March 2008

Site Changes

March 31, 2008

I have made some minor changes to the site to help navigation and to promote the objective of improving market conditions for the Durham luxury market.  Quite often people find blogs such as this through search engines. Blogs with frequent posts and links from other sites eventually work their way up the search engine ranking and that [...]

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Historic Hope Valley

March 28, 2008

I’ve just added a link to the website of the Hope Valley Neighborhood Association to the “blogroll” on the left sidebar of this site. Don Stanger, the current president of the association informs me that there are some upgrades to the site in the works that will include over 100 pictures which have been taken [...]

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Love the One You’re With…

March 24, 2008

In his very popular book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Steven Covey tells a story about a man who comes to him at a seminar and confesses that he does not love his wife anymore and wants Covey’s advice.  Covey tells him to love her.  It takes a little more conversation for Covey to [...]

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Just Trust Me…Yeah, Right.

March 19, 2008

There’s lots of blogging going on now in the real estate industry. Unlike this blog, a good deal of it is meant for real estate professionals. Cruising through some of these sites this morning I came across two articles that were thought provoking enough to interrupt what I had planned to do and write this. One article [...]

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Rough and Ready Durham

March 16, 2008

In my conversation with a mortgage executive in Cary last week (that’s not him in the picture,) he questioned me about the wisdom of focusing on the luxury market in Durham. I believe he used the expression “tilting at windmills.” Why focus on one of the few stagnant segments of what, until recently anyway, has [...]

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More on the Triangle’s Most Expensive Listing

March 15, 2008

I had lunch yesterday with a mortgage executive at his office in Cary. He had read the post a few days ago about the drastic price reduction ($23M to $12M) of what is still the most expensive listing in the Triangle. It turns out the original owner was an acquaintence of his and he had [...]

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How about a $100M Home?

March 10, 2008

In the last post I talked about the $23,000,000 listing in Raleigh that was reduced to $12,000,000 in January.  Even at $12M it’s still the most expensive listing in the Triangle MLS. But there are markets where that’s run of the mill. The picture here is of an estate in Lake Tahoe that is listed [...]

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Major Price Reduction

March 10, 2008

When I wrote the Durham Luxury Home Report for 2008 (which is available through a link on the sidebar on the left) the most expensive listing in the Triangle Multiple Listing Service (TMLS) was an estate in North Raleigh that was listed at $23,000,000.  This property had been on the market at that price since [...]

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Habitat in East Durham

March 9, 2008

In the free report available from the link on the sidebar I mention that I wrote much of the report during a period that I was also involved in a Rotary Club project to build a Habitat house in east Durham. Yesterday I attended a dedication ceremony for that house and one directly across the [...]

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Location

March 8, 2008

Why do the luxury homes in Wake, Orange and even Chatham sell more readily than those in Durham? For the most part, access to major highways, the airport, shopping, healthcare and the major employment centers is just as good or better. Convenience is a good thing but it can be trumped by a community’s image.  [...]

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What makes luxury homes different?

March 7, 2008

My siblings and I have talked about a commune since the 60′s and when I shared this picture with them we decided that this was a good way to create and organize the living spaces. I’m not sure how this group worked out the plumbing, but maybe the real purpose was art and not function.  [...]

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The Fox

March 7, 2008

Nature takes over One of my first memories of downtown Durham (when “downtown” was still lower case) was of a fox running down Chapel Hill Street past the empty storefronts where the Civic Center is now east towards the post office. I’d just moved to Durham to become the Marketing Director of Central Carolina Bank.  [...]

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