Beginning tonight, if you’re anywhere near uptown Charlotte you’ll be able to see what’s taken months of public testing to complete, a light show in the new Duke Energy Building!
The 48 story building will begin showcasing some of it’s lighting capabilities, which includes 2 minute shows at the top of every hour beginning at 8pm tonight.
According to the Charlotte Observer, “the lights will display a default white setting from 30 minutes before sunset each evening until after the final show at midnight. The lights will come on again at about 5 a.m. for the morning commute, then turn off after sunrise.”
If you’ve been around Charlotte for any length of time than you know that this won’t be the first building to be lit of with a variety of different lights and colors, but I believe it might be the first one that has the ability to create motion with the lights.
To read more about this exciting new feature of uptown Charlotte, visit http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/08/17/1628169/duke-building-light-shows-start.html#ixzz0wtYnUQIm
Filed under Charlotte NC, Fun Stuff, Life In the Carolinas, Out and About in the Carolinas by 
With so many incentives to buy a home, now is by no doubt, the time to buy. With lenders tightening their guidelines, you might want to be sure you have your finances in check.
With brand new federal regulations, this will help you understand how it will benefit you and tame your credit card debt. The bad news, is because of this government intervention you might have already seen a rise in your interest rates. This is from Red Book Magazine
1. They can’t raise interest rates on debt you’ve already racked up. They can if you are more than 60 days late on these payments. So pay your cards on time!
2. If your card charges you different interest rates (say, 14% for existing balances, and 2% for balance transfers), they must apply your payments to the debt carrying the highest rates first. So the faster you pay it off, the more money you save.
3. They can’t raise your rates if they find out you’ve been late on other credit cards or loans. This doesn’t mean you credit score will not be affected, which can eventually lead to higher interest rates. Your best bet is just to pay it on time.
4. You can no longer go over your credit limit and be charged the subsequent fees- unless you notify your credit card company in writing that you’d like to spend more than your limit. So don’t spend more than your limit.
5. They will tell you on your bill how long it will take to pay off your debt and how much it will cost you, including interest, if you pay only the minimum each month. This will be an eye opener, and a hard lesson for many. Pay more than the minimum or you could possible pay on this card longer than your house mortgage.
6. Those under 21years old won’t be able to get a credit card unless they show proof of income or get an adult to cosign. I think this is the smartest law of all! When I was in college, you would sign your life away for a free t-shirt or can coozie. All adults over the age of 21 take note…DON’T COSIGN
If you’re looking to buy a lakeside home at a huge discount, right now might just be the time to act! Of course, that’s if you don’t mind living in north Charlotte NC on Lake Norman.
A recent story run by WCNC news station talked about the glut of lakeside homes that are available in Lake Norman, and many of them are listed at steep discounts. For example and as quoted in the Charlotte Observer,
“It’s 7,000 square-feet,” said broker Jason Noblitt as he looked at pictures of a waterfront foreclosure in Mooresville. “It was on the market for approximately $1.7 million.”
The 5-bedroom, 4 1/2-bath house is under contract now and Noblitt thinks it’ll sell for under $1 million. That’s a $700,000 discount.
“In our current market you absolutely are not going to get what you did in 2006 or even 2007. We need to look at where prices were in 2004 and 2005,” he said.”
And it’s not as if there isn’t competition either. An MLS search showed 470 lakeside homes listed in the Lake Norman area, which means it’s a highly competitive housing market.
Of course on the flip side, if you’re looking to purchase a lakeside home, now is certainly a great time to act!
Down here in the Fort Mill SC area, it’s still most definitely a buyer’s market, but as I’ve always said, if your home is marketed and priced correctly, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t expect to get a fair value for your home.
To learn more about the Fort Mill SC or Rock Hill SC housing market, contact me today and I’d be more than happy to show you exactly what the Fort Mill SC real estate market looks like.
Filed under Charlotte NC, Home Buyers, Life In the Carolinas, Market Trends, News Reports by
The I-485 loop that has been the subject of debate for sometime now will apparently be completed using a process never before used in the state of North Carolina. In the plan called ‘design-build-finance’, contractors will help pay for the cost of completing the beltway upfront and will then be reimbursed on the back end.
Typically, most road construction projects follow a ‘design-build’ process whereby contractors are responsible only for designing and building the roadway. In this scenario, they would also join in the financing of the project as well.
This new process supposedly offers a streamlined method for completing the project that has been a hot topic since Gov. Purdue took office last year.
I for one am curious to see how well this process plays out. Call me a bit of a skeptic, but I don’t have a whole lot of faith in a government that’s already operating in the red and current projections don’t look very promising either.
While I do believe in allowing private enterprise to help us correct many of the problems we now face, I’ll be curious to see how the back-end financing portion works out for the participating contractors.
Regardless, I think it’ll be a good thing to have the project completed, now projected to occur around 2014. This 1-485 project has dragged on for waaaaaay too long already and it will certainly help the entire Charlotte area as it continues to grow and expand.
Filed under Charlotte NC, News Reports by
A recent study released by the Gallop orgnization shows that many of Charlotte NC’s residents rate it highly in terms of it’s overall beauty, quality of life, and access to higher education, but simultaneously rank it lower for things like the areas parks, playgrounds, and hiking trails.
While it all sounds like a bit of a contradiction, overall the feeling from the poll shows that Charlotte is very open to new comers as well, as it should be. It’s very difficult to find many native Charlotteans and even some of the cities most well known people, former Charlotte Observer owner D.A. Tompkins and former Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl just to name a few. I can honestly say that’s one of the reasons I love the Charlotte NC area so much is because of the diversity brought about by people coming from all over the country. It truly is a melting pot of cultures and ideals.
Some of the areas cited as needing improvement include the quality of the schools and the economy. The economy is certainly an easy one to understand when you consider that much of Charlotte’s economy is based on the banking industry, which has certainly taken a beating over the past 18+ months.
In terms of the school systems, I really don’t know what to say about this one. It certainly is a bit of a mess and as much as I’d love to say we can see a light at the end of the tunnel I don’t know that that’s the case.
Fortunately, for those of us down here in the Fort Mill SC and Rock Hill SC area, we don’t have to deal with the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System’s troubles. Fort Mill SC school district is rated as one of the top school districts in the state of SC and many people are choosing to purchase the new home in the Fort Mill SC area for this very reason.
Overall, I’d say that Charlotte NC definitely has a ton of great features and is a great place to live. At the same time, the Fort Mill SC and Rock Hill SC areas offer many additional benefits PLUS we also get to take advantage of everything that Charlotte has to offer because of it’s close proximity!
Filed under Carolina Real Estate, Charlotte NC, Fort Mill SC, Life In the Carolinas, Rock Hill SC by
