News – Piedmont Historic Homes

This Week’s Best: A Kerner Family Home in Kernersville and Two Elegant Houses in Greensboro

September 15, 2025

The most remarkable development last week was the sale of 225 N. Main Street in Kernersville. The house is notable in its own right, but the sale itself is also worth noticing. The house was for sale for almost two years when the owners accepted an offer on September 7. The sale closed four days later — an astonishingly quick end to a surprisingly long process. The sale price was $340,000, down a substantial $125,000, 27 percent, from its original $465,000. The house was sold by its next-door neighbor, the Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden.

The house was built by Rephelius Byron Kerner (1849-1881), a great-grandson of the town’s namesake, Joseph Kerner. Rephelius was a cousin of Julius Gilmer Korner (1851-1924), aka Reuben Rink, a commercial artist, Bull Durham barn painter and builder of Korner’s Folly.

This Week’s Best: A Grand Tudor and a Couple Craftsman Gems

August 17, 2025

It was a quiet week, more of a back-to-school week than a let’s-sell-the-house week.

The best new listing is in High Point’s Emerywood neighborhood. If there’s a more attention-getting house for sale in High Point than 427 Woodbrook Drive, I’d love to see it. The Alex and Adele Rankin House is a grand Tudor Revival on a big lot, white with yellowish-brown half-timbers, shutters and trim. It’s for sale at $950,000; at 3,753 square feet, the price is $253/square foot, relatively reasonable for a house like this these days. Built in 1924, it has a grand vaulted Tudor living room and period color tile in the bathrooms.

This Week’s Best: A Literary Connection in Reidsville and a Striking House in Elkin

August 10, 2025

Some intriguing houses and past owners this week.

Who knew the connection between Reidsville and one of Britain’s most important writers and theologians of the 20th century? This 1930 house was the boyhood home of Walter Hooper (1931-2020). “All of us who know and love the writings of C.S. Lewis owe a great debt to another figure, highly regarded in the field of Lewis scholarship but less well known to the wider world of readers: Walter Hooper. Over the course of six decades, Hooper served as literary advisor to Lewis’ estate, dedicating his life to editing, preserving, and sharing the work of C.S. Lewis.” There’s an appropriate Lewis quote painted on a kitchen wall.

This Week’s Best: Two National Register Houses, a Sweet MCM in Asheboro and an 1875 House in Greensboro

August 3, 2025

Two houses on the National Register were put up for sale this week. The John Randle House, circa 1800, on Lake Tillery near Norwood has 27 acres, a richly detailed history and a million-dollar price tag. The J.L. Hemphill House in Wilkesboro is an 1895 Queen Anne with just about the shortest National Register nomination you’ll ever see. Those things usually read like the writers got paid by the word.

This 1979 Mid-Century Modern home in Asheboro is an outstanding example of the style, which isn’t too common in the region’s smaller towns but does keep popping up here and there, now and then.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want When Selling a Home, As These Recent Sales Show

May 12, 2025

Sold for $99,900 below initial asking price
Sold for $175,000 below initial asking price
Sold for $100,000 below initial asking price
Sold for $80,000 below initial asking price
Sold for $300,000 below initial asking price
Sold for $202,000 below initial asking price

There can be a lot of reasons why houses, historic and otherwise, sell for far less than their listed prices. Sometimes the sellers (and their agents) are just too optimistic. Sometimes inspections reveal previously unknown problems that would be costly to fix.

Here are seven historic houses that, for one reason or another, have sold recently at conspicuously lower prices than the sellers wanted. They include an 1885 house in Mount Airy, whose sale was especially painful; a 1929 bungalow in a very popular Greensboro neighborhood; a 1915 house in a Greensboro historic district; farm houses in Davidson and Davie counties; a Mid-Century Modern house in Greensboro; and a 1950s mansion in Reidsville. Some of the sellers at least deserve credit for facing reality and reducing their asking prices to get their houses sold in less than a year.

Competition to Buy Historic Homes Is Building, Especially in Winston-Salem

April 30, 2025

Sold for $55,000 over asking price
Sold for $20,000 over asking price
Sold for $22,000 over asking price
Sold for $15,000 over asking price
Sold for $31,000 over asking price
Sold for $15,000 over asking price
Sold for $26,000 over asking price
Sold for $9,500 over original asking price
Sold for $11,000 over asking price
Sold for $101,000 over asking price

It may seem like current trends — interest rates, especially — are disadvantaging both homebuyers and sellers these days. There are some interesting trends emerging, though. April has seen an uptick in the number of historic homes for sale. It’s largely seasonal, of course, but the sheer number of homes coming onto the market seems greater than the typical spring upturn.

At the same time, competition among buyers is becoming more common. This month, 14 historic-home sales have closed at prices above asking prices, eight of them in Forsyth County. Compared to recent years, that’s a lot. (There also have been a few closings with conspicuously lower prices than listed. There’s more to say about that next time.) Here are eight of the houses that have sold significantly above their asking prices this month, plus the big winner of the year, which closed at 67 percent over its asking price in January. Click on the links for more information.

Sold: Ayershire, an Impressive 1935 Mansion in Sedgefield, $2.8 million

April 14, 2025

For sale, on and off, for 17 years, one of Sedgefield’s most extraordinary homes has been sold. Ayershire, the 1935 mansion at 3215 N. Rockingham Road, had been in the family of textile executive Nathan and Martha Adams Ayers since it was built.

The price was $2.8 million. That figure works out to $212 per square foot, far less than the price of many relatively ordinary houses these days. But there just aren’t many buyers looking for 13,000 square-foot mansions. The buyers in this case live a half-mile away in Sedgefield, so we can hope that they appreciate its value and that Ayershire won’t meet the same fate as two similarly impressive multi-million dollar mansions — Adamsleigh in Sedgefield and the J. Spencer Love House in Greensboro — that were bought in recent years and then torn down by owners with more arrogance than sense.

An Unexpected New Direction for Greensboro’s Double Oaks, a 1909 National Register Mansion

August 2, 2024

One of Greensboro’s grandest historic mansions has been sold to a new owner with a new vision. Known as Double Oaks Bed and Breakfast for much of the past 25 years, the house has been bought by Down Home North Carolina, a statewide community-organizing group working “to build multiracial and working-class power in small towns and rural communities across North Carolina.” The house will serve as a community center, event venue and meeting place for the organization.

Update, August 9, 2024: Here are their plans.

“Together, we are taking action to increase democracy, grow the good in our communities, and pass a healthy and just home down to our grandbabies,” its website says.

The organization paid $1.5 million for the house, 204 N. Mendenhall Street. The purchase was made possible by years of successful fund-raising, Down Home said. Among its recent major gifts was a $250,000 grant from the Katz Amsterdam Foundation in Colorado for “increasing voter registration in rural communities of color and addressing disinformation and voter disenfranchisement.”

The 7 Most Interesting Historic Homes Sold in June

July 3, 2024

June’s most notable sales include an 1881 Italianate farmhouse, a couple of particularly sweet bungalows, a Mid-Century Modern house designed by one of the state’s first African American architects and a pair of intriguing restoration candidates.

Of particular note among the past owners is James Holt Green, owner of the Glencoe mill and village in the 1930s and one of the state’s great heroes of World War II. Although rejected by the Army, he was determined to join the war effort and finagled a posting with the Office of Strategic Services. He led units behind German lines in Yugoslavia and Slovakia, rescuing downed airmen and wreaking havoc. He didn’t make it back home.

Click on the links below for more information about the houses and their histories.

The 6 Most Interesting Historic Houses Sold in April

May 4, 2024

A National Register mansion and the home of a renowned poet and novelist are among the most notable historic houses sold in the Triad in April. Others worth noting include the homes of a prominent 19th-century millwright, a Lexington orphan who became one of the town’s most successful businessmen, and a small-town theatre owner. In addition, a decrepit farmhouse was sold for the first time since it was built around 1800.

Piedmont Historic Homes

Historic homes for sale in the Piedmont Triad

Category: News