Cary's median sales price hit $627,500 in August 2026, up 7.5% from the same month in 2025, according to Doorify MLS data covering single-family homes, townhouses, and condos across the town. That sounds like a clean signal. It isn't one. The report attached to that number includes its own warning: a month with more expensive single-family homes closing can push the median higher even if no individual home actually gained value. Most of those August closings were homes that went under contract back in July, so the number you're reading in September describes buyer behavior from six or eight weeks ago, not today.
If you're comparing Preston to Amberly to MacGregor Downs right now, that distinction matters more than the headline figure itself. The town-wide median is built from whatever mix of homes happened to close in a given month. Ask the same question about a single neighborhood and you get the same distortion, just smaller and easier to miss.
A Number That Moves Without Anything Changing
Look at how differently Cary's price gets reported depending on who's measuring it. Redfin's rolling three-month window through June 2026 put the median sale price at $645,000. Zillow's home value estimate for the same general period sat closer to $629,000. Neither is wrong. They're answering different questions. One measures what homes actually closed for over a specific stretch. The other estimates the value of the entire housing stock, occupied and vacant, listed and not, using a model that updates monthly.
For a buyer, the practical lesson is not to figure out which number is "the real one." The lesson is that any single figure you find on a portal is describing a slice of the market defined by someone else's methodology, not the specific home in the specific neighborhood you're actually considering. That's true at the town level. It's just as true one street over.
The Same Distortion Shows Up Inside a Single Neighborhood
Amberly is the clearest example, because Amberly isn't one housing product. It's townhomes in the Village Square, custom estates in The Peninsula, and Carolina Preserve, a 55-plus active adult section with its own clubhouse and pricing pattern.
In June 2026, Carolina Preserve's median sold price came in around $580,000, while Amberly overall traded closer to $639,000 to $641,000 across the same general window. That's roughly a $60,000 gap sitting inside one neighborhood name. A buyer who hears "Amberly is around $640,000" and starts comparing that number to a Carolina Preserve listing is comparing two different products that happen to share a mailing address.
The same caution applies to Preston and MacGregor Downs. Preston spans townhomes that once started closer to $300,000 up through custom estates well above $3 million. MacGregor Downs itself ranges from around $600,000 resale homes to estate properties near $5.3 million on the water. A neighborhood median tells you almost nothing until you know which section, which lot type, and which era of construction you're actually looking at.
Three Neighborhoods, Three Different Reasons for Where Their Prices Sit
Once you get past the headline numbers, the more useful question is why these three neighborhoods land where they do. It isn't the same story repeated three times at different price points. Each one is shaped by a different structural fact.
Preston holds its price because it's finished. Preston was developed starting in the 1990s, with SAS involved in bringing the land to what it is today, and the neighborhood is fully built out across communities like Preston Village, Preston Pines, Preston Grande, and Preston Forest. There's no new supply coming. Homes here have decades of mature landscaping and tree cover that a newer subdivision can't fast-forward into existing. Scarcity plus maturity is doing the work, not a recent catalyst.
Amberly's price growth traces to a single retail project. Fenton, the 92-acre mixed-use district near Amberly, held its grand opening on June 3 and 4, 2022, bringing Wegmans, Arhaus, and restaurants including Superica and Colletta to what had been a commuter interchange. Amberly's proximity to that development is a specific, dated cause you can point to, not a vague "desirable location" claim. If you're weighing Amberly against a neighborhood without something like Fenton nearby, you're weighing a location that got a concrete amenity upgrade in 2022 against one that didn't.
MacGregor Downs trades below its water access because of its capital history, not its lake. MacGregor Downs Country Club was founded in 1967 by developer Greg Poole Sr., who built the 40-plus acre lake originally for irrigation before it became the neighborhood's signature feature. The club stayed member-owned for decades, but by the mid-2010s it was facing deferred maintenance on aging infrastructure. In 2014, the membership brought in an outside operator, Concert Golf Partners, which funded more than $4 million in capital improvements to the course and clubhouse. That recapitalization kept the club solvent and modernized, but it also means MacGregor Downs never went through the kind of single-owner, executive-development branding that shaped Preston. The result is a neighborhood with genuine lakefront homes trading in the $450,000 to $800,000 range on the resale side, a real discount relative to Preston for buyers who want water without the Preston price tag.
None of this makes one neighborhood a better value than another in absolute terms. It means the price gap between them is explainable by specific, checkable facts rather than a vague sense that one address sounds more prestigious than the other.
What This Costs You Every Month
The sale price is only the first number. HOA dues and property taxes differ enough between these three neighborhoods to change what a monthly budget actually looks like.
| Neighborhood | Typical Price Range | Monthly HOA Dues | Property Tax Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preston | $700,000 to $1.2M+ | $175 to $225 | About $9,400/year on a $900,000 home |
| Amberly | $450,000 to $1.1M | Varies by section | About $10,400/year on a $1,000,000 home |
| MacGregor Downs | $450,000 to $800,000 | $100 to $160 | About $6,000/year on a $580,000 home |
These tax figures use the combined Town of Cary and Wake County effective rate of roughly 1.04%. The gap between a MacGregor Downs tax bill and an Amberly one isn't just about the sale price. It compounds every year you own the home, which matters more the longer you plan to stay.
Two Questions Worth Asking Before You Compare Neighborhoods
Does a higher median always mean stronger resale? Not necessarily. Preston's price holds up because there's no new inventory to compete with it, which is a different mechanism than Amberly's boost from a nearby retail project or MacGregor Downs' lower entry point tied to its club's ownership history. Strong resale in each case comes from a specific structural reason, not from price level alone.
Will Fenton keep pushing Amberly's prices ahead of Preston and MacGregor Downs? There's no way to promise future appreciation, and any neighborhood's trajectory depends on factors beyond one retail development. What the 2022 opening date does show is that Amberly's recent price movement has an identifiable cause, which is more useful for a buyer than a general assumption that newer areas simply appreciate faster.
If you're trying to figure out which of these three neighborhoods actually fits your budget and your plans, the numbers on a listing page won't answer that on their own. I'd rather walk you through what a specific section of Preston, Amberly, or MacGregor Downs is really trading for right now, and what that means for your monthly costs, not just your offer price. You can start by browsing the Cary neighborhood guide, or if you're ready to talk specifics, let's talk about your next move. If you're the one selling in one of these neighborhoods, pricing your Cary home correctly for today's market is the same conversation from the other side. And when you're ready to see what a comparable home nearby has actually sold for, At Home with Jody can pull that for you directly.
