A $19 million dirt sale, four houses over $4M, and now a KB Home community. Virginia Avenue is having a decade.

Most new communities open quietly. You find out when the flags go up.

Meadowbrook is different, not because of the marketing but because of the street. Virginia Avenue has quietly become the most active development corridor in Campbell, and KB Home just dropped a townhome community into the middle of it.

Here is what the record shows, and then what I think it means.

Meadowbrook, on Virginia Avenue just south of West Campbell Avenue. Three-story townhomes, up to four bedrooms. Rendering courtesy KB Home.

What Virginia Avenue has been doing

Four brand-new single-family homes, all built in 2026, on one street:

Two closed. Two still asking. All four are five-bedroom houses north of $3.8 million on a street where the typical home is a 1950s ranch.

And underneath all of it, one transaction most people missed: in October 2024, a 2.16-acre parcel on Virginia Avenue changed hands for $19,385,000. That is what land costs here before anyone pours a foundation.

What Meadowbrook actually is

KB Home opened it on July 10th. The particulars:

• From $1.2 million
• Three-story townhomes, up to 4 bedrooms and 3.5 baths
• Virginia Avenue just south of West Campbell Avenue, near San Tomas Expressway
• Campbell Union School District and Campbell Union High School District
• Park and playground on site, and John D. Morgan Park within walking distance
• ENERGY STAR certified — a standard fewer than 12% of new homes nationwide meet

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The kitchen overlooks the great room — the layout most buyers say they want and most older Campbell houses do not have.

Sightline from the kitchen through dining to the balcony. On a three-story plan, this floor is where you actually live.

Dining and great room on the middle level.

The great room. Note the window wall — three-story townhomes live or die on how much light reaches the middle floor.

Primary bedroom on the upper level.

Dual vanity, quartz, separate water closet.

The balcony. This is the outdoor room, and on a townhome it is doing the work a backyard does elsewhere — worth walking before you decide how you feel about the plan.

A dedicated laundry room rather than a hallway closet. Small thing. Buyers notice.
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Photographs of the model home, courtesy KB Home.

How it prices against the street

This is the part worth sitting with.

On the same avenue, a new single-family house runs $3.85M to $4.7M, at roughly $969 to $1,273 a foot. Meadowbrook starts at $1.2 million.

Those are not competing products, and that is exactly the point. Virginia Avenue is now selling two completely different things to two completely different buyers, three hundred yards apart. The custom houses are for someone trading up with equity. The townhomes are the only new-construction entry point on the street — and close to the only one in the city under $1.5 million.

I wrote a few weeks ago about why four builders are working in Campbell while Cupertino sits dark. The short version: Campbell's median townhome is 25.8% larger than Sunnyvale's at effectively the same price per foot, which produces about 24.4% more revenue per door. That arithmetic is why this keeps happening here and not thirty minutes north.

Meadowbrook is that thesis with a sales office.

The design studio, and why it matters more than it sounds

KB's model is that you personalize at their Design Studio rather than buying a finished spec. Their Regional GM puts it as buyers "not paying for features they don't value or compromising on ones they do."

Take that seriously, because it cuts both ways.

The plan you pick matters more than the finishes you pick. One is permanent; the other is a weekend and a contractor.

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Study.

Living room finish option.

Bedroom.

Backsplash and fixture options.
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Design Studio selections, courtesy KB Home.

Here is the advice I would give anyone walking in there: spend your money on the things you cannot change later.

The floor plan, the lot within the community, the orientation, the number of bedrooms, the structural options — those are permanent. Backsplash tile, cabinet hardware, light fixtures and paint are a weekend and a contractor at any point in the next twenty years, usually for less than the studio charges.

I have watched buyers spend $40,000 on finishes and take the interior lot. That is exactly backwards.

What I would actually check

The lot within the community. In a townhome development, which unit you get matters enormously and does not show up in the price sheet. End units, corner exposure, what your balcony faces, how far you are from the trash enclosure and the guest parking. Walk it at 6pm on a weekday.

The HOA. Get the budget, the reserve study and the fee schedule before you fall in love. A new community's dues are an estimate until the association is handed over.

The delivery timeline in writing, and what happens if it slips.

And the resale question nobody asks: you are buying one of many nearly identical units. When you sell, you may be competing against your neighbours. That is fine — it is the tradeoff for new construction at this price point — but it means the lot, the plan and the upgrades that are actually structural will matter more at resale than they do at purchase.

The honest read

Campbell has not had many new for-sale townhome options, and it has essentially none under $1.5 million. Meadowbrook opening at $1.2 million on a street where new single-family runs four million is not a contradiction. It is a builder reading the same numbers I have been writing about all year and putting product where the gap is.

Whether it is right for you depends on things a press release cannot tell you: which unit, which plan, what the dues settle at, and what you are giving up versus a 1950s house on its own lot for similar money.

That is a walk-through conversation, and I am happy to have it. Text me at (415) 691-9272 — I will tell you what I would buy in there and what I would avoid, and I have no stake in whether you buy new or resale.