Tim and Faith List Franklin Farm

SELLERS: Tim McGraw and Faith Hill
LOCATION: Franklin, TN
PRICE: $20,000,000
SIZE: 753+ acres with (at least) half a dozen homes

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Between them, country music king Tim McGraw and pop/crossover country music queen Faith Hill have 8 Grammys, 28 American Country Music Awards (ACMs), 14 Country Music Awards (CMAs), 14 American Music Awards (AMAs), and 4 People's Choice Awards.* The couple's joint Soul2Soul II tours (2006-07) hauled in $141,000,000, at that time and still the highest gross ever for a multi-year country music tour. Together they've sold more than 80 million records and—depending on where you look on the internets—have a combined net worth of around $135,000,000.

Such accolades, accomplishments and riches affords the Miz Hill and Mister McGraw the pampered and profligate lifestyle of the A-list country music super stars they are. The couple—married more than 16 years with three young female children—own a private jet and are well known by property gossips like Your Mama to maintain a frequently in flux property portfolio that would make the ears of a run-of-the mill multi-millionaire bleed with envy and (financial) anxiety.

In 2005 they sold a 10,702 square foot mansion in Brentwood, TN for $1,855,000 and in October 2008 they listed a 10,500 square foot  mock-Med mansion in the "old section" of the bifurcated Beverly Park community in the Beverly Hills Post Office with a $14.8 million price tag. They eventually sold the property, which was famously burglarized in 2007, in June 2010 for $9.5 million to an obviously well-to-do Beverly Hills attorney.

In late 2009 the McGraw-Hills floated their 4.22 acre semi-rural estate on the outskirts Nashville's affluent Belle Meade nabe on the market at an unknown price. We're not really sure when the property was taken off the market but we do know that in late May of this year (2013) they pushed the well appointed estate back on the open market with an asking price of $2,900,000. Current listing details show the existing house was originally built in 1934 and has five bedrooms and four full and three half bathrooms in 6,767 square feet. The couple have also listed a separate but contiguous, 7.37 acre parcel for $2,000,000.

We've now learned, via a short, covert communique from a real estate canary we'll call Chiquita Chirpsalot, that in addition to their Belle Meade mansion, Mister McGraw and Miz Hill have also hoisted their historic and impressively pedigreed 753+ acre farm in Franklin (TN) on the open market with an hefty, hefty, hefty $20,000,000 asking price.

A quick poke around several property record data bases shows the McGraw-Hill's bucolic farm in Franklin, not quite 30 miles southeast of downtown Nashville, is comprised of two adjacent parcels divided by the tree-lined Harpeth River. It appears to Your Mama they purchased the adjoining farms in separate but simultaneous transactions in November 2001. The smaller parcel (353.12 acres) cost the country royals $5,009,560 and the larger parcel (400.7 acres)—an Antebellum plantation that was previously owned by country music legend Hank Williams—cost them another $8,750,000. A few quick clickety-clicks on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus and we tabulate that the McGraw-Hills total outlay for the Franklin farm was $13,759,560. Your Mama certainly ain't privy to the pocketbook(s) of Mister McGraw and Miz Hill but we have to assume they've spent several million more over the last dozen years on taxes, upkeep, and improvements.

Beechwood Hall, also known as the H.G.W. Mayberry House after it's original owners Sophronia Hunter Mayberry and Henry George Washington Mayberry—was built in 1856 as the high fallutin' residential centerpiece of what was then a 1,000 (or so) acre pre-Civil War plantation. Privately situated down a snaking drive deep in the heart of the 400+ acre larger parcel, the grand, Greek meets Italianate Revival style mansion needs a complete, sensitive, and thoughtful renovation/restoration but, children, the bones, as they say in the real estate bizness, are magnificent, are they not? The stately structure measures 6,856 square feet, according to the Davidson County Tax Man, and includes a paneled library with voluminous ceilings and a gigantic, 20-foot by 40-foot entrance hall with a swooping, circular floating staircase that staircase divas like Scarlett O'Hara and Auntie Mame would surely have swooned over and swanned down.

The log-built Greek Revival style house on the smaller parcel was built in 1850, according to listing details, and has three bedrooms, four bathrooms, and at least five fireplaces in 3,330 square feet of totally, renovated, restored, and casually luxurious space done up with a kind of Shabby Chic-y day-core. We're not sure the columned portico on the front façade is original to the house but it certainly lends the otherwise humble log structure a rather regal attitude, doesn't it? A roomy red brick screened porch along the back of the house has a sweeping view over the farm and looks to Your Mama like a divine spot to spend humid late summer evenings nibbling nibblits, nursing gin & tonics, and working a vexatiously monochromatic 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Anyhoo...

In addition to Beechwood Hall and the Greek Revival-style log house, the McGraw-Hill's compound-like farm-estate has at least four much more modest (and far less interesting) residences. Probably they are used by friends, family and/or staff but what do we know, right?

Numerous warehouse buildings house farm equipment (and whatever). The 12-stall barn—a stunning piece of architecture in its own right—has a tack room or two, a 1,200 square foot caretaker's apartment, and a cavernous arched hay loft that with a little gussying up would make an fine spot for  high-toned hoe down for a couple hundred of the McGraw-Hills friends and associates.

Rustic dirt roads and paths criss-cross and loop through the vast farm that includes open fields, fenced livestock pastures, and copse-dotted rolling meadows dotted. Each of the parcels has a large pond although Your Mama isn't sure if either is swimmable and/or stocked with fish.

Mister McGraw and Miz Hill's primary residence remains—at least as far as Your Mama knows—the super-sized mansion they had custom-built at the tail end of a long, gated driveway on 17 acres in the Forest Hills area that they picked up in August 2004 for $3,000,000. We don't have a lot of specific intel on the manse. Based on aerial imagery we'd call it a multi-winged, stone-built neo-Tudor about which Mister McGraw's mom, Betty Trimble, told Men's Journal in 2009 that "You drive up to the house and it looks like Europe. The Davidson County Tax Man shows the 37-room behemoth has five bedrooms and 9 bathrooms in more than 22,000 square feet. A big house for big stars.

*He has 3 Grammys, 14 ACMs, 11 CMAs, 10 AMAs and 3 People's Choice and she has 5 Grammys, 14 ACMs, 3 CMAs, 4 AMAs, and 1 People's Choice. They share 5 of their ACMs.

listing photos: Fridrich & Clark
aerial image: Bing