Grand Highland Estates

Grand Highland Estates is acre-plus lots off Highway 98, on well and septic, with no streetlights and horses on a few of the properties. Roughly 120 homes went up between 2006 and 2015, and they sell from about $700,000 to $1.2 million. The quiet is deliberate. No sidewalks were poured and no clubhouse was built, the dues are $500 a year, and the lots are large enough that nobody's kitchen window looks into yours.

What that buys is space and dark skies. What it costs is every convenience that comes with a dense subdivision, from a pool to a streetlight at the corner. Buyers who want the acreage tend to know that going in, and the people who are unhappy here are usually the ones who expected a neighborhood and got a road with houses on it.

Where it is

The entrance is off Highway 98, the through road for this whole stretch east of Wake Forest. Go west and 98 runs into town and crosses US-1, the four-lane signed as Capital Boulevard that heads south toward Raleigh. Go the other way and you are in the country around Falls Lake. The neighborhood's position also explains its school assignment, which follows the Wakefield chain to the south rather than the Wake Forest schools in town. Plan on driving for everything. There is no version of an acre-lot address out here that puts a store within walking distance.

What to know if you're moving here

Well and septic is the fact to plan around, and most of what else you pay for out here follows from the size of the lots and the age of the houses.

• There is no water bill and no utility to call when a pump fails, so budget for water testing, a softener if the iron runs high and regular septic pumping.
• Lots start at an acre and go up, which is serious mowing unless you pay someone or let part of it go back to woods.
• The build years, 2006 to 2015, put these houses at the age where roofs and HVAC systems come due, so read an inspection report with that in mind.
• Dues of $500 a year cover very little, and there is no pool.
• The absence of streetlights is wonderful for the stars and means carrying a flashlight after dark.
• Schools are Pleasant Union Elementary, Wakefield Middle and Wakefield High, and none of them is close.

What to do if you're visiting

There is not much commercial ground out here, which is the trade residents made. What a visitor does instead is play a round, take a long walk, or spend an hour with animals that need homes.

• A round at Brevofield Golf Links does not require a drive back through town.
• The walk is Horseshoe Farm Nature Preserve, with open ground of a kind that does not exist inside a subdivision.
• Volunteers and adopters are what Saving Grace Animals for Adoption, INC needs, and that matters in a place where people keep animals on their land.
• If you are visiting someone here, bring what you need with you, because the trip back out for a forgotten ingredient is longer than you expect.