Guilford County – Piedmont Historic Homes

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.

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.

A 1907 Greensboro Landmark: The George Grimsley House

April 5, 2023

Update: The house sold for $805,000 on December 13, 2023.

One sure way for your name live on is to have a high school named for you. Today, there may not be many people who could tell you who George Grimsley was (or even what his first name was), but most everyone in the area knows his name is on Greensboro’s oldest high school. Few people associated with the city have had a greater impact on Greensboro and North Carolina than he did as an innovative school superintendent, promoter of public libraries and an early president of Jefferson-Standard Life Insurance.

Grimsley’s suitably impressive house is now on the market for $1.295 million. One of the most prominent homes in the Fisher Park Historic District, it has 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms. It’s a spacious 3,568 square feet, sitting on just over a half-acre. The price works out to $363 per square foot, which is in the range of what the most high-end historic homes are going for in elite neighborhoods.

National Register Property For Sale: Gibsonville’s ‘Most Stylish and Impressive’ Turn-of-the Century Home, $425,000

January 25, 2023

Update: The home was sold for $350,000 on February 28, 2023.

The number of historic homes for sale has contracted sharply in recent months, along with the rest of the market, but one still robust category is National Register properties in Guilford County. There are three for sale, and 204 E. Railroad Avenue in Gibsonville is by far the most affordable. At $425,000, the price comes out to a modest $120 per square foot.

“The Francis Marion Smith House, erected in 1898, is the most stylish and impressive residence in Gibsonville surviving from the 1890-1910 period that witnessed the town’s major growth,” its National Register nomination says. “The two-and-a-half-story frame house combines elements of the Colonial Revival and Queen Anne styles, including an elaborate program of classical trim and turned ornament.”

Not surprisingly, given its location and date, it’s associated with the Whitsett Institute and family, arguably the most prominent family of its day in eastern Guilford County. “It is one of three notable late nineteenth and early twentieth residences associated with the Whitsett Institute, a boarding secondary school and junior college in the Whitsett community near Gibsonville. The three houses (one of which has already been listed in the National Register) are among the finest houses combining Colonial Revival and Queen Anne style elements in eastern Guilford County.”

Sold: A 1920 Craftsman Bungalow in Greensboro That Might Best Be Called The Nina Riggs House

May 16, 2022

The Craftsman bungalow at 506 N. Mendenhall Street is a standout on one of the most interesting blocks of one of Greensboro’s most interesting neighborhoods. It was sold recently for $650,000, more than twice its price 12 years ago. In its 102-year history, the home’s most notable resident may have been one of its most recent.

Westerwood was built out mostly in the 1920s and ’30s, just west of downtown on the north side of Market Street. The neighborhood is notable for its consistently attractive and diverse architecture. The majestic Double Oaks mansion stands near the head of North Mendenhall, with a collection of more modest bungalows, foursquares and a few Spanish Colonials and Prairie-style homes, many quite striking, arrayed down the rolling streets toward Lake Daniel Park. There’s even an outstanding Mid-Century Modern mansion overlooking the park on East Lake Drive, well hidden among the tress on what was probably the neighborhood’s last lot to be built upon.

A 1964 House in Sedgefield Designed by Edward Lowenstein and 22 UNCG Undergraduates, $765,000

April 26, 2022

3307 Gaston Road is one of Edward Lowenstein’s “Commencement Houses,” the three homes designed by Lowenstein and his students when he taught at the Women’s College (which had become UNCG by the time this one, the third, was built). Two of the houses still stand, and this one in Sedgefield is now for sale at $765,000.

The house is a Mid-Century Modern classic. The entrance hall has a 17-foot high wall of windows. There are large windows throughout the house, an open staircase and minimal ornamentation. At the back, a second-floor deck provides a view of the Sedgefield Country Club golf course. The house sits well back from the street in a forested landscape. The kitchen is modern but maintains its strikingly 1950s look.

New Listing: One of Greensboro’s Most High-Profile B&B’s, the Iconic 1909 Double Oaks, $1.795 Million

March 8, 2022

Update: The MLS listing was withdrawn on March 28.

The owners of Double Oaks, the Harden Thomas Martin House, are selling it as a turnkey business, including the furnishings and fixtures. But if you need 6 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms and a commercial kitchen just for yourself and your family, it would serve quite nicely as a $1.795 million single-family residence.

The house has been impeccably restored. The interior is as attention-grabbing as the exterior. Originally operated as a B&B from 1998-2007, the current owners bought and reopened it in 2016. They’ve restored the formerly closed third floor and added extensive landscaping, making it an active venue for weddings and other events.

New Listing: A Mid-Century Modern Mansion in Greensboro Designed by a Top New York Architect, $550,000

February 24, 2022

The George and June Newman House is in Greensboro’s Latham Park neighborhood, 1307 Latham Avenue. It was designed by architect J.P. Coble, who practiced in New York City.

Jack Pickens Coble (1909-1984) was born in Greensboro. “He graduated from the Cornell University College of Architecture, where he won first prize in the 1934 Baird Prize Competition, $35 and a gold seal, for designing a proscenium arch and a curtain for an opera house,” his obituary in The New York Times reported. His residential clients included Edgar Bronfman, Bennett Cerf, Stephen Sondheim and Mrs. Marshall Field.

The Roy and Rosamund Morgan House in Greensboro: 1940’s Home of a Distinguished Lawyer-FBI Agent-Diplomat, $863,000

October 12, 2021

Update: The listing was withdrawn June 7, 2022. It was relisted June 29, 2024.

201 County Club Drive was a relatively late addition to Greensboro’s most affluent neighborhood. The Colonial Revival was built around 1940, and today it retains the stately elegance of its era, which was rapidly drawing to a close. The house was listed for sale this week at $863,000.

The Morgan House has 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms, in 3,058 square feet, which comes out to an impressive $282 per square foot. The lot is 0.46 acre. The interior looks impeccable; the landscaping is gorgeous as well. The house is a fine example of Irving Park at its opulent best, but it isn’t quite as remarkable as its first owner.

Roy Morgan may have had one of the most distinguished careers of anyone in Greensboro in the mid-20th century, but he may be one of the least known among the city’s leading figures of the time. Aside from serving on the City Council, most of his work was far from Greensboro.

A Victim of the 2008 Crash, Sold at a Loss: A 1921 Mansion in High Point, $700,000

August 2, 2021

*Tudor Revival (left) and and Colonial Revival (right) rub shoulders at 603 Hillcrest Drive in High Point’s Emerywood neighborhood.*

The Conant-Praigg House was sold in April, almost four years after being put up for sale and almost three years after the owners gave up and took it off the market. It was finally sold without being listed publicly again. There are at least a couple reasons why it was a particularly difficult sell. One was a quirk of history.

Even in the hottest sellers’ market in recent memory, the sellers took a $150,000 loss on the house, and that was after owning it for 13 years. They had bought it, sadly, just two weeks before the 2008 real-estate market crash (they paid $850,000 in September 2008). Home prices have recovered overall, but, all these years later, there are still an unfortunate few houses that have been left behind.

The April sale, though, was the second in a row in which the sellers took a significant loss. The 2008 price was $50,000 less than the price paid in 2006. Prices may have peaked before the crash, but there’s another issue at 603 Hillcrest Drive.

Piedmont Historic Homes

Historic homes for sale in the Piedmont Triad

Tag: Guilford County