South Charlotte Living

UPDATE 2/8/2010: Apparently I have severely offended someone by reblogging this fantastic article. It seems as thought the original author, Claude Cross, allowed Magnolia Tree to purchase some of this content. Since I did not see any reference telling the reader that this gentleman was the author and I only found the information on the Magnolia Tree, I gave proper recognition to Magnolia Tree as anyone else would. This morning, I received several threatening notes from Mr. Cross stating that he was the rightful owner and I was plagiarizing because I did not give him the credit. Well Mr. Cross. Since most of this content is yours I humbly apologize for being ignorant about it as there is no where else on the internet with your name attached to this information at the time of the post. I still think its fantastic information and I have received e-mails from readers stating as such.  Enjoy the article!

As I was browsing through the internet during my lunch break I came across this thread by Magnolia Tree… Now they are mostly a Home and Gardening Blog, but I was happy to have found that they wrote about my neck of the woods. I love living in South Charlotte mainly because of the lifestyle and the people. The traffic can be hectic on occasion, but you’ll find that anywhere if you stay put long enough.  I’ve been in every one of the communities they mention and know them all pretty well. I wrote about some of the communities mentioned in the past. Enjoy!

If location is king in real estate, then Waxhaw (in Union County) uses its prime location to its supreme advantage. The town runs right up to the edge of Mecklenburg County. This area is a big draw for people venturing out of the South Charlotte real estate market. Folks like to live here for three very good reasons; it’s location, excellent schools, and low, low taxes (just shy of half that which you would pay in Charlotte)! Here, you are more apt to find homes with 6,000 square feet, than to find homes with 2500 square feet. Most of the homes are relatively new, as are the schools. The area really expanded its growth upon the heels of South Charlotte and the Ballantyne Development. Once horse country, a drive down any of its old country roads would take you past some beautiful rolling pasture land, with barns as the backdrop for the horses that grazed there. A few farms are left, but most have succumbed to developers. Home to many estates.

 Here you’ll find one very large development, with three sections: Providence Downs, Providence Downs South and The Residences of Providence Downs South. Each street within the development is named after a Derby winner or a horse of note. Home prices range from $500, 000 to $3.5 Million (July 2009). The school set up is Marvin Elementary, Middle and High School. The community offers a clubhouse, pool, tennis and basketball courts, soccer fields, a putting green, fitness center, and walking trails. Many of these homes have their own pool…and a little of everything else! Very grand, indeed.

Another development close to the South Charlotte border is Toll Brothers’ Marvin Creek. Marvin Creek’s idea of a pool area, will leave you scratching your head. It is every child’s dream pool! Noted for its incredible amenities, Marvin Creek’s residents enjoy a 6,500 square foot clubhouse with a beach pool, lazy river, geyser park, tennis and multipurpose courts. The entrance to the community is equally impressive with a spray of fountains and guardhouse. Homes in this neighborhood typically range in price from $600,000-$900,000; with 4,000-6,000 heated square feet-give or take a few!

 

The Club at Longview is also tucked in right across the border. Rated #11 in NC by Golf Digest, this gated community opened in 2003. A Jack Nichlaus Signature course, sporting a 28,000 square foot clubhouse with multiple lounges, dining areas and terraces. Stunning. The 10,000 square foot activity center’s lower level is complete with massage and steam rooms, state of the art work out equipment, and fitness classes. If you need a place for the kids, there is a Youth Lodge upstairs. The pool facilities offer both adult and family resort-style pools, with a wading area and a hot tub. There are also four Har-Tu tennis courts. This is just one of a very few gated communities in the Charlotte real estate market. Prices range from $900,000 to $3.5 million.

The draw for all of these neighborhoods, is the convenient location to South Charlotte. Within a five mile range, you can be at one of many fine establishments. Every type of restaurant, boutique, national, local and chain store imaginable…all set amongst fountains, and nightly music, theatres, plenty of plenty! It is also very easy on the eye. Each shopping area has been beautifully developed with the use of pedestrian friendly venues. Going from shop to shop is no hardship here. The use of landscaping has softened the retail shops and the roadways. It’s all very, very nice.

 Some of our MOST popular neighborhoods on this ‘just over the border’ area of South Charlotte, would be the communities of Hunter Oaks and Somerset. They were the hottest neighborhoods going, when the roads opened up into Union County. They have continued to be top sellers in the Charlotte real estate market today. Both offer wonderful swim clubs, tennis courts and playgrounds. Buffed up by huge Oak and Magnolia trees, sidewalks a plenty and street lamps. The price ranges in here from $300,000 to $500, 000. The square footage range is between 2200 and 4500. The schools are yet another draw, with Rea View Elementary, Marvin Ridge Middle and High School. So, there you have it! If you are shopping for Charlotte NC real estate, don’t overlook it’s bordering counties!

Thank you again to Magnolia Tree Gardening (Claude Cross) for posting this information. As a resident of South Charlotte, I couldn’t agree with you more!

Mooresville New Construction 100% GREEN Community

People have been chatting about a new community in Mooresville…. Sills Creek Estates since June this past year, but no one seems to know whats it’s all about.

As the exclusive Realtor for the 72 home luxury community this is a HUGE undertaking. How do you tell thousands of Realtors about a completely GREEN community? I’m not talking 1 or 2 homes, every one of the 72 homes will be LEED certified! yah, every one of them. There’s over 5 miles of riding trails for you and your horse or if you want to walk by yourself or with a friend. There’s a stocked fishing pond with a really nice over sized dock too.

Located on Jackson road off route 152 you can’t beat the location. It takes me only 5 minutes to get into downtown Mooresville and 20 to get into the heart of the Lake Norman area. If you go take a gander at the area, all the lots in phase 1 are labeled, there’s a large map of where they are and the roads are in. The lots are ready to build on. Oh and don’t forget to stop in at McCaan’s Place. it’s on the left on rt 152 as you are in route to Sills Creek. They have the BEST hamburgers on a bulkie roll around! They are a family run establishment and open early for breakfast as well.

If your the internet type and love to do research on something before you make the trip, visit the Sills Creek Estates page on my personal site or the Sills Creek Estates official site.

All the homes in Phase 1 are in the Charlotte MLS and can be found on Zillow and Trulia

I hope to see some of my AR friends and their clients there! If your out of state and looking to relocate, I specialize in relocation and look forward to helping you design your new home.

Going GREEN

Ever since I finished my classes to achieve my GREEN designation early this past October, I have been asked by several other Realtors what the big deal is about the designation. Well….first I wanted to know what I can do to live a little greener and help show others how they can reap the rewards of living a little greener as well.

Fate so has it that I am working for a builder that is also thinking along the very same lines as I am. The builders name is HILCO Construction, and he’s a Certified Green Professional which is a designation awarded by the National Home Builders Association. He is the exclusive builder of Sills Creek Estates in Mooresville off rt 152 just past the Mooresville Dragway. He’s building homes as I remember them being built when I was a child. Keeping the trees and natural landscaping and removing only what needs to be removed, recycling materials, using energy-efficient designs and building a neighborhood with the look and feel of, what seems like so long ago, a NEIGHBORHOOD. Not the street lined track homes that are so easily “knocked out” these days.

So whats the big deal with “Going GREEN”? Well there’s numerous reasons for going green and your probably already living a little greener already and don’t even know it. If you have Energy Star appliances, that’s a start. If you purchased those long life spiral shaped light bulbs, thats another… my mother and her friends were into cleaning with citrus at one point as well as using Simple Green, and almost everyone I know recycles, so you see, living green is really easy, and this is the simple stuff.

If you want to REALLY go GREEN, then you can look into one of HILCO’s homes. He’s building homes that aren’t just good for the environment, they’re good for you. He’s using designs that are sustainable and installing today’s technology to enhance the overall quality of life for the homeowner. Air quality will be improved, water filtration systems will be used as well as rain water collection barrels to help with irrigation. When the US Green Building Council reports that buildings are consuming 14% of potable water (thats 15 trillion gallons of water that we can drink), 40% of raw materials (3 billion tons) and 39% of the energy in the US alone…. we have GOT to do something to cut back, and why not? Cut back on your energy usage is just the same as putting money back in your pockets so you don’t have to cut back on the activities you love because your paying those high energy bills. Seems pretty much like a no brainer to me.

So when you’re raking the leaves…again…that have fallen from your maple tree in the front lawn this fall, be thankful for it has probably shaded your home during the hot summer months aiding in the reduction of your overall home cooling bill.

When People Say It Can’t Be Done…

It can’t be done… You don’t have the experience… That’s impossible…. it’s not going to happen…

When I get fed negativity like this, I instantly turn it into something to prove them all wrong, but not all people can. I was blessed with the drive to do better when people gave up on me.  It wasn’t always this way and of course, like anything that’s worth anything, is worth working for… right? Right. Just agree with me on this one. I’m going somewhere with this…really, I am.

Today I spoke to an appraiser who will remain anonymous to protect his reputation. He seemed quite pessimistic about what I was asking of him. “They are crazy” he would say ”It will never work” he kept telling me. Hrmmmph! …. I went along with what he said, thanked him for his time and hung up determined to prove this guy wrong.

So, today is the 1st day of many to come in which I am going to do just that. Of course I can’t do it by myself and I will need the aid of everyone who reads this.  It’s going to start with a link I would like you all to go visit. It’s on YouTube so the quality is…well…YouTubish and not very good. Click here.

OK great! Thanks for coming back! What did you think? Pretty nifty eh? Not bad for $3.00 and a few moments of my time. This is just the beginning and I need everyone’s help to make this project succeed. Just as anything else, I welcome constructive criticism. You can leave your comments on the you tube site or come back here and post up.

You all are going to help be a part of the collective effort that all realtors around the globe try to achieve… keeping negativity out of todays Real Estate market!

Thanks!

The Community of Piper Glen

The community of Piper Glen is located in South Charlotte on Rea rd right between Rt 51, Pineville-Matthews Rd and Ballantyne Country Club Dr. You may have heard of it because of the golf course that the community is built around.

 

TCP Piper Glen is a joy to play. Arnold Palmer has balanced the combination of beautiful landscaping and playability. But that’s not the only reason why people want to move here. You can imagine what the economy is doing to these huge homes. It’s extremely unfortunate for everyone when a WHOLE community is put into flux, but that’s whats happening here. Piper Glen has not been able to dodge the economic blow. As of the writing of this blog, there are 50 homes currently listed as active here all ranging from $319,000 to $3.8 million, but the truly fantastic thing about all these listings is that only 4 are a short sale, foreclosure or a corporate home. So what does that mean? It means that although prices are coming down and a buyer can get a great deal, there is little worry that these deals are because of foreclosures, but are the direct result of smart people making a smart move.

Providence Downs South

Ahhhh…. Beautiful Providence Downs South. One of the most majestic luxury communities near Weddington, NC. With its roads named after some of the most famous race horses; like Giacomo Dr, Smarty Jones Dr, Funny Cide Dr, Strike the Gold Ln and Sir Huon Ln. The most discriminating buyer will find something here they will enjoy.

Home sites start around $199,900 where you can hire some of the best builders in Charlotte like Arcadia Homes, Avallon, Holevas & Holton, Stylecraft, Persis-Nova, or Trident builders to name a few, and start living within a resort style estate community.

The Gated entrance lets you know there is something special in this neighborhood. Extra wide streets, Tennis courts, A large beautiful Clubhouse, Exercise cabana and wooded estate lots, but if your a Realtor in the Charlotte area, you know that Providence Downs South has had it’s fare share of losses.

I was approached by a builder back in February when most listings were over the 1Million dollar price point. I’m not going to mention any names but he had an agent representing 2 of his homes for quite some time and he was interested in switching when the contract expired later that month. I, of course, said I could chat about a future contract with him and took a tour of the homes. He asked me ar what price I believed the houses would sell at. I know this community very well and have been tracking it’s progress for quite some time. I never took a listing here because of the length of time the homes remain on the market and the inflexibility of the sellers. This builder was no exception. I gave him a range somewhere around $400,000 less than what he was asking for.

Yes. Our tour ended there and he never asked for me to take his listings, but I was going to stick to that figure never the less.

Jump ahead a few months to May. The market is really getting bombarded by the housing cirsis and prices in this community are starting to drop like flies, 3 and 4 listings per day, just so builders can stay afloat; but alas there are still no sales.

Today. July 13th there are 55 active listings here, one of which is a whopping 12,000 square foot, to be built, estate with a staggering $3,495,000 price tag. This is not the builders home I was speaking about. His homes have been humbly reduced to a little over $850K & $950K with the same agent and now at over 700 days on the market.

There IS light at the end of this sad story. In the past 3 months there have been 8 sales ranging from $700,000 to a little over $950,000. Can I see the future? heck no, I just proved that if you watch a community for long enough you can be ahead of the curve, and that’s the name of the game so few Realtors seem to grasp.

Providence Downs South may have been stagnant, but seeing this recent activity, I believe it may be high time to start taking a listing or two here….