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We are interested in moving to the Cary/Apex area but we are having a hard time finding houses with any kind of decent lot size in our price range. We are looking for something in the .25 to .33 acre range (more if we could...) and want to spend about $225 K. Most of the new construction seems to be either .17 acre lots or costs twice as much as we want. We don't mind resales either, but they also seem to have smaller lots mostly, unless they are very old. Does anyone know of neighborhoods in our price range that have the lot size we are looking for? We are working at Duke, but don't want to live in Durham. We are also open to Hillsborough or Wake Forest or other areas of Wake County that aren't so far from Duke if we have to. I guess the builders want to fit in as many houses as they can, but it seems so weird to me that there are all these very expensive houses on very small lots.
We've been looking for something with at least 1/3 acre in Cary, but our budget is a little more than yours is. All of the new Cary neighborhoods seem to be in the $400K range with less than 1/4 acre. You may do better in Apex and I'll bet your odds would increase even more if you looked in Holly Springs. I have a coworker that just bought a house in Apex for under $200K (3/2/2) but he didn't say how big the house or lot was.
Apex may very well have some things that would work. The big challenge with being on the Wake side of the line is making it through the RTP traffic and commute. I work for Duke and have some co-workers coming in from North Raleigh and Apex who commonly complain about the traffic/commute.
I'm going to throw out some options that, to be honest, I don't know first-hand, but I know they work for some folks--
1) If Hillsborough ends up higher priced than you'd like, you might want to look just to the west of the I-40/I-85 split, in a town like Mebane. Lots of new developments going up in that area and prices are much lower. Commute is about 30 mins to Duke. Don't know much about the schools but I would assume from what I've heard 3rd hand that they are not near the Wake Co. level. Parts of Mebane are in Orange Co., other parts in Alamance.
2) You might also consider southern Granville County, just to the northeast of Durham. Easy commute in since I-85 widening has wrapped up -- just take 85 to 15-501 and you're at Duke. Again, I think the schools here would be a question relative to the Triangle, but you'd want to research that more.
3) You mention you aren't interested in living in Durham. You may still want to look at the Streets at Southpoint area in Durham, which resembles Apex in some ways in terms of new developments and near-new ones dating back to the 80s/90s.
Hillsborough is a neat town and lots of people I know who live there love it. Lots of good choices -- just keep digging!
I didn't want to choose Durham because of the schools situation. I looked at the ncreportcard website at the area high schools. It seemed like in Cary/Apex they have around 90% passing, in Wake Forest 85%, and in Hillsborough/Orange County 80%. But the best schools in Durham were only 70% and some were below 50%, so we didn't like that.
We also want to consider that we have family in Apex and in Garner/Clayton, so we prefered to be that direction of Durham to be closer to them. But we might check Holly Springs even though it's kind of further than we were planning. I think Hillsborough might not be so bad in that respect either though because it's a pretty straight shot on 40 to get there.
I was thinking that the traffic to Duke from the south/Apex area wouldn't be too terrible since they have been widening 55. Do you think that's still a bad direction even with the widening? When 540 opens in that direction, do you think that will help or hurt?
They may have widened 55, but they didn't do anything about the worst part . . . .downtown Apex and the railroad bridge . . . .where the road slims back down to 2 lanes.
I540 will definitely help, but I'm not counting on that road to be completed in my lifetime ;-)
Have you considered south Raleigh? East of Apex but west of Garner. That may give you easier access to I40 and there are areas with large lots. Another bonus is that some areas are unincorporated and have no city taxes.
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