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I am currently researching the Triangle as there is a job that I'm looking at applying for.
What can you tell me about the area? Specifically Raleigh, Cary, Durham, etc. My hubby and I are in our late 20s with no kids. He was in law enforcement in SC, and looking to get back in. I'm in historic preservation/downtown development. We would want to live in a historic house or building, and I prefer to be able to walk to shops and restaurants.
What is Cary like? Does it have historic homes/buildings for rent? I ran a Trulia search and didn't come up with much, so that made me wonder what was up with that. I know there are scads of historic homes to Durham, but I've read some mixed reviews about safety in that area. We were "urban pioneers" but several bad incidences in our current city of Columbia, SC have sort of reformed us. We can handle petty theft, but busting in doors (regardless of a security system) was a little too much for us.
I think my hubby is a fan of Chapel Hill, but I don't know if we could afford a decent sized apartment there. We will be in the $1000/month range.
How about downtown Raleigh? Is it a happening place? I know my husband has mixed ideas about driving in Raleigh (he claims there are no street signs or the streets are confusing or something...LOL).
Anyhoo, any info would be very helpful. Thanks in advance!
I am currently researching the Triangle as there is a job that I'm looking at applying for.
What can you tell me about the area? Specifically Raleigh, Cary, Durham, etc. My hubby and I are in our late 20s with no kids. He was in law enforcement in SC, and looking to get back in. I'm in historic preservation/downtown development. We would want to live in a historic house or building, and I prefer to be able to walk to shops and restaurants.
What is Cary like? Does it have historic homes/buildings for rent? I ran a Trulia search and didn't come up with much, so that made me wonder what was up with that. I know there are scads of historic homes to Durham, but I've read some mixed reviews about safety in that area. We were "urban pioneers" but several bad incidences in our current city of Columbia, SC have sort of reformed us. We can handle petty theft, but busting in doors (regardless of a security system) was a little too much for us.
I think my hubby is a fan of Chapel Hill, but I don't know if we could afford a decent sized apartment there. We will be in the $1000/month range.
How about downtown Raleigh? Is it a happening place? I know my husband has mixed ideas about driving in Raleigh (he claims there are no street signs or the streets are confusing or something...LOL).
Anyhoo, any info would be very helpful. Thanks in advance!
I personally wouldnt live in durham, but there are many who love it, and it has some nice areas.
raleigh has street signs. i promise. lol DT raleigh is basically a grid system with lots of one way roads. not hard to figure out.
you should be able to able to find a decent 1 bedroom apartment in raleigh or cary in that price range- historic though? hmm probably not but MAYBE
cary doesnt have much in the way of historic homes, though im sure there are some. Raleigh has more, but they come at a steep price, in most cases. And sometimes surrounding areas can be iffy (not in all places)
for the most part both raleigh and cary are extremely safe, but any city has its crime. ive lived in and around raleigh/cary most of my life and never had a problem. well once my car was broken into. but it was downtown LOL
lots of cool bars/ places to eat in DT raleigh.
chapel hill is cool but pricey.
raleigh, cary, or CH will be an upgrade from columbia, imo LOL
Durham does have some wonderful old neighborhoods (Old West Durham, Old North Durham, Trinity Park are the ones that come to mind). Durham's "crime rep" is outdated and much has been done about it in the past decade. Of course there are bad parts of any city, but none of the areas I mention above are near the "bad" parts of Durham.
It is true that Raleigh's street signs can drive even a native crazy--you'll go through an intersection, driving straight ahead, and the road will have another name--but I don't think that is enough to put Raleigh "out of consideration" over. Oakwood and Mordecai are two neighborhoods here that fit what you describe.
Cary is mostly known as a town for transplants, with tons of new construction and cul-de-sac neighborhoods, and though there is a "historical part" of Cary, I don't know how much of it fits the sort of thing you describe. Hillsborough might be somewhere else to consider, but it would depend on where this job is, as Hillsborough would be a hike from the Eastern part of the Triangle.
raleigh, cary, or CH will be an upgrade from columbia, imo LOL
ANYWHERE would be an upgrade from Columbia!
Thanks to you both for the info!
Oh and Francois--the street thing sounds a lot like Atlanta. Unfortunately, that was pre-marriage for me, so the hubby doesn't have much experience in the street name switch game. :-)
If you are looking for historic homes, you are largely limited to Durham and Raleigh. much of Cary didn't exist prior to 1980, and I suspect you would find historic homes in Chapel Hill to be outside your price range.
I can't speak for Raleigh, but if you want to learn more about historic properties in Durham, Preservation Durham is a great place to start
I can only speak to downtown Durham. There are plenty of opportunities at a range of price points for buying older homes, from "fix-up needed" gorgeous early 20th c. homes in some neighborhoods that'll run $300-500k before you even start construction, to houses in up and coming neighborhoods like Cleveland-Holloway and Old East Durham that can be found for a fifth of that number.
Right now my wife and I are fixing up a 3,000 sq. ft. home that's three blocks from the heart of downtown and are psyched that there are tons of good old home professionals in Durham, from historic preservation consultants to awesome GCs. Our GC remodeled an old-age retirement home into the Kings Daughters Inn B&B down the street from our new digs (plug: it's a great place to stay if you're coming to town to look around.)
We have several friends who've bought in Cleveland-Holloway, Old East Durham and Old North Durham and who love it there, and who're getting to use local consultants and contractors to fix up their places -- or are DIY. I can't speak to what level of safety/grittiness/urban pioneering you're looking for. Those three neighborhoods offer a wide range of progress-points on the revitalization spectrum, from just-starting to nearly-renewed.
Downtown Durham has gone through a nice renaissance. In walking/biking distance or on the free Bull City Connector bus you have Duke's campus, a Whole Foods (and soon, apparently a Harris Teeter), the farmers' market, the American Tobacco complex and adjacent minor league ballpark and Durham Performing Arts Center, the Carolina Theatre (arts performances and movies), lots of restaurants, bars, shops, etc. The NYT just called Durham one of the 41 places in the world to visit in 2011, on account of downtown's locavore food scene.
Crime has never been an issue for my wife or me. I grew up in an Orlando suburb and lived in Cambridge, Mass. for ten years; there are pockets of Durham where I wouldn't feel safe after dark, just as I wouldn't have felt safe going to Cambridgeport or Alewife late at night fifteen years ago, either, even though Cambridge is a perfectly safe place to be. Compared to all-suburban Cary and other towns in the Triangle, of course there's higher crime levels in cities like Durham and Raleigh, but if you compare to other cities in the SE and the USA, Durham does comparatively well. (The 2007 data show that city crime levels are about 1/3 lower in Durham vs. Columbia SC -- Durham violent crime rate ranks 7th among like-sized Southeast cities :: WRAL.com)
I'd second everything BCR said. Durham's a great place to live if you want to be in a historic structure and pay $1000 a month or less. I love it here.
If you're in to downtown development, both Raleigh and Durham have a lot of cool stuff happening. To me, it seems as if the pace of development is quicker in Durham, but I'm sure that there are a lot of things happening in Raleigh that I don't hear about.
Raleigh's definitely further along in its downtown renaissance, and that is probably due to the presence of state government continually adding jobs throughout the past 30 years, whereas Durham was hit hard by the decline of US manufacturing. Durham has quickly turned around in the past decade, and there's definitely a lot to do.
While I can't guarantee you won't get your door kicked in in Durham, I couldn't guarantee that in Cary, Chapel Hill, or any other town in America. Crime sucks, it happens on occasion, but remember that Durham has less crime than the average American city its size.
You guys should drive up for the weekend and see Durham. It's really a fun place.
Thanks again to you all for the suggestions and comments--especially Bull City Rising. You response hit all of the nails on the head. Best of luck to you and your wife in your renovation. :-)
I've been following Preservation Durham's progress and it seems like a lot of the historic districts are on the upswing. It does my preservationist's heart good to see such positive movement (even if we don't move to the area).
I am currently researching the Triangle as there is a job that I'm looking at applying for.
What can you tell me about the area? Specifically Raleigh, Cary, Durham, etc. My hubby and I are in our late 20s with no kids. He was in law enforcement in SC, and looking to get back in. I'm in historic preservation/downtown development. We would want to live in a historic house or building, and I prefer to be able to walk to shops and restaurants.
What is Cary like? Does it have historic homes/buildings for rent? I ran a Trulia search and didn't come up with much, so that made me wonder what was up with that. I know there are scads of historic homes to Durham, but I've read some mixed reviews about safety in that area. We were "urban pioneers" but several bad incidences in our current city of Columbia, SC have sort of reformed us. We can handle petty theft, but busting in doors (regardless of a security system) was a little too much for us.
I think my hubby is a fan of Chapel Hill, but I don't know if we could afford a decent sized apartment there. We will be in the $1000/month range.
How about downtown Raleigh? Is it a happening place? I know my husband has mixed ideas about driving in Raleigh (he claims there are no street signs or the streets are confusing or something...LOL).
Anyhoo, any info would be very helpful. Thanks in advance!
With regards to Chapel Hill, I am not sure what you mean by a decent sized apartment, but there are plenty 2br/2ba in that range. My roommate and I were scouting it a few months ago and landed in a nice place where we pay $375 each for a 2br2ba 833sqft. Most of the other stuff we saw was between 800-1200sqft. All within the <$1000-$1000ish price range. Most of the places are safe because its Chapel Hill, but there are going to be students anywhere you go. The upside of this is a lot of reasonably priced apartments. Unfortunately most of the historic buildings would probably be out of your price range in Chapel Hill. There might be some stuff in Durham, especially if you are interested in historic areas, but the thing to be careful with there is some neighborhoods have a tendency to shift from good to bad and vice-versa so when you move in there is a chance that a neighborhood might be terrific at first, but go down hill while you are living there. I know many people this has happened to. The only other place I know well enough that I might recommend is Carrboro, sometimes you can find older mill houses for rent in your price range, but those tend to be pretty popular.
Last edited by Randomstudent; 01-15-2011 at 11:47 AM..
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