Your Guide to Buying a Home in Durham, NC

Buying a Home in Durham, North Carolina

Durham is located in Durham and Orange County

Durham is home to Research Triangle Park, Duke and North Carolina Central universities and many City of Medicine,USA medical, diet and fitness centers. Durham is also home to 13 historic sites, three art centers, 12 signature annual events with national or regional recognition, plus dozens of other core and celebrated annual events, six science and nature centers, and great spectator sports venues.

Durham is an hour's drive from the Triad region of Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point. It is two hours from Charlotte. Durham is three hours from the beautiful North Carolina mountains and two hours from the famous Tar Heel coastline.

Durham is consistently ranked in the regional and national media as one of the top places to live and do business in the United States. Recently Durham was rated first among 274 similar-sized counties nationwide on the Creativity Index, compiled by "creative class" economics researchers from Carnegie Mellon University.

Durham’s vibrant quality of life and commitment to arts and culture contribute to its ever-growing popularity. Durham’s neighborhoods surround Duke and North Carolina Central universities and Research Triangle Park and range from historic homes on tree-canopied streets to renovated Downtown lofts to communities planned around lakes or golf courses.

Durham is a single city-county at the pinnacle of North Carolina’s Research Triangle Region and proud to be home to Research Triangle Park, Duke and North Carolina Central universities, and known as "The Bull City," "The City of Medicine USA" and "A County with MERIT" for (M)edicine (E)ducation (R)esearch (I)ndustry and (T)echnology.

Durham is characterized by 98,000 acres of hardwood and evergreen forests including the only remaining old growth Piedmont bottomland forests and 7,800 acres of cropland. Hills and dales, meandering rivers and streams, several lakes, 26 rare plant species and several rare species of birds and animals can also be found here.

North Carolina is the "Old North State," a reference that originated with the division of the Carolinas in 1710. It is the first of the original 13 colonies to vote for independence. With 52,660 square miles, North Carolina now has 7.6 million residents. North Carolinians are sometimes called "Tar Heels," a nickname that dates back to pre-Revolutionary days, when tar, pitch and turpentine were extracted from North Carolina pine forests for British naval stores.

Located twenty-three miles from the Virginia border, the city of Durham is in the northeast corner of North Carolina’s central piedmont, a geographic foothills region lying between mountains and coastal plains. Durham is 140 miles from the Appalachian highlands and 130 miles from the coast.

When you visit the city of Durham, don’t be confused by the use of the term "Triangle" or "Research Triangle". Used in many varying ways, these terms refer to a broad region of North Carolina. The term "Triangle" was first coined to refer to an area anchored by three major universities: Duke University in Durham (and later North Carolina Central University, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University in Raleigh. The three joined in the 1950’s to help create Research Triangle Park, centered in southeast Durham. Some expanded the term to include the three cities, then the three counties and later, 16 cities surrounding the universities. Today, the term is used to refer to a five-county metropolitan statistic area or census labor shed or a 3,000-acre, six-county, 26-community planning region. Raleigh-Durham is not a city but the name of an airport that serves two separate major cities and jointly-owned with Durham and Wake Counties.

Licenses are required for fishing and hunting and are available at all sporting goods and outdoor activities stores. Children 16 and under are not required to have a license but must be accompanied by a licensed adult.