By Josh McKnight | The McKnight Team
Waverly Senior Services, a Gladwyne based organization, is planning an independent living community on a 43 acre estate at 452 Roberts Road in Radnor Township. The plan calls for 208 multi family units across 15 buildings, 16 twin homes, and a handful of administrative buildings.
Radnor PA real estate has very little product aimed at this buyer. The historic estate is owned by the Haverford School and is in the process of being purchased.
Where the Proposal Actually Stands
Nothing is approved. Waverly will submit plans to the Radnor planning commission, which issues a recommendation, and the township commissioners take the final vote. Planning commission members have said they are open to seeing the site developed but raised concerns about the early plans as drawn.
Residents raised three objections at the meeting, as reported in the weekly brief from the Suburban Realtors Alliance: added traffic, stormwater management, and a possible increase in ambulance traffic if an emergency medical services station ends up on the site. Waverly has also signaled it may seek additional zoning relief. The property carries an institutional zoning classification, and renovations falling outside it would require separate approval through the zoning hearing board. That is a second, slower path, and it is where projects like this one usually lose or gain a year.
What 224 Units Actually Does to Radnor PA Real Estate
The instinct is to read any 224 unit proposal as new competition for your house. In this case the more useful reading is the opposite. Independent living units do not compete with a single family home on a half acre. They compete with your decision to stay in one.
Set that against what the numbers show right now. Radnor Township recorded 257 closed sales over the twelve months ending August 14, 2026, at a median sale price of $1,150,000, per Bright MLS data. Those homes sold in a median of six days at exactly 100 percent of list price. Just 28 homes were actively listed. The median closed home was 71 years old.
Twenty eight active listings against 257 annual sales. Radnor does not have an inventory problem so much as it has a nobody moves problem.
Why the Downsizing Path Matters More Than the Unit Count
Look at that age figure again. A median closed property age of 71 years, in a township where the typical sale clears $1,150,000 in six days, describes a market where long tenured owners are sitting on substantial equity in large older homes. The reason many of them do not list is not price. It is that there is nowhere in Radnor to move to.
That is the quiet mechanism worth understanding, and it works in your favor if you own one of those houses. When a market adds age targeted housing, it often loosens the resale market above it, because owners who wanted to stay local finally have somewhere local to go. The 43 acre parcel would not be adding 224 households to Radnor so much as rearranging where existing ones live, and freeing up the houses behind them.
The traffic and stormwater objections deserve a fair hearing, and the neighbors raising them are not wrong to. Development at this density genuinely changes a road and a watershed, and reasonable people weigh that against housing supply differently. Both concerns are legitimate. If you own a large older home here and have wondered where you would even go, this is the Radnor PA real estate story worth following through the fall.
What This Means for You
If you own in Radnor and have been putting off a move because the next step was unclear, watch the planning commission calendar rather than the headlines. Approval timelines on projects like this run years, not months, so it should inform your thinking without setting your schedule. If you are buying here, understand that 28 active listings and a six day median means you are competing for a very small pool, and waiting for this project to add supply is not a strategy.
Pricing a home in a market this thin depends on recent comparable sales, not on county averages that include markets nothing like this one. Our Radnor market page tracks what is actually closing across the township, which is the right starting point whether you are listing a longtime family home or shopping the Main Line.
Thinking about buying or selling in Radnor? Let’s talk.
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