Holding Village
Holding Village is built around a 30-acre lake, which no other neighborhood in town can say. It is master-planned and large, roughly 1,000 homes at build-out, started in 2016 and still going. The housing is mixed on purpose: cottages, townhomes and single-family houses on a walkable grid, priced anywhere from about $400,000 to $750,000 depending on which of those you buy. There is a pool with a slide. Downtown is a five-minute drive or a fifteen-minute bike ride, and that bike ride is a real option here, not a line in a brochure.
Where it is
The neighborhood comes off Rogers Road, directly behind Holding Park. Downtown Wake Forest is five minutes by car and about fifteen on a bike, which is the whole argument for this place over the subdivisions further north. The streets inside are laid out as a grid, so walking to a neighbor's block or to the lake is normal rather than an expedition. The south side of the lake is the later phase and has its own listing, so pay attention to which side of the water a house is on when you are comparing prices, because the two halves were built in different years and sell differently.
What to know if you're moving here
The $400,000 to $750,000 range covers three different products. Decide which one you are shopping for before you start comparing per-square-foot numbers, because the rest of the decision follows from that.
- The $400,000 to $750,000 band covers three housing types, and the low end of it buys a townhome or a cottage.
- Dues are $700 a year and they carry the lake and the pool, which is fair value at that price.
- Schools are Wake Forest Elementary, Wake Forest Middle and Wake Forest High.
- Houses date from 2016 onward, so the earliest streets are out of warranty while the newest are still going in.
- A neighborhood planned for 1,000 homes and started in 2016 has been under construction for most of a decade and is still not finished.
- Mixed housing types sit on the same block, which matters to some buyers at resale, so walk the whole block before you decide on a house.
What to do if you're visiting
Walk the lake first. Thirty acres of water with a neighborhood built around it is a genuinely pleasant hour, and it is the fastest way to understand why people pay for this address.
- Downtown is five minutes from the lake, which is the point of the whole location.
- With kids along, Lumpy's Ice Cream is the stop.
- Browsing on the way through is what Magpie and Crow is good for.
- Check Arts Wake Forest for whatever is on that weekend.
- Bring a bike if you have one, since the fifteen-minute ride into town is the thing residents talk about most and it tells you more than any listing site.