Estately in North Carolina
We’re excited to announce the addition of North Carolina to the list of states that you can now find a home through Estately. Currently serving the Winston-Salem and Greensboro areas – and now you can even search with our best-of-breed old-school list view.
We’re joining local right-wing libertarian celebrity Orson Scott-Card (he’s better known for his novel, Ender’s Game) in our newest market – Greensboro! Greensboro, where an entire castle can be bought for a mere $4 million.
We are also giving residents of Winston-Salem – home of the original KRISPY KREME (!) – a better place to search for a home. Winston-Salem is a progressive town, marrying in 1889 with a hyphenated name decades before the feminist movement popularized hyphenation with the rest of the country. It leaves me wondering what you get for a city on its 120th anniversary.
Winston-Salem also holds the title of the city with the most cigarette brand names in its name (one and two).
To me the clash of northern rigidness and southern relaxation in the Triad region of North Carolina is perfectly illustrated in the way the locals deal with square footage on real estate listings. In some places, no one cares: you get the square footage close enough – builders will even just take the footprint of the house and multiply it by two for the second story to get the square footage. In those places, everyone just moves on. In other places, people want it just right (and they’ll sue if it isn’t), so home owners measure it perfectly and even cite the source (county records preferred) and the local Realtor boards hire attorneys to craft disclaimer language.
The Great North Carolinian Compromise is to put a range on square footage in advertising. A home is not 5,000 square feet, rather it’s 4,500 to 5,400 square feet, and it’s up to the home buyer to figure out if they really care. At first I hated this compromise, but I’ve come around to it: precise square footage takes one’s attention away from the utility of the space and almost removes the decision making from you by stack ranking houses from closest to farthest from your ideal, but a range makes you think for yourself: you have to decide if it’s a good space for you and your needs instead of saying “but the other home has 150 extra square feet.”
Triangle-area blogs we are reading now:
Lois Carol Wheatley’s take on Winston-Salem
Downtown Winston-Salem Blog by Jason Thiel
Life in Forsyth by Esbee, aka Lucy Cash
Greensboro 101
The Troublemaker by Ben Holder, “The Troublemaker”(I particularly like the “check in with your friends” section)
The Yes! Weekly Blog note: they blog more frequently than just once a week!
We told you last time that we weren’t done with Texas (hi Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston!) and Upstate New York and we meant it. This is major metropolitan area number six in under six months and we aren’t resting. More to come soon!
