Triangle Real Estate & Homes For Sale | North Carolina

Tagged as: Home Buying Tips

I’m not sure where you are moving from or how people there tend to organize housing developments. In the triangle the neighborhood is king. When surfing Triangle area websites you’ll undoubtedly come across lists of neighborhoods with descriptions trying to delineate one from the next (we do some of that here too). Funny thing is, lots of these neighborhoods meld into each. So knowing definitively where one stops and another starts can be tricky business. This is not always the case; there are lots of neighborhoods (subdivisions) with well defined borders. When looking for a new home in The Triangle it would be best not to get too caught up... Read More →

Tagged as: Home Buying Tips

I see it all the time. I’ll be going through an initial consultation with new buyers. They are of course very excited and I’m excited for them. At some point the conversation will bend to how much they are willing to spend on their new place. The couple will say, “Well, we’ve been approved up to $300,000, but we really only want to send $220,000. I say okay and customize a search to meet their criteria. A few days go by we go out hunting. We look at a couple places and I can tell something is up. They’ve been doing their own side hunting –and who can blame them. The internet makes it so easy. First you start looking at the homes that... Read More →

Tagged as: buying a house, Home Buying Tips

After a few weeks of looking for that perfect house we finally find, “The One.” We write up the offer and the sellers accept. What comes next? How can you be sure this house is worth your hard earned money? What are you really getting yourself into? This is where the home inspection comes into play. The inspection period of the sales transaction provides you with an opportunity to do your “due diligence” in investigating the neighborhood, schools, and the house itself. Most people hire a licensed home inspector to go through the house with a fine tooth comb. On the day of the inspection you and your Realtor will meet the inspector at the... Read More →

Tagged as: buying a house, home, Home Buying Tips

A local mindset is coming: Choose your new house carefully because your attitude to traveling will evolve. We moved to Durham from the hustle and bustle and dustbowl of Phoenix, AZ. In Phoenix it takes a minimum 20 minutes in the car to get anywhere; some of my closest friends lived 45 minutes away. When we got to the Bull City we brought this travel mentality with us. What we quickly found was that the people we made friends with, who had lived in the Triangle for years, did not share our notion of commute. When we’d tell them we lived in North Gate Park you could watch them workout the drive time calculation. If they lived more than 12... Read More →

Tagged as: Home Buying Tips, Mortgage Rates

Let me start out by saying I’m not a lender so the ins and outs of home loans is not my specialty. When it comes to mortgages, I have trusted professionals who help my clients. That being said, I do know one thing about home loans that never changes, interest rates. The thing about interest rates that never changes is that they are always changing.  The rate today will in all likelihood not be the rate a year from now. These seemingly small shifts in interest rates have a butterfly affect on how much home you can afford. Let me explain.  Let’s say you decide it’s time to buy. You call up your trusted lender and they says, “good news,... Read More →