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A Buyer's Market
Urbanites looking for downtown living can still find affordable homes in many Charlotte neighborhoods
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"That's a great area," declares Longstreet. "You can get a house for $99,000 to $130,000. A lot of single women and a lot of single people are moving in there. That's a safe neighborhood where you can walk your dog at 11 at night."
About a half mile down Central from Plaza Midwood, the neighborhood is seeing a resurgence of renovation by those who want an updated home but can only afford to pay a third to 40 percent of what it costs to live in Plaza Midwood.
Oakhurst
One of the few affordable neighborhoods near downtown that's loaded with cute bungalow-style homes built in the 1930s and 1940s, this is a still largely undiscovered bargain. It backs up to the popular Cotswold area on one side, where home prices are growing significantly. Oakhurst stretches across both sides of Monroe Road and is bound by Commonwealth Avenue and Richland Drive to the north and Independence Boulevard to the east.
"This is a bargain to me at any price if you want a bungalow," says Longstreet. "The houses are small but very cute. It's very safe."
The homes range in price from $90,000 to $160,000 and average about 800 to 1,200 square feet, with lots large enough to expand on. Developers are also building new homes for $300,000-plus on the edge of the neighborhood. Most people who currently live there are long-time residents, though young families with kids seem to be cropping up here and there.
SOUTH OF DOWNTOWN
Colonial Village
After home prices in Dilworth shot through the stratosphere, the Sedgefield neighborhood along Park Road, which backs up to Dilworth, became Dilworth's affordable alternative. Now that a match-box-sized home on a postage-stamp lot in Sedgefield will run you a minimum of $300,000, Colonial Village and Collins Park are becoming the affordable alternatives to Sedgefield.
A decade ago, Colonial Village, bounded by Park and Scaleybark roads, Hartford Avenue and South Boulevard, would have been thought of as a neighborhood on the edge of SouthPark. With the planned light rail line scheduled to begin running down the South Boulevard corridor next year, Colonial Village and other 1950s style 'hoods along the corridor with mature landscaping are now being recast as town neighborhoods with a direct link to downtown. With prices that run from the $180,000s to $270,000s for 1,500-to-1,800-square-foot houses, Colonial Village is quickly catching up to Sedgefield, though bargains can still be had if you're willing to pull down a little wallpaper, pick up a paint brush and perhaps update a kitchen.
The beauty of Colonial Village and nearby Collins Park and Madison Park is that in addition to being in town neighborhoods a 10 minute drive from downtown, they also back up to the Park Road Shopping Center area on the edge of Myers Park and are minutes from SouthPark.
Collins Park
The alternative to the alternative to the Sedgefield neighborhood along Park Road (see above for explanation), Collins Park is a real steal. For reasons that aren't clear, the renovation and turnover of the neighborhood's 1950s-era homes have gone a little slower in here, even though neighborhoods located further away from downtown down Park Road are posting higher prices for similar housing stock. This is a great place to look and homes now sell quickly when they come on the market. A buyer just snagged a beautifully renovated 1,200-square-foot house with perfect landscaping on Applegate Road for $170,000. Unrenovated homes are still in the low $100,000s.
Eventually, the market will figure out that something is out of whack here and the prices will shoot up to where they belong. In the meantime, somebody else is bound to get a good deal.
Madison Park
Madison Park became popular with 20- and 30-something renovator types about seven years ago, and they are beginning to cash out, which is quickly driving up prices. They've been getting $220,000 to $270,000 for their 1,500-to-1,800-square-foot 1950s-era homes, which is a real coup, because some recent sales indicate that home prices have doubled since 2000.
Madison Park, which is located between Park, Woodlawn and Tyvola roads and South Boulevard, has gone from slightly shabby around the edges to mostly trim and manicured in a relatively short period of time, and its lush green streets are great for walking off a day of employment stress.
The good news is that the first wave of renovators didn't get around to updating every home on the block, and houses that could use some paint and more modern fixtures can still be bought for $175,000 to $200,000.
Selwyn Park, located on the southern edge of Madison Park at the junction of Park Road and Seneca Place, is even more of a bargain, with houses still selling in the $140,000 to $170,000 range.
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