Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Statesville Real Estate’

Langtree at the Lake Gets a Financial Boost

Posted in Iredell County, Lake Norman, Mount Mourne, Statesville, tagged , , , , , on February 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

The Mooresville Tribune reported today that the developers of Langtree at the Lake, Rick and Brad Howard, have sold the 300 acre project for approximately $60 million to RL West Properties of Toledo, Ohio.  The Howards plan to continue their involvement in developing the property.  They’ve been working with RL West for several years on part of the project, and Brad Howard had told me earlier that they are a major player with good financial power available.  In the world of real estate development, financing problems have been a major reason for projects like this to become stalled.  Up the road near Statesville, another large mixed-use project, Larkin, has made little apparent progress in the last couple of years because of this financing problem, although their developers claim that they still intend to get going once the economy improves.. 

With positive news on the reduction of unemployment in the news today, hopefully we’ll begin to see that we’ve passed a tipping point in moving our economy toward a brighter outlook.  Progress on developments like Langtree at the Lake (think of the jobs involved in building that complex) can only serve to fuel the growth of our economy.  Within the last couple of months, two commercial businesses have secured land and built new buildings near the intersection of Brawley and Williamson Roads in Mooresville.  I hope all of these projects signal a renewal of economic growth.

For more details on this, click HERE to see the Tribune article and HERE to see another from The Charlotte Observer.

Read Full Post »

Remodeling Statesville, NC

Posted in Iredell County, Statesville, tagged , , , , on June 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I recently mentioned our city and county planners meeting with Iredell County Realtors to tell us about their plans for improving the area.  One of the most interesting parts of the presentation had to do with tuning up Statesville, both in the downtown area and in the “gateway” area of Shelton Avenue.  I knew that Statesville movers and shakers have been working on this for some time, including an extended visit to Greenville, SC a couple of years ago where they’ve transformed the downtown area into a wonderful destination.  So the Statesville gang has developed a good idea of what those improvements may look like.  You can see more about what they are thinking by going to the Downtown Statesville Development Corporation website HERE to download their reports and plans.  At the Realtor meeting, we were told that the Statesville city government is looking at ways to get some of this work funded.  Ultimately this would necessarily be a partnership of public and private interests working together for the common good, but Statesville’s initial investment would show good faith and help to jump-start the revitalization of what can be a very handsome city center and gateway area.  Statesville has some great historical architecture that can serve as the basis for these improvements.

Read Full Post »

Statesville’s Friday After Five Concerts

Posted in Iredell County, Quality of Life, Real Estate, Statesville, tagged , , , , on May 28, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Tonight is the kickoff for this summer’s concert series in Statesville called Friday After Five.  It runs from 5:30PM to 8:30PM.  There’s beer, wine, soft drinks and food available for purchase.  See more information and the entire summer schedule HERE.

Tonight’s band is the legendary Catalinas.  I remember that name from back when I was still in high school.  Back then, if you went somewhere that the Catalinas were playing, you knew you were in for a good time.  Have not seen them in a long time.  There have been a few personnel changes since then.  I doubt that a bunch of 70 year olds can party down for that long at a time.  I know that back then I played tenor sax in a local beach music band know as the Just Six band (although we eventually fudged and added a seventh player).  We could start at seven and play until midnight before we were worn out.  Now, I’d say a spirited half hour would probably finish us off.

Check out downtown Statesville.  Got some neat things happening there.

Read Full Post »

Iredell County and City Planners’ Report

Posted in Iredell County, Lake Norman, Mooresville, Mount Mourne, Quality of Life, Real Estate, Statesville, Troutman, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

The Charlotte Regional Realtor Association recently hosted a presentation in Mooresville of the local government planners from Iredell County, Statesville, Troutman and Mooresville.  We Realtors meet with them every year to get an overview of what’s going on in the county and to get to know the planners better so that we can get questions asked more easily during the rest of the year.  Here are a few comments from them that might interest you.

- Since the year 2000, Iredell County has grown by 21.5%.  During the slowest growth year, we still added about 2,500 people.

- There is little activity right now on approving new subdivisions.  One reason is that there are now 12,000 lots in various subdivisions that are approved but vacant in Iredell County.

- The new baseball park between Mooresville and Troutman will have a huge positive impact on the local hospitality and retail businesses during the summer season.  This should eventually help our tax revenues, too.

- Troutman is applying for grants to help develop a town park on land next to the town hall.

- As previously mentioned, the J. Hoyt Hayes Memorial Troutman Library will open on May 25.  This will be a great asset to our local quality of life.  (By the way, if you have an Iredell library card already, then you’re good to go.)

- Troutman still expects to have a Wal-Mart built at Exit 42.  Just don’t have firm dates yet.  Maybe they’ll want to be there for the baseball parents and kids!

- Statesville has some great looking plans for improving the downtown area and the Shelton Avenue corridor.  The town is working on how much they can invest in improving theses “streetscapes” as an investment in attracting businesses (mixed with some residential) to these areas.

- Larkin is still somewhere on the stove, if not on the front burner.  The developers are working on finding some bond financing to get going.  See Statesville Record & Landmark update HERE.

- Mooresville’s population has grown 100% in the last 10 years to around 30,000 plus.  We’ll see when the census numbers are in.

- Lowe’s corporate campus is now projected when complete to have 12,000 employees.  That’s a big reason for the need for improved roads and interchanges that serve that area.

- As mentioned already, Langtree at the Lake is starting to make some forward progress.

- Planners are cautiously optimistic about the progress of the re-purposing of the old Burlington Mills complex on Main Street.  Hopefully, the furniture retailer is just the start of more worthwhile development there.

- The Brawley School Road improvements west of Williamson Rd. are scheduled for completion by summer of 2011. The improvements east of Williamson Rd. are scheduled for completion by summer of 2013.

Read Full Post »

Real Estate Market Heating Up

Posted in General Real Estate Market, Real Estate, tagged , , , , on March 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

My fellow agents and I are seeing some upbeat interest in selling and buying homes among the local population lately.  Buyers and sellers are starting to call our office and our agents.  That’s one reason why it’s been awhile since I’ve posted here.  When I have the choice of writing a nice blog post or working with a client, the client always wins!

A couple of observations may be appropriate coming from this activity for people who are thinking of buying or selling. 

First, for buyers, yes there are lots of homes on the market and more coming on.  Many are short sales or foreclosures.  Lots of buyers tell us to start looking at that group of homes.  When we look into the listings, we find that often the reason they are having to be a short sale or foreclosure is because they tried to sell conventionally in the past, and there’s a good reason why they didn’t sell.  If we go see the property, we’ll take one look and understand why it didn’t sell when the owner wanted it to sell.  The lesson to learn is that when you want to buy a property, don’t just insist on seeing nothing but short sales and foreclosures, particularly if you want to live there.  There are plenty of good deals out there being sold by motivated buyers who will agree to a reasonable offer.

Next, for sellers, everyone wants to sell for the highest price possible, and I’m all for that.  As a matter of fact, one of my jobs as a listing agent is to help you get the best price and terms for your property.  Yet, sellers need to understand that even though there are lots of great ways for agents to market your property, and the amount and quality of property marketing can vary, no amount of fancy advertising will cause a buyer to want to pay too much for a property.  The purpose of property marketing is to get the property in front of as many potential buyers as possible since it’s a numbers game, and every buyer has a unique set of goals to meet in buying a property.  So, effective marketing coupled with reasonable market pricing will get people in the door.  Effective marketing with too high a list price will bring no one in the door and waste time and effort.  You will not get offers until you get some people to look at your property.  Let’s talk about how to determine a reasonable list price that is competitive with others in your market.

Read Full Post »

Seven Out of Eight

Posted in Iredell County, Lake Norman, Mooresville, Quality of Life, Statesville, Troutman, tagged , , , , , , , on March 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Mooresville, NC and Statesville, NC, Iredell County’s two largest communities, are celebrating another year of being named by Site Selection Magazine as the Number 1 Micropolitan Area in the country for new and expanded corporate facilities and projects.  They’ve received this recognition for seven out of the last eight years.  See a Record & Landmark article on this announcement HERE.

Why does this matter?  Is this some narrow little area of interest that the rest of us can ignore?  Hardly.  This recognition has to do with jobs and job growth in Iredell and surrounding counties.  The recognition that our area has been successful in bringing jobs due to expansion of existing employers and bringing employers new to the area gives us hope that our economic fortunes will be more positive in the future.  Every day we see in the headlines that the key to recharging our economy is job growth, and companies have to be convinced that expanding their employee base is a smart economic decision.  Looks like our local governments and economic development professionals have been doing quite a good job in helping employers see our area as part of their future growth.

It may not yet be “Happy Days are Here Again” time, but this announcement sure gives me an uplift in thinking we may see some better times ahead.

Read Full Post »

Two Kinds of Busy

Posted in General Real Estate Market, Iredell County, Lake Norman, Mooresville, Statesville, Troutman, tagged , , , , , , on March 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

People often me if I’m staying busy in my real estate work. I always answer that yes, I’m very busy.  In fact, in real estate work, there are two kinds of busy.  One is being busy trying to find clients to work with, and the other is being busy working for my current buying and selling clients.  Agents are always challenged in managing their schedules to spend plenty of time working for their current clients so that they earn a reputation for doing high quality work, the kind that makes clients happy and sparks referrals.  But they also have to spend a certain amount of time working on getting the next new client(s) since each closing means that there will likely be no more transactions with that client for a while unless they are investors.  We need to be working with a steady stream of clients in order to be able to make a living doing this (we are not on any kind of salary).

Lately, I’ve been spending more and more time working with clients that call me and ask me to list a property or help them buy a property.  Of course that’s a great way to be busy, and at least for me, it does seem that business is picking up.  Spring is just around the corner, and that usually perks things up.  It’s just comforting to see people interested in buying and selling real estate again.  I did some comparisons with last year, and the winter and spring back then were quite slow because of everyone’s concern for the fate of our economy.  This year, it looks like we’re seeing more confidence, even if it’s somewhat cautious, that things are moving in a positive direction. 

I’m happy to be busy working with clients.  If you notice that I don’t post to this blog as often for a period of time, take that as good news that I’m too busy to blog!  Yay!

Read Full Post »

Yes, We’re Selling Homes

Posted in Cornelius, Davidson, Iredell County, Lake Norman, Mooresville, Real Estate, Statesville, tagged , , , , , on February 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

It almost never fails.  When I get into a conversation with friends or anyone else for that matter, I eventually get the question, “how’s the market?”  Of course, they’re asking me about real estate.  Being a detail person, my first inclination is to ask for more details on what the questioner wants to know.  Are they talking local, national, compared to last year, compared to last month, or what.  I can get answers to all those questions, but I usually just let the questioner know that we are in fact seeing sales in our area- maybe not as many as we’d like or anticipate in the future, but the market is definitely not dead as some might imagine.

To make my point, here’s a few sales numbers just since January 1, 2010 for a few communities in the Lake Norman area.  These charts come from our MLS.  I can search on pretty much any criteria that we’d like to see.  These are just single family homes with a mailing address of the town under which their listed.  By the way, SOLD means that the transaction has closed.  PENDING means that the property is under contract but has not yet closed.  Some of these may fall through before closing for a variety of reasons.

Mooresville Single Family Homes

Pending – 37 Properties Found
  Square Feet Bedrooms Full Baths Half Baths List Price Sale Price Days On Market
Min 800 – 1100 2 1 0 $ 41,600 $ 0 4
Avg 2700 – 3300 3 2 0 $ 423,671 $ 0 123
Max 8800 – 10400 5 5 1 $ 1,849,900 $ 0 990
Sold – 39 Properties Found
  Square Feet Bedrooms Full Baths Half Baths List Price Sale Price Days On Market
Min 1000 2 1 0 $ 26,000 $ 26,150 2
Avg 2405 3 2 0 $ 274,603 $ 256,817 139
Max 4819 5 4 1 $ 769,900 $ 720,000 463
 
Statesville Single Family Homes
 
Pending – 25 Properties Found
  Square Feet Bedrooms Full Baths Half Baths List Price Sale Price Days On Market
Min 900 – 1100 2 1 0 $ 28,000 $ 0 5
Avg 1300 – 1700 2 1 0 $ 100,248 $ 0 63
Max 3000 – 3600 4 3 2 $ 184,900 $ 0 221
Sold – 27 Properties Found
  Square Feet Bedrooms Full Baths Half Baths List Price Sale Price Days On Market
Min 936 3 1 0 $ 8,995 $ 10,000 11
Avg 2119 3 2 0 $ 152,451 $ 145,544 140
Max 4621 4 4 2 $ 595,000 $ 575,000 448

Davidson and Cornelius Single Family Homes

Pending – 24 Properties Found
  Square Feet Bedrooms Full Baths Half Baths List Price Sale Price Days On Market
Min 1000 – 1300 3 2 0 $ 110,000 $ 0 1
Avg 2700 – 3200 3 2 0 $ 406,067 $ 0 103
Max 9300 – 11000 6 6 2 $ 1,100,000 $ 0 968
Sold – 30 Properties Found
  Square Feet Bedrooms Full Baths Half Baths List Price Sale Price Days On Market
Min 1818 3 2 0 $ 145,000 $ 127,500 14
Avg 2896 3 2 0 $ 407,559 $ 375,418 116
Max 8300 5 7 2 $ 2,600,000 $ 2,025,000 370

This shows that houses are going under contract and closing, so if you want to sell your home, there is a market out there.  It’s just that the buyers still pretty much have the upper hand because there are a lower number than normal who are ready, willing and able to buy.  Oh, if you want to buy another one here, the prices will still be comparable to what you were paid for yours, AND if you are under contract before April 30, you may qualify for the $6,500 tax incentive from the feds.

Read Full Post »

Kewaunee Scientific Corp. Expanding in Statesville

Posted in Iredell County, Statesville, Woodworking, tagged , , , , on February 8, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Statesville has taken some hits lately from companies closing shop and laying off employees.  I guess that’s to be expected in our wounded economy.  Still, every once in a while, we get a shot of good news to keep us hopeful.  That came for Statesville last week with the announcement that Kewaunee Scientific Corp. is expanding their furniture production plant over the next 5 years, and will add 100 more employees.  That’s not many employees per year, but I’ll take positive growth over negative growth any day.  Just holding your own nowadays is quite an accomplishment.  Although many economic observers are starting to see some glimmers of hope for coming out of our recession, it’s likely to be a ”two steps forward, one step back” type of recovery.  Here’s a Statesville Record & Landmark article on this news item.

Any time I hear or read something about Kewaunee, I perk up and pay a bit more attention than usual.  There are a couple of reasons.  One is that one of my neighbors is a part of the management team up there, and of course I’m always happy to see good things happen for a neighbor.  The other reason is that back when I was in college, I worked there when it was referred to as “Technical Furniture” during one summer.  That job along with a similar one at Blanton and Moore in Barium Springs may be why I like woodworking so much now.  You might say I have sawdust in my veins.  As I recall, it was more about having sawdust in my lungs back then.  They did a fair job of removing sawdust as the machines cut the wood.  Trouble is, the big bins that collected the sawdust would get clogged from time to time.  That’s when they’d send in the kids working summer jobs to poke around the big pipe that discharged all that sawdust into the bin.  After a proper amount of poking, the clog would let go and cover you from head to toe with sawdust.  We didn’t know about dust masks back then.  I don’t blame the older guys making us kids do that then.  When we went back to school in the fall, I’m sure the bin would clog up eventually and someone else would have to do the dusty job.

Hey, that’s all part of the growing-up process- if you survive.

Read Full Post »

Moving- Arrrrgghh!

Posted in General Real Estate Market, Iredell County, Lake Norman, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I’d like to take the time to write a nice useful, insightful post today, but unfortunately, I’ve got to spend the rest of the day packing my office for a move to our new office on Williamson Road in Mooresville.  It’s only been a year since I moved from our Troutman office to the one on River Highway, but somehow, I’ve managed to undo all the thinning out of unnecessary stuff that piles up.  It is truly amazing how much paper we receive and generate in the real estate business, especially since we are more “digital” in how we conduct business than ever.  Some day we may move to an all-digital office, but right now, the real estate business still operates on paper, with agreements, offers, contracts, disclosures and all manner of other documents that become part of each client’s file.  The files have to be retained for a considerable period after the closing for audits and such, so they stack up.  Of course, I’m not complaining that I have files to stack up.  Each one represents a lot of time and effort to help a client or clients work their plans and fulfill their dreams. 

Those are good piles of files.  Back to packing!

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 421 other followers