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When Chapel Hill Housing Was Affordable
by Charly Mann
In 1972, I was making $150 a week managing two Record and Tape Center record stores on Franklin Street.( One was on West Franklin Street, and the other was in NCNB plaza.) I was also twenty-one and was able to afford to own a nice house within five minutes of downtown at 812 Ward Street that cost $21,000. My down payment was $1,000 and my mortgage was $169 month. Today that same house is valued at $210,000, and I do not think many twenty-one year olds could afford a house in Chapel Hill. Recent data shows that the median price for a house in Chapel Hill now ranges between $470,000 and $506,000.
First house I owned at age 21 at 812 Ward Street Chapel Hill in 1972 (at the end of Barclay Road). This house also had a large front and back yard.
Only twenty years ago, in 1989, the average price for a house in Chapel Hill was $136,000. At this time Chapel Hill's city council was worried that there was an emerging trend for developers to build more expensive homes, and they tried to encourage construction of more affordable homes. Joe Hakan, Chapel Hill's most respected builder, complied with their call and proposed a new community called Rocky Hill off Weaver Dairy Road where the homes were going to range from $150,000 to $200,000. The citizens of two nearby neighborhoods, Chesley and Chandler's Ridge which were made up of expensive executive-sized homes, were outraged at this plan, and argued to the Chapel Hill council that if such homes were built near them, it would drive down the values of their homes.
$849,000 house at 205 Chesley Lane, Chesley community, Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill is now one of the least affordable areas in the country on a per capita basis correlating average incomes to home prices. Today the median price for a home in Chandler's Green is $628,000 and $827,000 in Chesley.
$800,000 home at 105 San Mateo Place in the Chesley community Chapel Hill, NC
Even for those who want to rent in Chapel Hill the cost is very high. In 1971 I rented, with my then girlfriend, a one bedroom apartment on the top floor of a house just steps away from downtown at 211 North Columbia Street for $100 a month. Today a similarly sized apartment, more than a ten minute drive from town, rents for $827.
I rented the upper floor apartment of this house at 211 North Columbia Street Chapel Hill with my girlfiend Colleen Frances Edgell for $100 a month from 1970 to 1972
Comments:
Gayle Burns
10:46 AM Mon 10/19/2009
There are great discrepancies of income in Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill is a youth oriented community, and among households under 30 the median income is about $25,000. For those who own any kind of home in town the median household income is more than $80,000.
I think part of why Chapel Hill's downtown is dying is because it has always focused on the younger population, and many of those people no longer live close by. Those young people who still live near Franklin Street have far less disposable income than previous generations because of the high rents they are paying.
Aaron Pearson
3:18 PM Sun 10/18/2009
Chapel Hill use to be a community that was almost all middle class. Today it is really two extremes - of very well off - and just getting by. It is this underclass that labors in the stores and restaurants, keeps the town clean and safe, yet can not really be part of the community. The growth in crime is one result of this disparity.
Jason Bradford
12:51 PM Sat 10/17/2009
Home prices are high, but there is no place better to live than Chapel Hill - if you can afford it.
M Golden
8:53 AM Sat 10/17/2009
I am 27 year old lab tech at the University. My boyfriend, who is a cook downtown, and I make about $3400 a month between us, and we have little hope of buying anything close to Chapel Hill. Most of our expenses go for renting a modest two bedroom apartment south of town, which is $1400 a month.
Shabay
1:19 AM Sat 10/17/2009
Looks like things have changed. NOW we have web sites like www.moronsinchapelhill.com, along with SENATOR John Edwards screwing skanks, PROFESSOR Frank Lombard (who was a high profile church member in Chapel Hill) molesting his adopted children on live streams posted on the internet and Eve Carson shot on the streets with no one even coming out of their houses to investigate the noise. Are you sure this stuff isn't fantasy and not member?
Check out our other website:
Investment strategies and advice about Apple Inc. and related technology companies by Charly Mann. www.appleinvesting.com
Investment strategies and advice about Apple Inc. and related technology companies by Charly Mann. www.appleinvesting.com
Chapel Hill is located on a hill whose only distinguishing feature in the 18th century was a small chapel on top called New Hope Chapel. This church was built in 1752 and is currently the location of The Carolina Inn. The town was founded in 1819, and chartered in 1851.
What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. or the crisp October nights. No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be, The University of the People.
-- Charles Kuralt
Dark Side of the Hill -- Pink Floyd, the creators of the most popular album in history, Dark Side of the Moon, took the second half of their name from Floyd Council, a Chapel Hill native, and great blues singer and guitarist. He once belonged to a group called "The Chapel Hillbillies".
Check out Charly Mann's other website:
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
There would probably be no Chapel Hill if the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees in 1793 had not chosen land across from New Hope Chapel for the location of the university. By 1800 there were about 100 people living in thirty houses surrounding the campus.
The University North Carolina's first student was Hinton James, who enrolled in February, 1795. There is now a dormitory on the campus named in his honor.
The University of North Carolina was closed from 1870 to 1875 because of lack of state funding.
William Ackland left his art collection and $1.25 million to Duke University in 1940 on the condition that he would be buried in the art museum that the University was to build with his bequest. Duke rejected this condition even though members of the Duke Family are buried in Duke Chapel. What followed was a long and acrimonious legal battle between Ackland relatives who now wanted the inheritance, Rollins College, and the University of North Carolina, each attempting to receive the funds. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1949 UNC was awarded the money for the museum. Ackland is buried near the museum's entrance. When the museum first opened, in the early sixties, there were rumors that his remains were leaking out of the mausoleum.
The official name of the Arboretum on the University of North Carolina campus is the Coker Arboretum. It is named after Dr. William Cocker, the University's first botany professor. It occupies a little more than five acres. It was founded in 1903.
Chapel Hill's main street has always been called Franklin Street. It was named after Benjamin Franklin in the early 1790s.
Chapel Hill High School and Chapel Hill Junior High were on Franklin Street in the same location as University Square until the mid 1960s.
The Colonial Drug Store at 450 West Franklin Street was owned and operated by John Carswell. It was famous for a fresh-squeezed carbonated orange beverage called a "Big O". In the early 1970s, I managed the Record and Tape Center next door, and must have had over 100 of those drinks. The Colonial Drug Store closed in 1996.
Sutton's Drugstore, which opened in 1923, has one of the last soda fountains in the South. It is one of the few businesses remaining on Franklin Street that was in operation when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Future President Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice. First when he was 24, in 1938, he took a law couse in summer school at UNC. He lived in the Carr Building, which was a law school dormitory. At the same time, Richard Nixon, the man he served under as Vice President, was attending law school at Duke. In 1942, Ford returned to Chapel Hill to attend the U.S. Navy's Pre-Flight School training program. He lived in a rental house on Hidden Hills Drive.
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In 1986 we bought the house at 812 Ward Street for $67.000. We loved living so close to town with the great lot on the dead end road. Tons of trees so really didn't see your neighbors.
We sold the house in 1994 for $94,000. Some days we miss our little house so close to everything. Currently we live south of town in Chatham county--larger lot, cheaper taxes.
My husband and I both went to school here and love Chapel Hill