CHAPEL HILL (and Carrboro)

Population: 53,500

CHAPEL HILL PROFILE

Chapel Hill is a very lovely little college town surrounded by upscale subdivisions and lots and lots of rolling farmland.  The downtown has historic homes, a great shopping and restaurant district (along Franklin Street) and the gorgeous UNC-Chapel Hill campus.  It's a very pretty, very vibrant place to live.

The Franklin Street business district is only a couple of miles long, but it is as charming as it is walkable. It boasts about 300 seriously good restaurants, lounges, wine bars and great boutiques (at all price points). A stroll up and down the street is a great way to spend a day.

There is also great culture in this little city -- like Durham (who benefits from Duke’s presence), the whole community enjoys the concerts, performances, lectures and book signings that the University sponsors and attracts.

Chapel Hill is generally the priciest spot in the NC Triangle. The historic homes in the neighborhoods that line Franklin Street around the campus go for about $100,000 more than a comparable house in neighboring Durham.  But due to the downturn in the economy, single family homes in the surrounding suburbs are now about comparable to other Triangle cities.  And there are lots of nice subdivisions to choose from, all less than a 15 minute drive from downtown, but you'll feel like you're out in the country.

A Big Bonus:  Chapel Hill/Carrboro city schools have the best, most stable public school system in the Triangle, hands down. You don’t need private schools when you’ve got public ones like this – in 2005, Newsweek named two Chapel Hill high schools in the top 100 high schools in America – and there were only two high schools in Chapel Hill at the time. A third one just opened. See SCHOOLS

A word of caution: This town is pretty much all about Carolina, as UNC is called in the local vernacular, and it’s a small town. If you have no affiliation with the school, well, you might find the school spirit a little oppressive.  But just about anyone can fit in in CH -- it's a real melting pot.