Ask anyone who's spent a few years around this market which city gets you more house for less money, Savannah or Richmond Hill, and the answer comes fast: Richmond Hill, twenty five miles south on I-95, small-town price tag. That answer used to be right. As of this summer, it's the wrong question, because the two markets no longer sit where that reputation puts them.
The number that stopped making sense
Over the six months tracked through August 2026, homes in Richmond Hill closed at a median of $446,895. Savannah's median over that same window came in at $359,900. Narrow the window to the three months ending in May 2026 and the gap holds, Richmond Hill's median sale price sat at $402K against Savannah's $339K.
However you slice it, the town that's supposed to be the affordable alternative is currently closing homes $60,000 to $90,000 ahead of the city it's an alternative to.
That's not a rounding error and it's not one weird month. It shows up in two separate six-month tracking windows and it shows up in the shorter three-month snapshots too. Something changed in what each of these medians is actually built from, and that's the part worth understanding before you let either number set your expectations.
Why Richmond Hill's number climbed
Richmond Hill's housing stock is weighted toward recent subdivision construction, and there's a specific reason new construction is what's for sale there right now: the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, a $7.59 billion investment bringing more than 8,500 direct jobs to the I-16 corridor, sits close enough to make Bryan County, and Richmond Hill specifically, the most direct commute for a wave of new hires. Master-planned communities like Heartwood exist to catch exactly that demand, and they're doing it with new-build pricing, not 1990s ranch-house pricing.
That matters for the median because a town built mostly of five-year-old and newer inventory doesn't have an old, paid-off, undersized housing stock left over to drag the number down. Every home selling is priced closer to what it costs to build today, insure today, and finance today. There's no cheap tail on the distribution because there's very little cheap inventory left to sell.
Why Savannah's number still reads lower, even though it doesn't feel lower if you're shopping
Savannah's citywide median is doing something different: it's an average of two markets that barely resemble each other, sitting inside the same city limits.
At the low end, neighborhoods like Windsor Forest carried a median around $228,000 as of the most recent reporting this spring, with Georgetown near $344,950, West Chatham near $340,000, and New Hampstead around $351,390. At the high end, the historic core trades in an entirely different bracket: Downtown Savannah at $943,500, the North Historic District at $959,900, the South Historic District at $1.2 million, and Ardsley Park/Chatham Crescent at $1.164 million.
Blend a $228,000 neighborhood with a $1.2 million one and you get a citywide median that looks moderate on paper while describing almost nothing that's actually for sale in either direction. Richmond Hill has no Windsor Forest. It also has nothing close to the South Historic District. It has one narrower band clustered around new-construction pricing, and right now that band sits above Savannah's blended middle.
Here's the shape of it side by side, using the same spring 2026 reporting window:
| Market | Typical Price Range |
|---|---|
| Savannah, low end (Windsor Forest, Georgetown, West Chatham, New Hampstead) | roughly $228,000 to $351,000 |
| Richmond Hill, citywide median | roughly $402,000 to $447,000 |
| Savannah, citywide median | roughly $339,900 to $359,900 |
| Savannah, historic core (Downtown, North & South Historic District, Ardsley Park/Chatham Crescent) | roughly $943,500 to $1.2 million |
Look at that table and the flipped headline stops being confusing. Richmond Hill didn't get pricier than Savannah. Richmond Hill got narrower, while Savannah stayed wide.
What this actually means if you're choosing between them
If you're comparing these two cities on the citywide median alone, you're comparing two numbers that describe completely different housing products.
- If your priority is the lowest entry price in the metro, it's not sitting in Richmond Hill. It's in Savannah's outer neighborhoods, where a home in the low $300,000s or even the high $200,000s is still findable.
- If your priority is character, walkability, and a house with a story, nothing in Richmond Hill competes with the historic squares. That's a Savannah-only price tier, and it starts closer to $950,000.
- If your priority is predictable new-construction cost, a shorter commute to Metaplant supplier jobs or Fort Stewart, and a home built to current code, Richmond Hill is the more legible option. Just budget for it like an established new-construction market, not a discount suburb next door.
None of that makes one city the smarter buy. It makes the citywide median close to useless for deciding between them. The decision that actually holds up is neighborhood against neighborhood, not city against city.
The financing detail that changes who this affects most
If your target is Savannah's lower-priced side, there's a program worth knowing about before you assume the entry price is the whole story. The City of Savannah runs a down payment assistance program that in 2026 offers eligible buyers purchasing inside city limits up to $50,000, structured as a deferred, no-interest second mortgage rather than a grant you repay monthly. The Georgia Dream Homeownership Program layers on top of that for first-time buyers across Chatham, Effingham, and Bryan counties, with a standard $10,000 in assistance. Stack those against a $228,000 Windsor Forest purchase and the real cash-to-close number for a first-time buyer looks a lot smaller than the sticker price suggests. That kind of tool doesn't move the needle the same way in Richmond Hill's newer subdivisions, where entry prices already sit well above the range these programs were built to bridge.
A few questions worth asking before you write off either city
Did Richmond Hill get expensive across the board, or just at the new-construction end? The latter. The shift is about what's currently for sale, heavily new subdivision inventory, not about older homes suddenly reselling for more.
Does Savannah still have starter homes? Yes. Neighborhoods like Windsor Forest are still trading well under $250,000, even while the historic core pushes the citywide average upward.
Should I skip Richmond Hill because the median moved past Savannah's? Not necessarily. If a shorter commute to Metaplant-driven jobs or Fort Stewart matters to your household, that convenience has a price, and right now the price is visible in the number rather than hidden in a longer drive.
Is this likely to reverse? Hard to say with certainty. As long as Bryan County keeps absorbing new residents tied to the Metaplant, Richmond Hill's inventory will keep skewing new, and new tends to stay priced near the top of its own band rather than drifting back down.
The headline number was never the whole story in this market, and right now it's actively misleading if you take it at face value. The house that fits your budget and your commute is still out there in both cities. Finding it just takes comparing the right neighborhoods against each other, not the two cities as a whole.
If you're weighing Richmond Hill against Savannah, or trying to figure out which pocket of either city actually matches your number, Michele Niles works both sides of this exact comparison across the Lowcountry and coastal Georgia. Schedule a white glove consultation and get a straight read on what your budget buys in each market before you fall in love with the wrong one.
