Durham skyline

Our New Luxury Classification

by Jay on February 15, 2010

Let’s start with some stats

As promised in the last post, DurhamLuxRE will begin to look at a broader range of the luxury home market over a wider area in the Triangle. Specifically, we’re talking about any home listed and/or then sold for at least $450,000. Our old threshold was $700,000 and we still make the distinction between homes between $450K and $700K and those over $700K.

Since we haven’t looked at this lower price range of entry level luxury homes here are the statistics. But first let me head off anyone who might want to argue with the cutoffs. They’re arbitrary and I know it.  There are some very nice homes in the area that are under $450K including mine but you have to make the cutoff somewhere. [click to continue…]

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Urban neighborhood

Shift in Direction

by Jay on January 25, 2010

I was naive.  Maybe too cocky.  But definitely wrong.

With this blog that began almost two years ago, I had hoped to contribute to a revival of the luxury home market in Durham.  It didn’t work.  The collapse of the overall real estate market didn’t help, of course, but the numbers are still pretty dismal.  [click to continue…]

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2009 Durham Luxury Market

December 31, 2009
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A typical year?
A first pass looking at the Durham luxury home statistics for 2009 you might not guess that we’re in a recession. In the 4th quarter 3 homes  closed in Durham for prices over $700,000, the somewhat arbitrary cut off point I use for analyzing the luxury home market in Durham. However, the total [...]

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Third Quarter 2009 Market Report

October 9, 2009
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So what are we to make of this? For several quarters in a row now Durham has maintained over 10% of the luxury market in the Triangle with 13 sales. Since I have been doing these updates, my rather arbitrary definition of the luxury market has been anything in the MLS system that is listed [...]

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Oak Drive Mansion

August 5, 2009
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So far in eighty some posts I have not really featured any of the luxury homes in Durham. But I’ve got a lot of reasons for featuring 11 Oak Drive.  First of all I was the agent for the current owners, Steve and Kim Van Horn when they bought the home several years ago. Steve [...]

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Durham Is…

July 30, 2009
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As the chair of the PR committee for the Downtown Durham Rotary Club I often end up writing the report on the program for the weekly bulletin. Last Monday, Tom Bonfield, Durham’s new city manager and a member of the club presented the program. I’m re-publishing my write-up here because Mr. Bonfield made such a [...]

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More on School Performance

July 27, 2009
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The link below is to a story in the Baltimore Sun about the importance of schools in home buyers assessment of a community. Even folks without school age children often consider the schools as an indicator of the overall livability of a community.
This also supports the larger point that many listing agents and sellers have [...]

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More Good News for Durham Real Estate

July 16, 2009
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There are two things I’m very proud of in terms of my involvement in the community over the years. The first was the small role I played in the late 80’s in downtown revitalization getting Downtown Durham, Inc. off the ground with a coherent marketing theme. During that same timeframe as the Marketing Director of [...]

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Got Your Own Idea of A Luxury Home?

July 4, 2009

Sometimes you can’t have your dream by buying somebody else’s. If your dream is a small estate for your family and a few chosen horses here is a chance to build it yourself.

This site of 10.76 acres is located at 10040 South Lowell Road in Northern Durham. Long time Durhamites know that there is an [...]

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Second Quarter Luxury Home Report

June 30, 2009

More of the Same
Pulling together these statistics on the Durham luxury home market is getting a little boring I’m afraid. Unlike our neighboring counties of Wake, Orange and Chatham, through the economic downturn Durham has not gotten worse…or better. You might see a glimmer of hope in the fact that for the last two quarters [...]

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The Triangle Top Ten

June 29, 2009

Just for fun, I decided to look at the top ten most expensive listings in the Triangle Multiple Listing Service at the end of June.. Here are some observations from the exercise:

The top ten range from $11,900,000 to $3,850,000. Only the top two are over $5 M. It still amazes me that many homes in [...]

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Followers and Sources

June 18, 2009

If you have followed DurhamLuxRE for the last several months you may have wondered about the growing list of followers are of the DurhamLuxRe Twitter Account. As I write this there are 455 followers but there is a good chance that when this gets read there will be more.
There are three basic groups of followers. [...]

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The Tobacco Legacy

June 18, 2009

It may be ironic that sweeping legislation to put tobacco regulation under the control of the FDA has been done during the administration of a president who himself is struggling with a tobacco addiction.  But as Terry Mancour of the London Guardian points out in the article here such regulation was inevitable.
I’m no fan of [...]

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Living in Durham

June 15, 2009

US News and World Report is big on “Best of” lists to generate some readership and sometimes even some controversy. A story published earlier this month listed their Ten Best Places to Live for 2009. Number 7 on the list is…ta da…Durham.
The story is available on the USNWR website at this link along with links [...]

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Economic Indicators

June 7, 2009

Economy Up, Service Down
I have long believed that the health of the economy is inversely proportional to the quality of service in fast food restaurants. When the economy is good, service truly sucks because they are forced to hire  the dregs of the labor pool.  When the economy is bad they can be more selective [...]

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