Headline homes: Nashville’s top sales for August

Kix Brooks has just topped one more list.

With musical partner Ronnie Dunn, Brooks has been to the top of the country single charts 23 times. Brooks & Dunn have won more awards from the Country Music Association than any other act. And now, Kix and wife Barbara are the buyers in Nashville's biggest home sale of the year.

The couple paid $5.45 million in August for a palatial and secluded new house in Forest Hills. That purchase price dethroned the year's prior champ, a $5.3 million transaction closed earlier in August. Both of those sales are bigger than any recorded in 2007.

With more details on all the top 10 single-family residential transactions recorded in Davidson and contiguous counties in August, ranked by dollar value, here are this month's headline homes:

1.

47 Bancroft Place, 37215

Buyer: Dwight Wiles, trustee for Kix and Barbara Brooks

Sale price: $5.45 million

Builder/seller: Delta Design and Development LLC

Architects: DA|AD Partners

Landscape designer: Charles Noble Massey

Seller's representative: L. B. "Beau" Hammet II (Todd, Floyd & Hammet PLC)

Buyer's agent: Laura Stroud (Fridrich & Clark)

Country stars typically purchase their homes via trustees in an effort to keep their locations confidential, but the news almost always gets out. In this case, The City Paper learned the buyer's identity even though everyone involved in the deal with whom we spoke maintained strict secrecy.

Mr. Brooks need not worry that the Jugg Sisters will be pulling up in the little pink NashTrash tour bus to ogle him while he trims his prodigious moustache, since the mansion is in the gated Bancroft development and is nestled so deep in the woods that not a trace of it is visible, even from within Bancroft.

The home sits at the end of Bancroft Place (a ways down from where Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman lived just after their marriage), on a steep lot. Builder Jim Massey of Delta Design started on it with the intention of living there himself, but agent Stroud, who has also been in the music business, approached him about modifying it to suit the Brookses. The completed structure "embodies rustic contemporary elements that embrace its natural setting," according to architecture firm DAAD's Web site.

What will five and a half mil buy you in Nashville these days? Thirteen-thousand square feet in which to hang your Stetson. Four bedrooms. Five and a half baths. Reclaimed structural beams, flooring and roof decking, all milled from century-old remnants of tobacco warehouses. A three-story wood and steel staircase. 28-foot ceilings in the central hall tower. A commercial-grade kitchen. A wine cellar with "custom-designed mahogany racks floated over polished black stones set within limestone columns," as described by builder Massey. Windows imported from Germany. An infinity-edge pool feeding a 45-foot-wide waterfall that spills into a wading trough. A hillside entrance accented with wildflowers, emphasizing local and endangered plant species.

2.

4410 Gerald Place, 37205

Buyers: Gaylon and Lisa Lawrence

Sale price: $5.3 million

Seller: Cynthia C. Ortale

Seller's agent: Steve Fridrich (Fridrich & Clark)

Buyer's agents: Betty and Elaine Finucane (Fridrich & Clark)

Before the Brooks transaction, this one was the biggest single-family home sale locally in at least the past year and a half, topping the $5.1 million sale of the historic West Meade mansion in May 2007.

Gaylon Lawrence is vice chairman of Tennessee Bank & Trust. He moved to Middle Tennessee in 2003 to start the bank as a division of Blytheville, Ark.-based Farmers Bank & Trust, which his family owns.

Buddy Ortale (who deeded his interest in the home to his wife some years ago) is president of private equity firm Sewanee Ventures LLC. His firm has some $100 million under management.

The home sits on 2.34 acres. A sprawling ranch house, once the home of Genesco leader Maxey Jarman, stood on the site when the Ortales bought the property in 1998. They built the current house on a grand scale: five bedrooms, five full and three half-bathrooms, fireplace mantels and light fixtures imported from Europe, hand-carved antique doors, and 10,000 square feet of living area.

3.

4424 Georgian Place, 37205

Buyers: Steven and Laura Smith Hooper

Sale price: $3.2 million

Seller: Kathy Rolfe

Seller's agent: Steve Fridrich (Fridrich & Clark)

Buyer's agent: Tom Fussell (Fridrich & Clark)

This house is on a 2.3-acre lot, situated on a quiet Belle Meade cul-de-sac. FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith, father of Laura Hooper, provided the mortgage.

Bob and Kathy Rolfe paid $4.85 million in July for a house on Jackson Boulevard in Belle Meade. Bob Rolfe is CEO of Brentwood-based MyOfficeProducts Inc.

4.

605 Westview Ave., 37205

Buyers: David & Ashley Dill

Sale price: $2.85 million

Seller: Peaches Gunter Blank

Agent for both parties: Steve Fridrich (Fridrich & Clark)

Perched at the crest of the hill on Westview, this 8,200-square-foot house boasts five bedrooms and six full baths. It was listed at $3.2 million and was on the market for just over two months.

David Dill took over as chief financial officer at LifePoint Hospitals last year. He previously held executive posts with Renal Care Group and its successor, Fresenius Medical Care North America.

Peaches Blank, who was formerly married to Nashville Banner publisher Irby Simpkins, served as deputy governor in the administration of Don Sundquist. She has also chaired the board of trustees at North Carolina State University.

5.

504 Westview Ave., 37205

Buyer: Cheryl Glass Smith

Sale price: $2.3 million

Seller: Gaylon & Lisa Lawrence

Seller's agent: Betty Finucane (Fridrich & Clark)

Buyer's agent: Suzanne T. Lewter (Fridrich & Clark)

Across the street and down a ways from the Dills' new abode is the home of Community Health Systems CEO Wayne T. Smith and wife Cheryl. The Marchetti Co. built it for the Lawrences in 2003-04, in what the listing calls a "French eclectic" style.

Within the tidy confines of 6,100 square feet, this home includes an elevator, a wine cellar, an exercise room and a three-car garage.

6.

3704 Richland Ave., 37205

Buyers: Stephen C. and Harriette M. Scarpero

Sale price: $1.7 million

Sellers: Thomas T. & Kathryn H. Pennington

Sellers' agent: Rick French (French Christianson Patterson)

Buyers' agent: Jacquie Jenkins (Fridrich & Clark)

This four-bedroom, five-bath home was built around 1915 in the classic foursquare style prevalent in the Richland neighborhood. After extensive renovations and additions, it offers 5,900 square feet of living space.

The Scarperos are a double-doc family, a pairing seen several times in on the headline home list this year. Dr. Stephen practices internal medicine in Donelson, and Dr. Harriette is a urologist at Vanderbilt.

Thomas Pennington is an attorney at Manier & Herod.

7.

409 Lake Valley Dr., Franklin, 37069

Buyers: Robert B. Wallace & Deborah J. Lawson

Sale price: $1.4 million

Sellers: Jeffrey O. & Pamela D. Duckworth

Sellers' agent: Mark Lonsway (RE/MAX Elite)

Buyers' agent: Mary Suto (Crye-Leike)

This colonial-style home is in Williamson County's Legends Ridge subdivision. It offers nearly 7,000 square feet of space, with five bedrooms as well as five full and two half baths.

Deborah J. Lawson is a former healthcare industry research analyst with Salomon Smith Barney in New York City. No info is available on the other parties to this sale.

8.

4303 Lindawood Dr., 37215

Buyers: Jonathan D. Gitlin & Patricia A. Hodgman

Sale price: $1.34 million

Seller: HR Properties of Tennessee

Agents: None of record

Not much info is available about this house, but if it's anything like the others that HR Properties has built on teardown lots in the Lindawood-Wallace-Sneed area of Green Hills, it is sure to be spacious and well-appointed.

In June, Jonathan D. Gitlin took up an appointment as physician-in-chief at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital and the James C. Overall Professor and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical School. He and his wife moved down from St. Louis, where he had spent 22 years in pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine.

9.

116 Taggart Ave., 37205

Buyers: Joseph W. & Page L. Plowman

Sale price: $1.2 million

Builder/seller/agent: Brian D. Glasser (Worth Properties)

Buyers' agent: Mary Poor (Crye-Leike)

Brian D. Glasser, of JBS Custom Builders, finished this 4,600-square-foot home within seven months after tearing down its predecessor in the Belle Meade Highlands neighborhood. It has four bedrooms, four full bathrooms and two half baths.

Joe Plowman is executive vice president for corporate services with Mission Linen Supply Inc., a company based in Santa Barbara, Calif. We have been unable so far to reach anyone with the company and find out what brings the Plowmans to town.

10.

137 Keyway Dr., 37205

Buyers: Michael S. & Lisa Moschel

Sale price: $1.1 million

Seller: HR Properties of Tennessee

Sellers' agent: John G. Brittle Jr. (French Christianson Patterson)

Buyers' agent: Ellen Christianson (French Christianson Patterson)

Here's another HR Properties home. The builder has been quite active in West Meade as well as Green Hills, replacing 1950s ranch houses and the like with sleek new temples of domestic bliss. This one has four bedrooms, four baths and 4,400 square feet.

Michael Moschel is a partner at Bass, Berry & Sims.

To read about top-dollar property deals for each month of this year, just Google "Headline Homes." Buyers and sellers so far in 2008 range from Dave Ramsey and Scott Hamilton to Simon Fuller of American Idol.