Mauldin Clears 500-Home ‘Missing Middle’ Project as Upstate Buyers Chase Affordability

MAULDIN, S.C. — Mauldin City Council has cleared the way for one of the largest single housing approvals along the Fork Shoals corridor in years, voting 4-3 to rezone roughly 33 acres for Cottage Green, a nearly 500-home community mixing cottages, duplexes and garden-style apartments. Developer HMF Americana says it intends to break ground before the end of 2026, adding a dense wave of smaller-footprint housing to a market still working through an inventory rebound.

The site sits at the corner of Fork Shoals and Ashmore Bridge roads and includes the annexation of about seven acres behind Take Heart Church into the city. Plans call for 226 cottage-style homes paired with a separate multifamily parcel of duplexes and garden apartments, bringing the total to roughly 500 residences on land that had sat largely undeveloped on Mauldin’s southern edge.

The project lands at a pivotal moment for Upstate housing supply. Greenville County’s active resale inventory has climbed an estimated 21% to 28% year over year, median home prices in the Greenville market are running between roughly $370,000 and $480,000 depending on submarket, and 30-year mortgage rates have hovered near 6.3% through the summer. Homes are also sitting longer — an average of 52 to 71 days on market — signs of a resale market that has tilted back toward buyers after years of tight competition.

Even so, builders are still betting on “missing middle” formats like Cottage Green rather than slowing down. Detached new-construction homes in fast-growing Greenville County suburbs routinely list above $400,000, pricing out many first-time and middle-income buyers even as resale supply loosens. Smaller cottages and duplex units let developers hit lower price points on land that’s grown more expensive to acquire and entitle, while still capturing renter and buyer demand from households priced out of traditional subdivisions.

Approval didn’t come easily. The rezoning followed months of resident opposition over density and traffic along the Fork Shoals corridor, and the split council vote reflects a broader tension playing out across Mauldin, Simpsonville and other fast-growing Greenville County suburbs: local governments weighing infrastructure and character concerns against regional pressure to add entry-level and workforce housing supply.

For buyers, projects like Cottage Green could eventually widen the pool of smaller-lot and rental-cottage options as the region’s apartment construction pipeline shows signs of thinning. For developers and investors, the format offers a hedge against rising land and construction costs by shrinking unit size rather than cutting corners on location. And for sellers in the broader resale market, added supply at the entry-level end should keep price appreciation modest, with most forecasts calling for gains of just 2% to 4% across Greenville-area home values in 2026. City officials said construction crews are expected on site before Christmas, making Cottage Green one of the first tests of how quickly missing-middle housing can move from zoning approval to delivered units in the current Upstate market.