Drive west on Route 910 through Franklin Park on a weekday afternoon and the character of the borough changes twice before you reach the county line. Near the older sections, half-acre and acre lots sit behind mature tree lines, colonials and center-hall traditionals spaced the way builders spaced them in the 1980s and 90s. Closer to the interstate, the road narrows into a construction zone, flaggers direct traffic around new ramp work, and the parcels on either side are zoned for something the older neighborhoods were never built to allow.
Both of these are Franklin Park. Neither is more representative than the other. And that split, written directly into the borough's own zoning code, is the reason a buyer comparing Franklin Park to Wexford or Pine Township on price alone is comparing two different housing markets wearing one municipal name.
Two Zoning Districts, Two Very Different Promises
Franklin Park Borough's zoning code does not pretend the whole town functions the same way. The R-1 and R-2 Single Family Residential districts are described in the borough's own zoning summary as combining "the preservation of natural features and resources with low-intensity residential development suited to the natural conditions and rural character of portions of the Borough." That is the Franklin Park most buyers picture: generous lots, low density, a subdivision layout built around privacy rather than proximity.
The M-2 Mixed Use district tells a different story. It is written to provide "high intensity residential development" of up to 24 dwellings per gross acre, specifically located adjacent to an interstate interchange to allow, in the borough's own words, quick access to the region's transportation network. The M-3 district, meanwhile, sets aside land for mobile home park development at six dwelling units per gross acre alongside light industrial and commercial uses.
Laid out side by side, the contrast is stark:
- R-1 and R-2: low-intensity, large-lot single family, framed explicitly around rural character preservation
- M-2: up to 24 dwellings per gross acre, positioned deliberately near interstate access
- M-3: mobile home park development at six units per gross acre plus mixed commercial and light industrial use
A buyer who assumes every Franklin Park listing sits on the R-1 side of that line is working from an incomplete map.
The Interchange Project That Makes the M-2 Language Real
The M-2 district's language about proximity to an interstate interchange is not theoretical right now. PennDOT is in the middle of a $46.5 million rebuild of the I-79/Route 910 Wexford Interchange, a full offset single-point urban interchange spanning roughly a mile and a half of I-79 and Route 910, running through both Franklin Park Borough and Marshall Township between Nicholson Road and Brandt School Road/VIP Drive. Contractor Golden Triangle Construction Company Inc. began active work in August 2025, and PennDOT's project page lists a proposed completion of October 2027, with lane restriction updates still being posted as recently as this month.
This is the exact corridor the borough's M-2 zoning was written for. An interchange upgrade of this scale, sitting inside a zoning district that already permits up to 24 units per acre, is the kind of infrastructure detail that tends to shape what gets built nearby over the following few years, not what has already been built. A buyer evaluating a new listing near that stretch of Route 910 is not just buying a house. They are buying into a corridor the borough has already zoned for a different future than the one a mile away in the R-1 district.
What Council Changed in 2024, Without Much Fanfare
Zoning designations only tell you what is legally possible. Ordinance amendments tell you where the borough is actively steering. In 2024, Franklin Park Borough Council passed two ordinances that did exactly that. Ordinance No. 687-2024 rewrote the Residential Uses Area and Bulk Requirements Table and loosened a specific multifamily design standard, raising the maximum share of a townhouse building's front facade that attached garage doors are allowed to occupy from 50 percent to 70 percent. Ordinance No. 689-2024 amended the same table again, this time adjusting the height standards that apply to townhome construction.
Neither ordinance rezoned a single parcel. Both simply made it easier to build the kind of garage-forward, higher-density townhouse product that the M-2 district already permitted. That is a quiet signal, but a legible one: the borough is not resisting the multifamily side of its own zoning code. It is refining the rules to make that product easier to build well.
Why Franklin Park's Median Price Won't Sit Still
This is where the zoning split stops being a planning detail and starts showing up in the numbers a buyer actually sees. Franklin Park is a low-volume market, and its headline price statistics have been genuinely erratic through 2026. In a snapshot covering January 2026, Franklin Park's median sale price stood at $535,000, with days on market dropping sharply from 116 days the year before to 63 days, on a sample of just nine closed sales that month. By August 2026, a different portal's snapshot showed a median list price of $379,000, a 37 percent drop from the same month a year earlier, with days on market falling to 20. A third source's recent figure put the median sale price at $322,500, up 89 percent year over year.
Three snapshots, three different pictures of the same town, all within the same eight months. That is not a market in freefall or in a sudden boom. It is what happens to a median when a small number of monthly closings are drawn from two structurally different housing types. A month where sales skew toward large R-1 colonials pulls the median up. A month where new townhouse or multifamily closings near the M-2 corridor factor in more heavily pulls it down. Neither number is wrong. Both are describing a different slice of the same zoning map.
This is the detail a portal's headline figure cannot show you, and it is the reason a single median price is close to useless for comparing Franklin Park against a more zoning-uniform neighborhood like Wexford or Pine Township. You are not comparing two markets. You are comparing one market's headline number against a blend of two markets that happen to share a mailing address.
What This Means If You're Cross-Shopping Franklin Park
If Franklin Park is on your shortlist because of its reputation for space and privacy, the smart move is to treat that reputation as a description of the R-1 and R-2 districts specifically, not the borough as a whole. Before comparing a listing's price to what you have seen in a neighboring township, it is worth confirming a few things directly with the borough or your agent:
- Which zoning district the property actually sits in, since R-1/R-2, M-2, and M-3 parcels can appear on the same listing search without the district ever being flagged
- How close the parcel is to the Route 910 interchange corridor, given the active construction and the zoning already in place for higher-density development there
- The subdivision's vintage, since Franklin Park's older large-lot neighborhoods and its newer townhouse product were built under different area and bulk standards, including the 2024 amendments to garage and height rules
- Whether the comparable sales your agent is pulling are drawn from the same district as the home you are evaluating, not just the same zip code
None of this makes Franklin Park a harder place to buy. It makes it a place where the zoning code, not the median price on a portal, is the more honest starting point for understanding what a given address actually offers.
A Few Questions Worth Asking
Does the interchange construction affect the older R-1 neighborhoods, or just the parcels near Route 910? The project's footprint is concentrated along I-79 and Route 910 between Nicholson Road and Brandt School Road/VIP Drive. Established large-lot neighborhoods set back from that corridor are not part of the construction footprint, though anyone commuting through the interchange should expect ongoing lane restrictions through the project's projected completion in October 2027.
Will the 2024 ordinance changes affect homes already built under the older standards? No. Ordinance No. 687-2024 and No. 689-2024 govern new construction going forward. Existing homes are not required to conform to the revised garage or height standards.
Where can I confirm a specific property's zoning district before I make an offer? Franklin Park Borough's Building, Zoning and Fire Official maintains the current zoning map and can confirm a parcel's district directly, which is worth doing before comparing any listing's price to homes in a different part of the borough.
Franklin Park rewards buyers who read its zoning map before they read its median price. If you are comparing Franklin Park to Wexford, Pine Township, or another North Hills community and want a clearer read on what a specific address actually promises, The Honeywill Team can walk you through the district-by-district differences and help you request a free market valuation before you commit to a comparison the headline numbers cannot support on their own.
