Charlottesville Breaking News
The year in Charlottesville-Albemarle real estate
Biggest House - 7444 Plank Road, featuring 11,852 sq. ft. including 9 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms and a ballroom, was listed at $1,275,000 and sold for $770,000.
Longest Listing - 2580 Palmer Drive. This home in Keswick Estates, was on the market for 1007 days. Originally listed at $2,995,000, it sold for $1,875,750.
Quickest Sale - 2218 Banbury Street. City records show that this property went to Fannie Mae in a foreclosure at $281,513 and traded later the same day to a new seller for $150,000.
Cheapest Listing & Cheapest Sale - 936 SW 5th Street. Condemned by the city and offered "as is," it was listed at $49,900, reduced to $27,900, and sold for $20,000.
Most Acreage, Priciest Listing, Biggest Price Drop & Highest Sale - 2789 Chapel Spring Lane. Formerly known as "Burning Daylight," this 1,478-acre Free Union farm hit the market at $13,500,000, was reduced to $10,900,000, and sold for $9,150,000.
Biggest Business Bldg. - 1317 Carlton Avenue. The 107,244 sq. ft. Lexis-Nexis building, situated on over 6 acres in the city, was listed at $4,850,000 and sold for $3,700,000.
Quirkiest Listing - 384 Coles Rolling Road. With an octagonal design, a photovoltaic solar system, a root cellar, and an outhouse containing a composting toilet, this southern Albemarle home had an asking price of $295,000 and traded at $275,000.As the New Year approaches, questions about the future of the housing market are more abundant than ever. Has the market hit bottom? Are hopes of recovery realistic? Will prices continue to drop as inventory continues to rise? And what about interest rates– are they going to go up, come down, or remain the same? With conflicting indications from market reports and continuing uncertainty over recovery, professionals and laymen alike wonder what’s in store for our area in the coming year.
With December drawing to a close, a number of national and state forecasts are being released citing predictions for 2012. In most cases, however, these reports are subject to the same variance in interpretation that has characterized the market reports provided throughout 2011. Credit reporting agency TransUnion foresees a significant drop in the number of delinquent mortgages over the coming year. Analysts at Goldman Sachs predict that home prices will– finally– hit bottom by summer of 2012. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, provides a similarly optimistic outlook in his ...
What's your New Year's resolution?
Walter Rush: "To start all over and get married again and do the right thing and stay out of trouble and stay out of people's way and follow directions and listen to what people say and be with my wife and stop hanging around with the wrong people."Hook staff
Cerrissa Obluck: "To leave the house more put together instead of in running clothes constantly."Hook staff
Aaron Moody: "To go to USC for grad school."hook staff
Buckalew family killed in plane crash
Jackson, Meriwether, Jeffrey, and Corinne Buckalewfamily photoTwo St. Anne's-Belfield School students have died along with their parents in the crash of a private plane along a busy highway in New Jersey. Jackson, a fifth-grade boy, and Meriwether, a first-grade girl, perished along with their mother, Corinne, and their father, Jeffrey F. Buckalew, who led an arm of a leading mergers and acquisitions firm.
The Buckalews had divided their time between Manhattan and Eagle Hill, a sprawling estate in Free Union.
According to news accounts, the crash took place shortly after 10am Tuesday, December 20, over horrified drivers on Interstate 287. Witnesses reportedly described a single-engine turboprop plane that seemed to weave erratically before breaking apart and crashing into a wooded median.
Also killed in the crash was one of Mr. Buckalew's colleagues at New York-based Greenhill & Co., Rakesh Chawla, a University of Virginia alumnus. An onboard dog also reportedly died in the crash.
“The firm is in deep mourning over the tragic and untimely death of two of its esteemed colleagues and members of Jeff’s family," reads a statement from Greenhill, which notes that pilot Buckalew, one of its first employees, had a passion for flying.
Mr. Buckalew is believed to have been operating the single-engine plane, which reported mid-air icing and which appeared to have suffered catastrophic component failure before impact.
A graduate of the University of North Carolina, Mr. Buckalew served on that...
Child un-support: State agency blames parents for flawed deposit
A state error led to hundreds in overdraft fees for Sherry Nist.PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE
Does this look like a check for $15?Joe YungEvery month, Charlottesville resident Sherry Nist gets a child support payment of $1,500 when her ex-husband writes a check to the state, which then moves the funds into her bank account. In early December, however, instead of the usual $1,500, the agency credited her account with just $15. The missing funds wreaked havoc on her finances, and state officials are now refusing to compensate her for the more than $600 in ensuing overdraft fees.
The check for $1,500 showed up in Nist's state account on Friday, December 2, as just $15. And even that money didn't reach her bank account until Tuesday, December 6, and that's when Nist realized she had a big problem.
"I was trying to buy coffee, and my debit card was declined," she says. "I had some auto pays that had posted. It just built so that I couldn't use my account. It was exponential."
Nist contacted the state agency, the Division of Child Support Enforcement, which promptly blamed Joe Yung, the check writer.
"The noncustodial parent made an error on his check," says Phyllis Sisk with the Division.
And yet a copy of the check provided by Yung shows a top line of "$1500." Although the zeros are written smaller, there also appears to be a notation for zero cents, and the second line is even more clearly marked: "Fifteen hundred even."
The release of the check hasn't prompted the state to admit any responsibility.
"Both our worker and the bank read it as $15," says Sisk, noting...
Hungry for stories: The 2011 food round-up
Peter Chang greets the media during the opening of his restaurant.File photo by Dave McNair
No more leisurely weekend breakfasts at the Tavern, as the iconic diner calls it quits.File photo by Tom Daly
The view from the new "Skybar" on the Downtown Mall.File photo by Dave McNairThe past year was a rough one economically, but that didn't stop some brave souls from opening up restaurants and eateries. We counted 28 new places that opened this past year, while 15 places closed. However, one restaurant, Carlton's, opened and closed this year, giving us some indication of the high-wire act restaurateurs must perform in these tough times and in this increasingly demanding foodie town.
And speaking of foodie towns. Back in May, Forbes had a story with lots of props for RelayFoods.com, the new Charlottesville-based grocery-gathering business which seems to be holding its own in a field littered with start-up corpses, but the real shocker was a casually inserted shout out to Charlottesville as the "locavore capital of the world."
Indeed, in the last five years, area chefs and grocers have taken the use of local produce to a new level. It used to be that chefs had a hard time finding enough volume of locally produced food, but thanks to ventures like the Local Food Hub and a growing number of producers we're in the midst of a local food explosion.
So, as we head into 2012, here are few memories from the past year.
Peter Chang chooses Charlottesville
The elusive Chinese chef once featured i...
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