light on why he has bought locally. More to come when we have more to report.

8. 317 Walnut Drive, 37205

Buyers: John & Amy Liz Riddick
Sale price: $1.47 million
Sellers: Sam & Vicki Bartholomew
Seller's agent: Betty Wentworth (Zeitlin & Co. Realtors)
Buyer's agents: Corinne Barfield & Laura McSpadden (Fridrich & Clark)

[Updated 10 June, 11:15 a.m., with buyer info:] Dr. John Riddick, a 2001 graduate of Vanderbilt's medical school, returns to Nashville after a stint (bad pun intended) as a cardiology fellow at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He will join Centennial Heart LLC as an interventional cardiologist in mid-July.

We reported last month on the purchase of a $1.9 million Northumberland home by prominent Nashville lawyer Sam Bartholomew and his wife Vicki.

9. 1719 Championship Blvd., Franklin, 37064

Buyer: David & Melissa Boudreaux
Sale price: $1.45 million
Builder/seller: Steve Hulen Construction LLC
Seller's agent: Lisa A. Cahalan (Westhaven Realty)
Buyer's agent: Mark Lonsway (Re/Max Elite)

Though the listed square footage of this new Westhaven home is just under 5,000, it looks larger with its two levels of plantation-style colonnade porches.

Melissa Boudreaux is a senior loan officer with the Brentwood branch of JPMorgan Chase Bank.

10. 9274 Wardley Park Lane, Brentwood, 37027

Buyer: Sushil Raj Patil
Sale price: $1.41 million
Builder/seller: Mike Ford Custom Builders LLC
Seller's agent: Susan Gregory (Bob Parks Realty/Brentwood)
Buyer's agent: Stan Gunselman (Coldwell Banker Barnes)

This new home in the Annandale subdivision checks in at just under 5,300 square feet. Dr. Patil is a gastroenterologist with a practice located next to Summit Medical Center in Hermitage.

And finally, a farewell:

1090 Millwood Court, Brentwood, 37027

Buyer: Deann Bullock Watkins
Sale price: $775,000
Seller: Aaron Neville
Agents: unknown

After Hurricane Katrina, legendary New Orleans singer Aaron Neville sold what was left of his home sight unseen and settled into this Brentwood property. He could not bear to return to the city he loved, even to play the annual jazz festival that the Neville Brothers traditionally highlighted.

In January 2007, Neville returned to New Orleans for the first time since the storm — but only long enough to bury his wife of 48 years, Joel, after she passed away from lung cancer.

Neville moved back to the New Orleans area a couple of months ago. In May, he played JazzFest once more.

Know of a big home sale in May 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:

April 2008: Buyers include Dave Ramsey, a pair of '90s V.U. grads returning in style with $2.85M home, and the Bartholomews buying into Northumberland.

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.