Briar Chapel Community - Chapel Hill (HOA, houses, neighborhood)

[kaplanj2010]

Anyone live or know someone who lives in the new Briar Chapel Community? What is the scoop on the pros and cons for living there. Thanks!

[mjohnson185]

I do know someone who lives there...here are a couple of pointers....

not the best idea to live near the pool...they play loud music there in the summer

She says the HOA is not very strict at all (which could be a good or bad thing).

We looked there about a year ago when looking at houses and one incident turned us off to Briar Chapel fast..... We have a small SUV (only a 4 seater) and we were driving around the briar chapel community and one section of homes had a median with trees dividing the two lanes of traffic (which looks very pretty by the way)....and we got stuck just trying to drive. What had happened is that all the home owners where parking in the street right up next to the curb in front of their homes instead of the alley garages behind their homes. There was not enough room for us to drive past those cars between the cars and the median. We had to back out and that is a main in and out through the neigborhood. We had to drive on the opposite lane just to exit The problem would be fixed if briar chapel had built wider roads or if the homeowners actually parked in thier garages.......

We investigated further by driving down one of the alleys to see why people were not parking in their garages....it was because the garage sizes were 20 x 20 with no room behind the garage to park an extra vehicle...and of course a lot of people use half of the garage for storage and park only one car in the garage...to be honest it looked like you could squeeze two cars in those garages if they were small enough. Even if you couldn't get two cars in the garages you would think they would have given homeowners somewhat of a driveway behind the garage to park in. We pulled into a garage of a home that had not sold yet to see how it was backing out of the garage....it was really really really hard....since no driveway...just garage and then alley, the alley was not wide enough to back out of smoothly.

My friend that lives there says most everybody parks in the street and that bothers a lot of homeowners and they are trying to get that changed so that everybody parks in the garage.

[nervous_in_new_england]

I know someone who lives there. She likes it but complains about how tight everything is=narrow everything. She lives in one of the tall narrow row houses and bought it new but not with her custom choices. She has no cabinet space and very little counter space in her kitchen and it's not really expandable based on the layout of the house. She doesn't really like the pool and says that the playground is insufficient for her two sons who grew bored with it almost immediately. She also has nothing positive to say about the elementary school that her son goes to, she's hoping that middle and high schools are better.

I drove thru the neighborhood a few weeks ago and it is very nice. It has lovely architecture and a gorgeous entry into the community. One thing that really turned me off was a boat parked in the alley behind someone's house. It was taking up way too much room, but the man whose house it was parked behind just seemed to watch, annoyed by drivers trying to negotiate the street to go around the boat. The roads are all narrow and only cars should allowed to park in the streets, no trailers of any sort (except for maintenance). He was washing the boat and should have been doing it in his driveway.

[geoff2v]

The main problem with the community -- aside from the fact that it's mostly unbuilt, which is a warning sign in this day -- is that the drive in from the road is miles along and the proposed retail village, such as it is, is far from the residential areas. Thus, it's not going to be an easy walk to buy some ice cream or pick up some groceries. Not to mention that it makes it very difficult to imagine any public transportation connecting Briar Chapel with other destinations (such as downtown Chapel Hill).

The alleys are nice, though, and really make the sidewalks along the road much more appealing practically and visually.

[no kudzu]

I think this is a good example of how a strong HOA can impact home owners and future sales. If I lived there I would push the HOA to keep people from parking on the street.

[Sayantsi]

I think its a poorly executed development for living in, and I avoided it personally.

[saucystargazer]

Originally Posted by Sayantsi

I think its a poorly executed development for living in, and I avoided it personally.

This 110%.

I also think the only high school available is still Northwood.....they have been talking about building another high school for 15+ years now and it still hasn't happened....

[mjohnson185]

I'm not so sure that if they forced you to park in the garages that the cars would actually fit. If someone had 2 SUVs more mid sized....I'm not sure they would fit at all. Maybe they would, but the HOA can't force you to sell your cars. The remedy would have been to leave an actual driveway at least 20 feet behind each garage instead of garage and then alley.

[ChapelHillMom]

I live in Briar Chapel and have to say that I disagree about the HOA and loud music. We live really close to the clubhouse and it does not bother us. I guess we knew moving in that the clubhouse was already there and that the benefits of having it and the pool nearby far outweighed any inconvenience of some occasional music or small events. So, if someone moved close to pool and clubhouse and didn't expect a little noise, they are idiots.

I've found the HOA to be more on the strict side - they are not overbearing, mind you, but there are certainly procedures that are followed. We put in a fence and modified our yard and we had to go through the whole process. A bit detailed, but we didn't mind because I knew everyone else had to do the same thing to get approval and that it would keep up or home value since there is a process in place.

The cars parking on the street near the row houses is very annoying and I hope something is done about that. We live in a single family home on the other side of the neighborhood and don't really have that problem. Most people park in their driveways because - not to call my neighbors out - but we all have a lot of stuff in our garages that we probably need to get rid of. On another note, it does make people slow down which is good with all of the young kids in the area.

My kids aren't in high school yet (and I'm sure the one of Jack Bennett will be built before they are), but we love Perry Harrison. The teachers and PTA are great and we've met some great families there. I can't wait until my son can walk to the new middle school in the neighborhood.

We love it at Briar Chapel and I'm not sure what all of the complaining is about. There are a ton of fun social opportunities for kids and adults every week - it's like living at a country club without the high membership dues. The pool and trails are great. The playground might bore some kids, but there are always other children for them to play with and other parks to visit where they can use their imaginations instead of equipment.

From the beautiful drive into the neighborhood, the wildlife, the "look" of the homes, and our neighbors - we love it!

[mjohnson185]

I'm specifically talking about the row houses as well. I'm not sure about the other side that is a little bit more pricey. They may have actual driveways and such unlike the row homes.