A look at Southern Orange County subdivisions

REAL ESTATE

By Gary A. Miller
Columnist

From July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023 at least one home was sold in 244 distinct subdivisions in southern Orange County, and among those 94 subdivisions had three or more homes selling in this time period.  With the ongoing housing inventory shortage, I wanted to consider the subdivisions of the area to examine where the most movement was happening.

As is typically the case in southern Orange County, the largest grouping of sold houses is actually categorized in the TriangleMLS as “not in a subdivision.”  Between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, 68 homes were sold in this category, making it by far the largest single group.  The pricing of these homes range from among the most affordable ($216,000) to the most expensive ($3,550,000) in the area.  For this article, I will ignore the homes that were not categorized as part of a subdivision

It is important to note that being within a subdivision does not imply that the homes are governed by a Homeowners Association, and in fact many of the areas discussed below do not have an HOA.  What follows is an analysis of the subdivision of Southern Orange County, which for the purposes of this article means the zip codes of 27510, 27514, 27516, and 27517 within the county border.

The table below shows the 11 subdivisions with the largest number of closed sales, along with the average price and average amount of living square footage for each.  Eleven were selected due to the four-way tie of subdivisions with nine sales.

These 11 neighborhoods account for around 19 percent of the total sales in southern Orange County over the past year from among the 244 distinct subdivisions.  Interestingly, the average sales price from among these 11 subdivisions was $656,803, which comes very close to the overall average of $665,030 among all sales during the time period.

As we would expect, there is a correlation between home size and home price, with the largest homes being the most expensive and the smallest being the most affordable.  As indicated in the table, no relationship seems to exist between price and level of activity, as the list includes some of the most expensive and some of the most affordable subdivisions in the area.

However, the subdivisions that were the most expensive and least expensive over the past 12 months were not among the busiest for sales. The Rockford neighborhood had only three sold homes, but comes in at the most expensive with an average sales price of $1,745,000.  With an average sales price of $143,883, Shepherd Lane Condos was the most affordable subdivision in the area and did not make the “top 11” list above with 6 closed sales.The table below shows the three most expensive and three most affordable subdivisions over the past 12 months.

During the past 12 months, there were a total of 781 closed sales.  Among these, the median sale price was $575,000.  Carrboro’s Webbwood neighborhood, located a few minutes northwest of downtown, had the most homes selling closest to that median price with an average sales price of $580,625 among the four closed transactions.