Mike Vrabel does not own the Forest Hills house anymore. He sold it in October 2024 for $4.8 million — roughly two and a half times what he paid for it six years earlier — and most of what is still written about the property describes it as though he lives there.
He does not. Here is the actual record, and the pattern it fits into.
- Bought in 2018, just under $2 million, shortly after taking the Tennessee Titans job
- Sold in October 2024 for $4.8 million
- Now in Brentwood, Tennessee, bought in 2024 for $1.78 million
The Forest Hills House He Bought in 2018
The property was brand new when he bought it. Tennessee Valley Homes, a Franklin-based custom builder, completed it in 2017, and Vrabel picked it up about a year later — a nearly new build without the wait or the decisions that come with commissioning one.
What the deed covered:
- 6,100 square feet of living space
- Six bedrooms, nine bathrooms
- A two-acre wooded lot, unusually large for its distance from downtown
- Primary suite and an office on the first floor, with the remaining bedrooms above
The style is traditional Southern with contemporary finishes — the kind of build that reads as expensive without dating itself to a particular year. The mature tree cover does the privacy work that a wall or a gate would do elsewhere.
Why Forest Hills, and Not Brentwood or Belle Meade
One thing gets misreported about this house constantly, including in earlier versions of this article: Forest Hills is not in Williamson County.
It is an incorporated city inside Davidson County, one of the satellite cities that kept its own charter when Nashville and Davidson County consolidated their governments in 1963. It has its own mayor and commissioners, covers about 9.24 square miles along the northern edge of Williamson County, and had a population of roughly 5,000 at the 2020 census.
That governance quirk is the reason the neighbourhood looks the way it does. Forest Hills is zoned exclusively residential — there is no commercial development inside the city limits at all — and its large-lot rules have held since before Nashville’s building boom. For a head coach, that combination buys something specific: a two-acre wooded lot about eleven miles from downtown, with no through traffic and no commercial frontage, in a market where land that close to the core has mostly been subdivided.
The 2024 Sale: From Under $2 Million to $4.8 Million
The sale closed in October 2024 at $4.8 million, against a purchase price just under $2 million in 2018. That is roughly a 140% gain over six years, or about 16% a year.
Two things drove it, and only one of them is about the house.
Nashville’s luxury market did most of the work. Between 2018 and 2024, the metro absorbed sustained in-migration while inventory in established, large-lot neighbourhoods stayed fixed — Forest Hills cannot add supply without changing its own zoning, and it has not. When demand rises against a hard supply cap, price is the only variable left.
The rest is the asset itself. A 2017 build sold in 2024 is still young enough that a buyer inherits no deferred maintenance, and two contiguous acres inside the city limits is a line item that cannot be manufactured. Those are the two things that let a house clear well above the neighbourhood’s typical range rather than tracking it.
Worth noting what this correction replaces: earlier coverage of this property, including ours, estimated its 2025 value at $2.5 to $3.5 million. The recorded sale came in above the top of that range, a year before the estimate was made.
The Mike Vrabel House Pattern: Ohio, Texas, Tennessee
The Forest Hills sale is not a one-off. Vrabel has bought a house in essentially every city he has worked in, held it through the job, and sold it on the way out.
Delaware House
Delaware, Ohio — bought around 2005 for $505,000 while he was still playing. He held it nine years, first listed it at $3.3 million, and sold it in July 2016 for $2 million. The gap between ask and close is the instructive part: the original number was aspirational by a wide margin, and the house still returned nearly four times its cost.
Bellaire House
Bellaire, Texas — bought in 2014 during his assistant-coaching stint with the Houston Texans. A Mediterranean-style home on a corner lot, 5,843 square feet with four bedrooms and six bathrooms. He listed it at $1.99 million and sold it in 2018, the same year the Titans hired him.
Forest Hills House
Forest Hills, Tennessee — the 2018 purchase and the 2024 sale above.
Three cities, three jobs, three buy-and-hold cycles that each ran the length of his tenure. That is a different approach from the players he has coached, who more often keep a permanent base and rent wherever the season takes them — Patrick Mahomes’ Belton estate is the version of that logic where the house outlasts every contract.
Where He Lives Now, and Whether Boston Is Next
He did not leave Tennessee when he sold. In 2024 he bought a six-bedroom, four-bathroom house in Brentwood, about twenty minutes south, for $1.78 million — a smaller, cheaper property than the one he had just sold.
The timing is what makes that interesting. He sold the large house in October 2024 and bought the smaller one the same year, before the New England Patriots hired him on 12 January 2025. So the downsizing was not a reaction to the move; it preceded it.
Whether a Massachusetts purchase follows is the open question. The pattern he has run three times says yes. The Brentwood house says he has not cut ties with Nashville, which is the one market of the three where he has now bought twice.
The Bottom Line
The Mike Vrabel house most articles describe — six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, two wooded acres in Forest Hills — is real, but he has not owned it since October 2024. He sold it for $4.8 million, bought a smaller one in Brentwood, and took the Patriots job three months later.
The more useful number is the one underneath: three houses across three cities, every one of them sold for a multiple of what he paid, in markets he moved to for work rather than for the real estate.
Sources
- Realtor.com, via Yahoo, on every property in the ledger: the Delaware, Ohio house at $505,000 in 2005, its $3.3 million listing and $2 million sale in July 2016; the Bellaire, Texas home at 5,843 square feet with four bedrooms and six bathrooms; and the Forest Hills house at 6,100 square feet, six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, and two acres, sold for $4.8 million in October 2024.
- Nashville Post on the October 2024 sale in its monthly record of notable local transactions.
- Nashville Scene on the original 2018 purchase, shortly after the Titans’ hiring.
- Yahoo Sports on the 2024 Brentwood purchase at $1.78 million and his remaining Tennessee ties.
- NFL.com on the New England Patriots hiring him as head coach on 12 January 2025, after six seasons and a 54-45 record with the Titans.
- City of Forest Hills and its public record on the city’s status in Davidson County, its 1963 charter retention, the 9.24-square-mile footprint, and the exclusively residential zoning.
