Driving into Asheville, one is struck by the warmly hued art deco and neo-gothic style buildings, including North Carolina's first skyscraper, the Jackson Building, poking out of a leafy green cradle of high hills. This town, which nearly 70,000 now call home, has always been a literary and artistic oasis in the mountains: The Fitzgeralds lived here (Zelda died in a local sanitarium); Thomas Wolfe was born here; and midcentury writers, musicians and artists once populated a town called Black Mountain, 15 miles east. With galleries, boutiques, restaurants and bookshops nestled in its steep hills, Asheville feels like a mini San Francisco.
"People are buying weekend condos downtown" said a local realtor with Beverly-Hanks, which represents about 30 percent of the real estate market share here. "It's really a sophisticated little city."
Outside of downtown there are many styles of housing, from grand Georgian manors to Arts and Crafts cottages to timber-peg homes. One of the most popular residential communities is still Biltmore Forest, the community originally built for those working on Asheville's landmark, the Vanderbilt family's Biltmore House, which remains, more than 100 years after its completion, the nations's largest home. With its lush trees, larger-than-average lots, and roads that criss-cross through the woods, Biltmore Forest conjures up a sense of pastoral privacy.
The design ordinances have always helped retain a sense of the past. "They are so strict that when you look at them you swear that you're driving through the '20s". People are also buying and fixing up old Victorians close to downtown, in historic areas like Montford.
According to the state's realtor association, home sales in Asheville were up 13 percent in 2005.
For more free information on our beautifull Mountains, please contact me and I will mail you maps and brochures about the area. |