Chapel Hill, NC, Southern Village,Chapel Hill Neighborhoods

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• published: 29 Sep 2012
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Hi. I'm Marianne Howell Wright from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Today I'm going to show you Southern Village. Southern Village is a planned mix use neighborhood in Chapel Hill that was developed in the early '90s. It was a new concept at the time, the idea of a neo-traditional neighborhood with a mixed use, a commercial area, a mixture of townhouses, single family homes, condos, apartments. It was being done in other parts of the country, but it was the first time in Chapel Hill. One of the things that was different about Southern Village than the other neighborhoods in Chapel Hill was that the lots were going to be very small. The entrance to the garages would be from the rear through alleyways. It was based on the idea of an old maybe 1920's era neighborhood. Chapel Hill had always been kind of a woodsy, large lot kind of place. No one was really sure how well Southern Village was going to take off, if at all. It's about 300 acres, with 90 acres of green space and 1,150 housing units plus the commercial area. That's quite dense. Southern Village had tons of topography, lots of hills. After all, we are in Chapel Hill. I just couldn't imagine how they would do it. As it turned out, it turned out really great. People love the neighborhood, but it took awhile. One more thing that I want to mention is that in the almost 20 years that the neighborhood has been under development, different homes have aged differently. It's very interesting to see that. Sometimes when a home is built, it's easy to get blown away by the maybe cool details and floor plans, but the quality of construction is really important, and you see it after almost 20 years that some of the builders didn't do as good of a job with the basics. While they might have been sold really well and done great at the time, they don't look as good right now. Let's take a tour of Southern Village. I'll show you around, and then I'll fill you in on more details of the neighborhood while we're driving around. The tree lined streets are really beautiful in October. The first homes in Southern Village had a Chapel Hill traditional kind of feel with stone walls, big houses set back from the street. Then they moved into some town homes and Charleston style houses with double front porches. You'll see these off to the left as we turn. They're selling in the $400,00 to $500,000 range now. This is October 2010, and houses in Southern Village stay in the market for an average of about 90 days and sell for 96% of the list to sales price. Although that's just the houses that sold. It doesn't tell you about the houses that are still on the market. There are about 36 houses sold in Southern Village in the past 6 months. There are about the same number of houses in the market. That's a six month supply. That tells me that the houses that are priced right and in good condition are going to sell quickly, while some may be on the market for a very long time. There's a wide range of prices in Southern Village, from the mid 100s for a 1 bedroom 1 bath condo, to a million dollars for a big single family home in a large lot. Most of the single family detached houses are in the $450,000 to $650,000 price range. Southern Village is a mixed use neighborhood, so there's a wide variety of housing. There are condominiums and apartments. This is an example of an apartment. There's an elementary school in the neighborhood. There's also a park and ride, and it's just not for the neighborhood. It's for the whole surrounding area. This is, driving up the street, there are many different kinds of businesses, restaurants, and shops. There's a green in the center of Main Street where a lot of things happen. There is a farmer's market there. There's music often in the afternoons and on weekends. The Lumina Theater shows outdoor movies. This is the amphitheater and stage. Looking up, you'll see that brick building. Those are also condominiums. Looking out past the condominiums at the top of the hill on Market Street, you can see all those houses. That's all part of Southern Village. There are cute shops on Market Street, and there are condos above the commercial area. The Lumina Theater is really popular. That's the Methodist Church telling me my five minute video is done. This is Marianne Howell Wright from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.