New Homes in North Carolina

New, sunlit four bedroom and four bathroom retreat on two plus acres. Tranquil, wooded setting, located moments from Chapel Hill. Select red oak hardwoods, granite, stainless steel appliances, double ovens, cherry cabinets, gas cooktop, first floor bedroom, built-ins, skylights, screened porch, designer tile baths, wetbar, deck with built-in seating, wrap-around porch, amazing green views! Fireplaces in owners and family rooms. Central vac. Kitchen open to family room. Large bedrooms.

Governors Lake... From the $420's


The homes in Governors Lake feature gourmet kitchens with solid surface countertops and GE appliances, and tile and hardwood floors. Just minutes from Governors Club Golf Course, Jordan Lake and Chapel Hill, Governors Lake keeps you close to everything you need. And with amenities including a swimming pool, playground, park, tennis courts, walking trails and a lake, Governors Lake is the ideal location for your new home. With a variety of home designs, including ranches and two-story homes with first- or second-floor master bedrooms, you'll find the perfect home in this premier community.

School District Information:

Chatham County

The Gabels at Greystone... From the $390's


NOW SELLING single family homes from 2950 square feet to over 3700 square feet. Town homes COMING SOON! Enjoy the community pool, clubhouse, playground and walking trails. Great West Cary location in close proximity to Research Triangle Park, area universities and Thomas Brooks Park.

School

These Boys need a Home, owner has terminal Cancer and is heart-broken. If interested, please contact the author of the Blog.

Thanks to you Dog Lovers Out there!

The Sprufera family - clockwise from top, father John, mother Lynn, Anthony, 11, Jessica, 9, and John, 17 - chat during dinner in their North Raleigh home. The Spruferas moved to the Triangle from Long Island.

John and Lynn Sprufera and their three children moved to North Raleigh from New York's Long Island last summer, embarking on a journey that just about all their friends have considered making at some point. On Long Island, Lynn Sprufera says, the word is out about North Carolina.
"Everyone talks about it," she said. "It's like a buzzword."

The Spruferas came to Raleigh after spending their entire lives in Suffolk County, which between 2001 and 2005 lost 1,875 of its residents to five Triangle counties, according to a nationwide study of Internal Revenue Service tax filings conducted by The Charlotte Observer.

Along with Fairfax County, Va., outside Washington (2,397), Los Angeles County (2,089) and Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago (2,034), Suffolk sent more people to the Triangle during that period than any other counties outside North Carolina.

If there is a thread linking the Spruferas and other transplants from these areas, it is a feeling that many of America's most populous counties are no longer places where getting ahead seems possible. In the Triangle, many people see the chance to enjoy a quality of life that has been slipping out of reach.

"It's like Suffolk County 30 years ago," John Sprufera said.

Between 2000 and 2005, the Raleigh-Cary region, which includes much of the Triangle, grew by 19 percent to almost 950,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The area was ranked the 18th fastest-growing region in the country.

Although the Triangle is experiencing its share of growing pains -- most notably, on roads and in schools -- economists say the area remains attractive because it has high job growth, a relatively low cost of living and a moderate climate.

"If you look at this area from 5,000 feet up, we still have a lot of room to grow," said Michael Walden, an economics professor at N.C. State University. "We'll probably have those factors making us more attractive for the foreseeable future."

A place of one's own

Of all the Triangle's attributes, few are more alluring than affordable housing. Over the past several years, real estate markets in the metropolitan areas around Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington and New York have priced out many of the people who have moved to the Triangle.

In 2005, the median monthly housing costs for homeowners in Fairfax County, including utilities, was $2,133, compared with an average of $1,383 for Durham, Orange and Wake counties, according to the census.

Eric and Cristina Middleton house-hunted in the Washington area for a year before finally giving up and moving to Cary in June. The family of four was living in a 1,700-square-foot townhouse in Springfield, Va., which was keeping them from having a third child.

Cristina Middleton said she and her husband realized they would have to spend $600,000 just to purchase a fixer-upper in suburban Virginia.

"We wouldn't have any money to fix it up," she said.

In Cary, which ranked fifth on last year's Money Magazine list of the best places to live, the Middletons bought a 3,800-square-foot home for $460,000. Eric Middleton, who works for Cisco Systems, transferred to the company's offices in Research Triangle Park.

The move means Cristina Middleton no longer lives in the same neighborhood as her mother and brother, but she had a simple answer when family members asked how she could leave: "I want a house and a yard."

For many transplants, leaving a white-hot real estate market has given them seed money to start a new life in North Carolina.

Perspective: Buyers, sellers deserve chance to shop for settlement services





One of the most dysfunctional aspects of the typical real estate transaction is the near inability of home buyers and sellers to comparison shop for settlement services. A new business model that creates some sort of transparency has been introduced and is welcome, though whether this particular model is exactly the right tool for this important job remains to be seen.

Comparison shopping is severely limited today because buyers and sellers have little or no easy and reasonable access to information about settlement-related products and services. This dearth of information encompasses the nature of these products and services, the differences (if any) among similar products and services offered by various companies, the level of customer satisfaction with these products and services, and lastly, but not insignificantly, the prices of these products and services.

In lieu of comparison shopping, buyers and sellers typically select settlement services without much thought and typically on the recommendation or as a result of the outright decision-making power of real estate brokers and agents, and lenders and mortgage brokers. This system of choice is inherently dysfunctional because those recommendations are strongly influenced by affiliated business arrangements, which are essentially corporate-level kickbacks disguised by cloaks woven of disclosure forms. In the most egregious instances, these recommendations are based not on such legal arrangements, but rather illegal and undisclosed rebates and other perks, pecuniary or otherwise.

New Homes RalegihCary NC
U.S. home buyers and sellers spend $100 billion a year on transaction costs, and buyers' closing costs have risen eightfold in the last 40 years, according to an October Money magazine report. Whether those sums are accurate, reasonable and appropriate is difficult to assess, yet the widespread perception still exists that settlement services come at inflated prices. That perception comes from lack of transparency in the system such that buyers and sellers have little opportunity to choose. Regardless of whether costs are in fact inflated or whether transparency would result in lower costs, more information would at least address the perception. And if costs are indeed reasonable, there should be no objection to transparency of price information.

While Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, PropertyShark and others have focused on property data, another new entrant has tackled the issue of settlement costs with an intriguing business model. Lowerfees.com allows companies to advertise fees and provides estimates based on fee quotes submitted by those companies. Buyers and sellers enter their own data into the Lowerfees.com Web site, which then generates a quote for the services.

Judging by the current state of the Lowerfees.com Web site, the company's execution has thus far not fully met the promise of the concept: The data fields in the vendor profiles are underpopulated, and in at least a few instances, only first names are used for some vendors. The customer satisfaction statistics, blogs and other resources exist more in concept than fact and other areas of the Web site are also still under construction.

Yet despite those weaknesses, Lowerfees.com appears to have identified a need in the marketplace and created a model that could meet that need once the Web site is fully developed. The fact that others have tried unsuccessfully to introduce variations on this model doesn't mean the idea isn't worthwhile.

However, where Lowerfees.com seems to have missed the mark is in its obsession with "lower fees," rather than meaningful information about settlement products and services, and what differentiates providers and their products from one another. Commodities are sold on the basis of price, and are subject to intense price competition because there is by definition no other basis of differentiation -- commodities are identical by nature.

But real estate settlement services shouldn't be commodities. Instead, providers should offer buyers and sellers meaningful choices among differentiated products and services at various price points. Differentiation would empower vendors to compete for business without the threat of a price war.

The opportunity still exists for Lowerfees.com -- or another competitor -- to make differentiation as well as price a selling point for not only buyers and sellers, but vendors as well. That sort of marketplace would give real meaning to transparency.

Now Selling Final Phase

Cedar Grove Fairways in Wakefield Plantation is country club living in a family atmosphere. Wakefield Plantation offers excellent Wake County schools and unmatched amenities.

The family orientated TPC Sports Club facility includes 8 tennis courts, a Jr. Olympic competition pool, a water park pool with 100 foot waterslide, and a kiddie pool. The facilty features a grille, locker rooms, a golf/tennis shop and a fitness center. Additionally, Wakefield has an 18-hole TPC golf course and a 9-hole executive course.

In Cedar Grove Fairways you'll have your choice of 3 spacious open floor plans with basements and golf course lots available.