Piedmont Historic Homes

Is something going on? The real estate market slowed to a crawl late last year, but it looks like spring might be quite a bit busier. Nine historic homes listed since January 30 are already under contract. The properties include a stately $950,000 home in Winston-Salem’s Buena Vista neighborhood and a $50,000 restoration project in Thomasville, a 1918 bungalow in Greensboro’s Fisher Park Historic District and a 1972 Mid-Century Modern home at the Bermuda Run Country Club.

Twenty-two homes have been added to the site in the last 10 days, so it’s not like everything out there is being grabbed up in just a few days. But the pace does seem to be picking up, right in the middle of winter. Here, in no particular order, are the nine new listings suddenly spoken for:

429 Lexington Avenue, Thomasville, $50,000

429 Lexington Avenue, Thomasville, Davidson County
sale pending February 6, 2023

• $50,000
• 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1,750 square feet, 0.51 acre
• Price/square foot: $29
• Built in 1916
• Listed January 31, 2023
• Last sale: $9,800, June 1974
• Note: The listing provides no pictures of the interior.

726 N. Stratford Road, Winston-Salem, $950,000

726 N. Stratford Road, Winston-Salem
The Jerry and Elizabeth Hester House
sale pending February 5, 2023

• $970,000
• 5 bedrooms, 3 1/2 bathrooms, 3,632 square feet, 0.37 acre
• Price/square foot: $267
• Built in 1926
• Listed February 3, 2023
• Last sale: $860,000, August 2021
• Neighborhood: Buena Vista
• Note: The original owners appear to have been Jerry Lee Hester (1876-1949) and Elizabeth Pearl Stipe Hester (1886-1969). They were listed at the address in 1928, the first year the city directory listed Stratford Road, and lived there until at least 1949, when Jerry died. He was a shoe salesman.

110 Park Boulevard, Winston-Salem, $269,500

110 Park Boulevard, Winston-Salem
Carl and Pauline Charles House
sale pending February 4, 2023

• $269,500
• 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1,340 square feet, 0.15 acre
• Price/square foot: $201
• Built in 1928
• Listed February 3, 2023
• Last sale: $30,000, March 1984
• Neighborhood: Washington Park
• Note: The kitchen is a little odd.
• District NR nomination: “Gable-front brick·veneered bungalow, three bays wide with wrap shed-roof porch supported by square posts on brick piers. Stretcher bond with continuing lintel course of alternating soldier and horizontal stretchers.
  • “Paired and triple-grouped 6/1 windows, two brick chimneys, one interior, one exposed face.
  • “Charles (wife Pauline) moved here from Franklin Street; he was a clerk with the post office and agent for Shenandoah Life Insurance Company.”
  • Carl Teague Charles, 1898-1974; Pauline Hyatt Charles, 1904-1998.

206 Louise Avenue, High Point, $263,000

206 Louise Avenue, High Point
sale pending February 4, 2023

• $263,000
• 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2,575 square feet, 0.19 acre
• Price/square foot: $102
• Built in 1909
• Listed February 2, 2023
• Last sale: $105,000, July 2003
• Note: The property includes a two-car garage, a chicken coop and a raised-bed garden.
  • “The house is being sold AS-IS and will need some work.”
  • The address doesn’t appear in the city directory until 1927, when it was the home of Edgar N. Allen (1880-1943) and Annie Grady Hastings Allen (1883-1981). Edgar was a traveling salesman. They were listed at the address until 1932.

206 Hundley Street, Eden, $110,000

206 Hundley Drive, Eden, Rockingham County
sale pending February 4, 2023

• $110,000
• 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2,016 square feet, 0.35 acre
• Price/square foot: $55
• Built in 1921
• Listed February 2, 2023
• Last sale: $60,000, January 2021
• Neighborhood: Draper

305 E. Hendrix Street, Greensboro, $424,900

305 E. Hendrix Street, Greensboro
The John and Helen Kleemeier House
sale pending February 2, 2023

• $424,900
• 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1,745 square feet, 0.11 acre
• Price/square foot: $243
• Built in 1918
• Listed February 1, 2023
• Last sale: $335,000, February 2021
• Neighborhood: Fisher Park Historic District (local and NR)
• Note: The property includes a wired storage building.
• District NR nomination: The original owners were John August Kleemeier (1879-1957) and Helen L. Bouldin Kleeneier (1884-1920). John, a native of Cincinnati, was president of Wysong & Miles. He sold the house in 1937.
  • Wysong & Miles was a manufacturer of machine tools and woodworking machinery established in 1903 (still in business).
  • For 48 years, from 1955 to 2003, the house was owned by Guy Delafield (1920-2008) and Letitia Carter Delafield (1920-2008). Guy was the office manager for the Lassiter Corporation, which sold cellophane products. Carter was an associate professor of English at Guilford College. She received her master’s degree in English from UNCG in 1966. Her thesis was titled, “Flannery O’Connor: Prophet and Evangelist.”
  • Guy and Carter were born six months apart in 1920 and died eight days apart in February 2008.

66 Bombay Road, Denton, $60,000

66 Bombay Road, Denton, Davidson County
sale pending February 3, 2023

• $60,000
• 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1,528 square feet, 0.48 acre
• Price/square foot: $39
• Built in 1900
• Listed January 27, 2023
• Last sale: $58,000, February 2022
• Note: A would-be “fix-and-flip” owner is walking away from this one after a year.
  • “Buyer has done a great deal of demolishing … Cash buyers only as this house will not qualify for a loan. Interior is down to studs in some areas. Most of the Main joist and some upper floor joist have been replaced. Inside walls are ready for wiring and insulation. Back porch has been partially closed in.
  • “A lot of work has been completed.” Caveat emptor.

300 West End Boulevard, Winston-Salem, $399,000

300 West End Boulevard, Winston-Salem
The Oscar and Francis Efird House
sale pending February 8, 2023

• $399,000
• 3 bedrooms, 3 1/2 bathrooms, 2,088 square feet, 0.25 acre
• Price/square foot: $191
• Built in 1926
• Listed February 3, 2023
• Last sale: $89,500, May 1984
• Neighborhood: West End Historic District (local and NR)
• Note: The property includes the home’s original two-car brick garage.
• District NR nomination: “The Efird House is a simple but stately two-story frame Colonial Revival house with a gable roof, weatherboard siding, paired sash windows, and a north side porch with slender Tuscan columns.
  • “The paneled entrance with sidelights and broad fanlight transom is sheltered by a pedimented Classical porch with Tuscan columns and a vaulted ceiling. The house has a stone retaining wall and steep stone steps to the terraced yard.
  • “Oscar O. Efird, an attorney and judge, and his wife, Frances, purchased the property in 1922 and were first listed in the city directory at this location in 1925. The Efirds owned the house until 1974.”
  • The Honorable Judge Oscar Ogburn Efird (1892-1974) was born in Winston and graduated from Roanoke College, class of 1912; Princeton, where he received a master’s degree; and Harvard, where he earned his law degree in 1919.
  • “At age 35, he was named judge of Forsyth County court and received seven two-years commissions from subsequent governors of North Carolina,” the Roanoke College website says. “He was the youngest judge of comparable jurisdiction in the state.”
  • The judge served as president of the Isaak Walton League and the North Carolina Skeet Shooting Association and was active in the Sons of the American Revolution and Rotary. He received the Roanoke College Medal in 1970 “for his life of productiveness and significance, as well as his distinctive service and professional achievements.”
  • Frances Kathrina Susan Koiner Efird (1892-1967) was born in Roanoke. She and Oscar were married in 1920.

182 Golfview Drive, Bermuda Run, $299,000

182 Golfview Drive, Bermuda Run, Davie County
sale pending February 2, 2023

• $299,000
• 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2,850 square feet, 0.1 acre
• Price/square foot: $105
• Built in 1972
• Listed January 30, 2023
• Last sale: $250,000, April 2022
• Neighborhood: Bermuda Run Country Club
• HOA: $225/month
• Note: The listing describes it as one of only two detached homes in the golf-course development.
  • The house backs up to the driving range and main clubhouse.
  • Country club membership is optional.
  • The property includes a two-car garage.
  • Something to ask about: The description says the home has “two additional rooms that could easily be used as bedrooms/office/storage.” Those rooms would be problematic as bedrooms if they’re the two rooms in the basement that don’t have windows. The 2022 listing for the home claimed it had five bedrooms, including “2 in the basement without windows.” Under the building code, bedrooms are required to have two ways in and out (typically a door and a window).