Why the Orchard Park Median Doesn't Match What Birdsong Is Actually Selling For

On December 11, 2025, the Orchard Park Planning Board took up a request that looks strange for a neighborhood most people assume is finished: permission to clear more trees. The applicant behind Birdsong Part 2, a 51-lot subdivision at the end of Rock Dove Lane, was still asking the town to let it prepare raw ground for construction, four years after Forbes Capretto Homes opened a model home nearby promising "the perfect combination of privacy and convenience."

If you've searched Orchard Park listings for more than a week, you've probably seen Birdsong come up several times, and each time it looked like a different price bracket. That's because it is. Birdsong isn't a subdivision that was built once and is now quietly appreciating. It's an active development pipeline with at least five distinct sections in different stages of construction, permitting, and neighbor dispute, and the town-wide median price you see on any portal is blending all of them together with everything else selling in Orchard Park that month.

The number that actually matters isn't the town median. It's which section of Birdsong a listing sits in, because that determines whether you're buying a finished lot next to a town-maintained nature trail or a home going up next to ground that was still being cleared this past winter.

One Name, Five Ongoing Projects

Trace Orchard Park's own planning records and Birdsong stops looking like a neighborhood and starts looking like a company's active project list. The subdivision's earliest section, referred to in town records as Birdsong Prime, was already complete by the time the Planning Board revisited later phases in February 2025. Behind it, additional sections filled in over the following years: Birdsong Part 2, Part 3B, and eventually Parts 4 and 5, which the town rezoned in 2025 and renamed Lexington Heights. The street names carry a consistent bird theme throughout: Kingfisher Court, Mallard Lane, Mourning Dove Court, Sandpiper Court, and Woodthrush Trail all branch off Birdsong Parkway, which enters from Jewett Holmwood Road.

The pace hasn't slowed. In June 2025, the Orchard Park Town Board approved rezoning roughly 125 acres of Lexington Heights from standard R-1 to R-1 with a Conservation Management Overlay, clearing the way for as many as 129 single-family homes. The same meeting released escrow funds back to the builder for two smaller, finished items: street lighting on Autumn Lane and tree plantings in a cul-de-sac in Birdsong Part 3B Phase 2B. Five months later, in November 2025, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation opened a comment period on a separate filing entirely: a proposed 61-lot Birdsong Subdivision Phase 2, which would touch 2.62 acres of the buffer around a mapped freshwater wetland. Buffer plantings and permanent monuments were proposed to keep future homeowners from mowing lawn into the protected area.

The Gate That Almost Wasn't There

None of this has moved forward without friction, and it's the kind a buyer touring a finished street would never see on a listing sheet. At that same February 2025 Planning Board meeting, members spent real time debating whether new construction should connect to Birdsong Prime through an emergency access gate. One board member worried the gate could freeze shut in winter, precisely when emergency responders would need it most. The applicant, David Capretto, ultimately proposed an alternate layout with no connection to Birdsong Prime at all. The street grid a buyer sees in early renderings for a still-permitting phase isn't guaranteed to match what eventually gets built.

A year earlier, in 2024, a different kind of friction surfaced. Residents packed a town board meeting to oppose a rezoning that would have replaced planned houses in Birdsong Part 5 with patio homes, according to the Orchard Park Bee's coverage of that meeting. The proposal didn't sail through as originally filed. The lesson for a buyer isn't about that specific dispute. It's that plans for unbuilt sections of Birdsong have changed more than once, and a phase that looks settled on a site map can still be renegotiated before a single foundation is poured.

What the Town-Wide Number Is Actually Averaging

As of August 2026, Orchard Park's town-wide median list price sits at $544,000, with homes spending a median of 17 days on the market, a figure essentially unchanged from the same month a year earlier. Earlier in the year, a separate pull of Realtor.com-sourced data put the town's median list price even higher, at $801,150 in February 2026. Depending on which month or which data source you check, the town-wide figure moves by more than a quarter million dollars.

Neither number gets you to what Birdsong is actually charging for new construction. As of this spring, Forbes Capretto's own site priced new homes in Birdsong from $823,900 to $1,139,900, on houses ranging from 2,473 to 4,202 square feet. That floor price sits above even the higher of the two town-wide medians. The reason isn't that Birdsong is mispriced. A town-wide median has to average in every ranch and colonial selling elsewhere in Orchard Park that month, and one subdivision, even a large one, doesn't close enough homes in any given month to pull the citywide number up to meet it. Comparing "Orchard Park's median" to a Birdsong asking price means comparing the whole town to one of its most active, and most expensive, construction sites.

The Trail Only Half the Neighborhood Can Walk To Yet

The contrast shows up on the ground, too. Birdsong Park, maintained by the Town of Orchard Park off Birdsong Parkway, has a paved walking path circling a large grass field, six handicap-accessible wooden bridges, and nearly a mile of crushed-stone trail through wooded and pond areas, according to the town's own parks inventory. Trail visitors describe deer, heron, and mallards along the boardwalks, and a quiet, wooded feel that traces back to the trail's establishment in 2006.

That amenity sits closest to the oldest, most finished streets: Kingfisher Court, Mallard Lane, Woodthrush Trail. A buyer touring those blocks is touring a settled section with a mature tree canopy and a park behind it. A buyer touring the terminus of Rock Dove Lane, where Part 2 was still requesting tree-clearing approval as of December 2025, is touring a construction zone that happens to share a subdivision name and a bird-themed street sign.

How to Ask About a Birdsong Listing

None of this means Birdsong is a bad place to buy. It means the name alone doesn't tell you what you're buying. A few questions are worth asking before you tour:

• Which Part or phase is the listing in, and is that phase complete, under construction, or still in town review?
• Has the phase's rezoning or subdivision plan been finalized by the Planning Board and Town Board, or is it still pending?
• If the listing borders an unbuilt section, is there a confirmed street connection, or could access change before construction finishes?
• Is the lot near the wetland buffer named in the Phase 2 filing, where buffer plantings and monuments will restrict future lawn expansion?

An agent working a specific address can usually answer these from the town's own planning file numbers, most of which are public record through Orchard Park's Planning Board agendas.

Is Birdsong still adding new construction? Yes. Phase 2's 61-lot wetland permit was still under state review as of November 2025, and Part 2's 51 lots were still awaiting tree-clearing approval as of December 2025.

Where does the Birdsong nature trail start? Birdsong Park sits off Birdsong Parkway, reached from Jewett Holmwood Road, and connects to the town's crushed-stone trail system through the subdivision's older, built-out sections.

Comparing an active, multi-phase subdivision like Birdsong to a town-wide median is a job that rewards someone who reads planning minutes as closely as listing sheets. Brennan Macey and The Macey Team spend as much time in Orchard Park's public records as they do on showings, matching each Birdsong phase's real status to what a buyer is actually paying for. If you're weighing a finished street against a section still working through town approval, reach out and Let's Connect before you write an offer.