Long for sale, former US Sen. John Edwards’ Chapel Hill estate has buyers with big plans
A working farm west of Chapel Hill that once was home to former U.S. Sen. and presidential candidate John Edwards is finding new life as a luxury home community for 12 new families.
Rockford Development, founded by Edwards in 2019, is partnering with Chapel Hill developer Tom Heffner to build the 102-acre subdivision at 1201 Old Greensboro Road, Heffner told The News & Observer in an interview Wednesday.
The 10 homes under construction are selling for between $1.5 million and $2 million-plus, he said.
Rockford is named for the “rock ford” that crosses Phils Creek on the property, located in southwestern Orange County about five miles from Carrboro, according to the Heffner Properties website. Roughly 40 acres of woods, the creek and ponds will be preserved.
Edwards bought the property, which has a Chapel Hill postal address, in 2004, building a 26,000-square-foot estate for his family that includes a 10,800-square-foot home with a four-bedroom guest house. His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, died in 2010.
Heffner said he got to know Edwards during that time, while he was building the Westhampton subdivision off Hatch Road, which backs up to the Edwards estate, Heffner said.
They later were re-acquainted through Edwards’ marketing agent when he listed the property for sale at $6.9 million in December 2016. The house languished without a buyer, even after the price was cut by $1 million in 2017.
In 2019, the property was subdivided, and the guest home and over 6 acres of land sold for $800,000 the next year. In November, the main house, which sits on 10 acres, was sold for nearly $2.7 million.
The sales took a long time, in part because the home was custom-built for the Edwards family, Heffner said.
“The purchase price was real, real high, so you cut down on the potential pool of buyers for it,” he said. “And then, when you do find a buyer who can financially handle the transaction, then they have to like the house.”
Enter the current housing market, which has seen lines of cars and people stalking available properties, bidding wars, and homes being sold for well over their asking price. Builders have struggled to keep pace with the demand.
The remaining 10 lots, ranging from 2.25 acres to 5.5 acres, sold in just a few months to private buyers and Raleigh and Chapel Hill home builders, Heffner said. The normal timeline is 12 to 18 months, he said.
Four homes are under construction, and one should be ready for occupancy soon. All are served by a private well and septic system.
“The market is so overheated right now. We have such a profound supply-demand imbalance that there is more demand in this upper price range and less supply than we probably have ever seen in the Chapel Hill market,” Heffner said.
On Wednesday, Realtor.com showed 139 single-family homes for sale in Orange County, over 60 of which had sales pending. The median list price as of February was $538,000, down roughly 4.7% since February 2021.
The median time a house spent on the market was 40 days, compared with 18 days in Wake County.
The pressure on pricing was higher in surrounding counties, however, with a 13.7% increase over the last year in Durham County, 18.3% in Chatham County and 21% in Alamance County.
Wake County reported a 9% pricing increase in the last year, but home listings fell by 55% in February compared to a year earlier, The News & Observer has reported.
This story was originally published April 27, 2022 at 12:01 PM.
