Real Estate and Related Topics

Custom Built Home In Equestrian Community Just Minutes From Raleigh.

This is the newest home we have listed in the Churchill Section of Portofino an equestrian community in Clayton, North Carolina which is a short twenty minute drive to Downtown Raleigh. JordanBuilt Homes is building a range of Craftsman style ranch and two story homes in Churchill.Standard features include, site finished hardwood floors, granite counter-tops, crown moulding, stainless steel appliances, tile floors. The homes in Portofino are heated with efficient Natural Gas, screened porches and grilling decks are standard.

Portofino is the Raleigh area's finest equestrian community with miles of trails, pastures, state of the art 22 stall barn. dressage arena showjumping arena. even if you dont own a horse there is so much to see and here, from walking the trails to kayaking on the river, fishing in the pond.

Swimming in the pool or enjoying an evening in front of a roaring outdoor fire at the clubhouse.
This home has three bedrooms downstairs and a bonus or forth bedroom up. it has a separate dining room, and study. a screened in porch with a fireplace. the fireplace in the living room has built in bookshelves on either side. Hardwood floors, granite countertops, mudroom with shoe boxes!

Four Bedroom Plus Bonus in Gated Community, Clayton,NC

Buy This House And It Will Save You A Boat Load Of Money, Year After Year Because It’s Energy Star Certified.

What does that mean? First off it has Radiant Barrier Insulation. Aluminum foil-based Radiant Barrier insulation which was originally developed by NASA helps keep the heat in during the winter and out during the summer. There is some good information here about Radiant Barrier Insulation

Sealed Crawlspace, it has  a sealed crawlspace, do you hate spiders etc? Open and vented crawlspaces are the norm and they rely on air movement to keep the area dry. There is moisture in the air aka humidity and moisture in the soil, if not properly vented out they can be quite a problem, wet and wood never good! So the crawlspace in 154 Sicily Dr. has a gravel base, a heavy PVC barrier. Insulation on the walls, the walls having been previously treated with moisture retardant. Now here is the kicker, the crawlspace is conditioned, meaning the air being pulled into the house is already cooled or heated, thus reducing your energy bills. Cleaner air also, so for people with allergies, you'll love this house!

Tankless Water Heater, set it and forget it! You set the temperature you like the water to come out of the tap and then you wait.........Until you need some hot water, in which case presto you turn on the tap and instant hot water. Most standard water tanks are constantly heating the water, when you're asleep, when you're at work, wasting energy all the live long day.

Other Energy Efficient Features Included in this home

Air Sealed House And Ducts

Low E Windows

Programmable Thermostat

Energy Efficient Appliances.

Building A Custom Home In Portofino In Clayton, A Diary.....It's Finished!

This is a magnificent custom built home in the equestrian community near Raleigh called Portofino. The house has four bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms, an office, a bonus room, finished walk-out basement. There are so many features and details, too many to list. The following series shows the different stages of construction in the building of this home in Portofino, the Triangle's premier equestrian community, named 2010 NC Community of the Year!

For further information about this or other homes available in Portofino call or text David at  (919) 601-2268

Building A Custom Home In Portofino In Clayton, A Diary.....Day 1

Building A Custom Home In Portofino In Clayton, A Diary.....Day 2 & 3

Building A Custom Home In Portofino In Clayton, A Diary.....Day 6&7

Building A Custom Home In Portofino In Clayton, A Diary..... Day 10

Building A Custom Home In Portofino In Clayton, A Diary.....Week 3

Building A Custom Home in Portofino In Clayton, A Diary.....Week 7

Building A Custom Home In Portofino In Clayton, A Diary.....Month 5

                             How Important Is The Direction Your House Faces

It depends! What are your interests? Where do you like to spend your time and doing what?
Do you like to garden, grow vegetables,flowers,grass? Do you have sensitive rugs, paintings. Do you read a lot, paint, draw.Do you have a Plasma TV, or watch a lot of TV?
Well unless you are buying or building a mansion, you won’t be able to cure all these nor would you want to spend the time figuring it out, but with a little planning and a good builder you can maximize your homes potential.

The first question is where in the world are you building, we’ll just deal with the US for today. North, South, East, West, or a combination of them. Being in the South-East we have mild winters and warm summers so shade in the afternoon is important to keep the house from heating up too much. I started this post after being in two houses yesterday, both had three season rooms. The first house which faces East-South East, has a fantastic three/four season room with tile floor, Eze-Breeze windows, bead-board vaulted ceiling and it was frigid cold in there. Now the builder could probably add a vent to take the chill off. The next house we went to faces North North - West, same four season room, tile, Eze-Breeze windows and this one was toasty, in fact you could have opened the windows and let a breeze in.

Quite a remarkable difference, which got me thinking. If you live in a colder climate that gets a lot of snow there might be an advantage to having your driveway face towards the sun to melt the snow, I’ve seen streets where one side is cleared completely and the other side is still dealing with frozen snow and ice.

This is a fascinating subject and there is a lot of opinion out there on it, there is one issue that is common and that is using the suns rays in the winter but shielding the house from them in the summer. This can be done with proper placement and also the correct overhangs. Vital to have the correct insulation also. Getting the sun into the kitchen, bedrooms in the morning is another favourite, the placement of the garage can make a difference, trees, and the type of trees, deciduous trees look and act a whole lot different in the summer time versus the winter, (they loose their leaves, silly!)

Many a patio goes unused in the summer because it gets too hot, and many a lawn suffers through life with no sun. I have seen many amateur gardeners start their vegetable garden in the shade only to curse their lack of edible vegetables...no I haven’t! That was me!!
So building your dream house just got harder, well not really, better to find this stuff out before you build rather than after you move in, and with the technology available today, and the advances in building materials there is a lot of help out there, start by getting a compass app on your phone!

Four bedroom home, master plus one bedroom downstairs. two bedrooms upstairs, separate dining room, office, bonus room, living room, laundry room.
Finished walk in crawl space to store the yard tools, deck, three season room, stamped concrete patio with built in fire place. Two car garage, decorative concrete stamped driveway turning pad. landscaped yard with drought resistant sod, irrigation system in the front. balcony off the bonus room, French country style brick exterior. Wrought iron railing on front porch.
The home sits on a large partially wooded lot with plenty of lawn. The home is two lots down from the Estate section of Portofino.

Portofino in Clayton is the “North Carolina Community of the Year” chosen by the Home Builders for the wonderful amenities which include a salt water, zero entry pool, seven miles of hiking and walking trails, Italian style terracotta roofed clubhouse and outdoor Piazza with slate courtyard, outdoor fireplace and covered patio.

The foyer has a herring-bone designed hardwood floor of white-oak with dark inlay, it is wide and gracious with 10 foot ceilings leading to the great room with stone fireplace cathedral ceilings, a wall of windows that look out to the beautiful yard. The kitchen is dominated by a huge center island, granite counter-tops, custom cabinets, corner pantry, stainless steel appliances.

The second bedroom downstairs is practically an in-law suite, separate full bathroom, this is where the laundry room and garage entrance are there is a linen closet and the information center which houses the alarm, Ethernet ports, cable etc.

The master suite, has hardwood floors, ceramic tile, huge closet with a window,separate vanities, soaking tub with jacuzzi, tiled shower with seat, shelves and multiple shower heads. 

A Second Set of Eyes.
How true that a second opinion, a second look, a second glance, a second set of eyes can make a big difference in opening our own eyes to what we are missing. I think, and I speak from personal experience that humans (not all) are prone to seeing things the way they are and if there is nothing wrong to moving on to finding the obvious fault or the easier correction to make.

Let me explain, my builder Neil Jarman and I walked through his custom built energy star home last week together, and while I am in the house multiple times a week and he is there from time to time, this is the first time we were both there together since he finished it.
So we have a buyer that has expressed an interest in the house and as we walked through the house I explained to Neil what it was they liked and didn't like about the house. There were only some easily changed items that were a concern to them, like switching out the carpet in the master bedroom with hardwoods. We stopped in the living room which has soaring cathedral ceilings and wooden beams across the length of the room and a wall of windows on one wall. Neil is looking at the ceiling and notices that something is just not right. The beams while beautiful to look at, seem somewhat detached from  the rest of the features in the room, the stone fireplace or the Brazilian Cherry hardwood floors, the built in shelving unit. So he starts to plan a way of adding beams perpendicular to bring everything together. As soon as he said it I realised that I have been looking at those beams for months and in the back of my mind thought something was missing, but because they were functional and beautiful I moved on.

The stone fireplace has a space cut out for someone to install a flat screen if they wish and if not then Neil will fill in the space, now I tell people this and it is obvious to me and the builder and to a lot of people, but as we are standing there looking at it …....it becomes a big black hole and to some people that is what they see and that is what they remember. Not everyone will know that the wires are behind the wood panel and the builder can easily add the stone to finish it if they so desire. Some folks might even think they would have to do it themselves!! So now we will get a nice picture to cover the gap in the stone and explain what is behind in a note card.

The great thing about a walk through a property like this is when Neil will say “what needs to be done with the master suite or the bonus room or theater or kitchen?” and the answer is a resounding NOTHING!! They are about as good as it gets.

These trails are amazing and have been compared to Umstead State Park in Raleigh and The Biltmore, imagine all you have to do is walk to the end of your yard in a lot of cases and you are on the seven miles of trails Portofino has to offer.

New Homes Started in Portofino, Clayton, NC 27527.

Finally the homes in Churchill have been started, we have footings dug for three new homes, we have the crawl built for one, so it won't be long before they start to take shape. The interest in these homes in Portofino has been remarkable, and understandbly so, when you consider the size of the lots (smallest is a half an acre), the price, high $200's to high $300's and the quality custom home that Jordan Built Homes is building.

Churchill in Portofino is a neighborhood of about sixty homes that offers a wonderful variety of lots. The homes will be a selection from Jordan Built designs that will include a number of ranch plans with master bedrooms down, open floor plans, optional bonus and bedroom upstairs.

We have already sold and reserved two lots in Churchill, which is a sure sign of the interest in this beautiful section of Portofino, North Carolina's "Community of the Year". The amenities that Portofino offers, the miles of walking/hiking trails, the saltwater, zero entry pool, the magnificent clubhouse, the fishing pond, canoe launch. Not to mention the state of the art horse complex which has just had one of the rings fenced and they are building a viewing stand this week.

For more information about this remarkable community in Clayton,NC call David at (919) 601-2268

Who Wouldn't Want To Live Here........?

Large Lots in The Raleigh Area.

If you are looking for a larger lot with some privacy, maybe some trees, it’s hard to find them in North Raleigh and Cary.

But some of the best large lots for home building are in Portofino in Clayton. Portofino has lots from half an acre all the way up to five acres and more.The large lots in Portofino offer a quality of life that few communities can claim. There are all kinds of options in this 400 acre community,voted the Community of the Year in the entire State of North Carolina for 2010!
We have large lots in the woods, we have large lots that are partially cleared, some lots are basement lots. There are many lots that have access to the nearly seven miles of hiking trails, some lots have a creek running through them and some lots have river access to the Neuse.

At Portofino the quality of the homes reflects the incredible natural beauty of the property, no two homes are alike and we encourage people to bring plans they have for their dream home and one of our custom builders will build a home that matches the lot you choose.
So often today developers will clear cut every tree, stick house on top of house and slab build to get the most they possibly can for their investment and often times in high density areas so you end up with a $500,000 home and you can reach out the bathroom window and touch the neighbors house!!!!

Portofino is twenty minutes to Downtown Raleigh, thirty minutes to North Hills, forty five minutes to Research triangle and a nice two hour ride to the beach. You need a larger lot in the triangle, you are looking for land or a lot wit a couple of acres but you want to be in a community, with a pool etc, come out to Portofino, you not be disappointed.