The highest- and lowest-priced single-family home sales from May 14 to 20

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HIGHEST

Listing agent: Lynn Salton, HM Properties

Selling agent: Janet Tuck, Cottingham Chalk Hayes

Sold price: $1.7 million

Square feet: 7,611

Three years and 200 tours.

That dizzying amount of work is what Janet Tuck said it took to find a house – for just one client.

The search ended last week, with the $1.7 million sale of 3344 Leamington Lane in Charlotte.

“They were excited to finally find a home they both wanted, and I was relieved that they were ready to make a decision,” said Tuck, a broker with Charlotte-based Cottingham Chalk Hayes.

The home was originally listed on June 29, 2011, and sat on the market for nearly a year.

Charlotte-based luxury homebuilder Potter Builders built the 7,611-square-foot home in 1999 in the Dovewood Community. It features five bedrooms, four full bathrooms and three half-baths and was built on a 0.64-acre lot.

Listing agent Lynn Salton, of Charlotte-based HM Properties, could not be reached to speak at length about the listing or sale.

Tuck said the buyers – she declined to name names – in particular liked that the home is in a gated community composed of 17 homes.

Tuck, who said she has been selling real estate in Charlotte since 1989, said the home’s selling price is comparable to the prices of homes she usually sells.

“A home at this price doesn’t sell every day, but I am seeing more activity in the luxury market than I did this time last year,” she said.

Other agents have said they are seeing an uptick in activity in the Charlotte-area luxury market.

According to a report produced for The Mecklenburg Times by Keller Williams broker Nadine Deason, 10 homes priced at $1 million or higher sold in the Carolina Multiple Listing Services area in April. That’s double the number of homes that sold in the same month last year.

Last month, there was 5.7 months’ worth of inventory of homes in that price range, down from 16.2 months in April 2011.

  LOWEST

Listing agent: Jason Benham, Benham Group

Selling agent: Patricia Lampe, Hines and Associates

Sold price: $15,000

Square feet: 1,270

When Patricia Lampe turned the faucet in the sink, dark brown water came pouring out. When she flipped some switches in the living room, only a couple of lights came on. When she took her client outside to see the front of the home at 277 Jefferson Court in Concord, three of the windows were boarded up and a blue tarp hung over almost half of the roof.

So when the client made an offer, Lampe, an agent with Cornelius-based Hines and Associates, said she was shocked.

“I was even more amazed when he told me he was going to live in this house,” she said. “I thought for sure this was going to be one he bought to fix it up and rent it out, but that’s not the plan.”

Lampe, the selling agent, declined to name the buyer.

She said the buyer told her upfront that he wanted an older home. What he bought, for $15,000 in cash, is a house that was built in 1940 and needs work.

“It was uninhabitable and needed new carpet, new paint and was missing all the appliances,” said Perry Butler, an agent with Charlotte-based Benham Group, who assisted listing agent Jason Benham.

“In cases like this it is usually more about selling the property quickly than it is about the money,” Butler said.

The home was a real estate-owned property. It spent 19 days on the market with Benham Group. The original listing price was $18,900.

“I’m glad it was a cash sale, because I’m not convinced this home could get a mortgage,” Butler said.

Lampe said she’s sold only one other home built in the 1940s, a $200,000 Lincolnton house that sold last year.

The Jefferson Court house was the lowest-priced home she’s sold since she started real estate after moving to Charlotte in 2007, she said. Prior to that, she worked as a computer programmer in New York.

“Coming here from New York, you never expect to see a house sell for $15,000,” she said. “For me, this deal was a piece of cake, because the buyer knew what he wanted to do with the property.”

And he wasn’t scared off by brown water.

A look at the highest-priced sales in other Charlotte-area counties

Anson County

1923 Woodlawn Ave., Wadesboro
Sold price: $52,000
Square feet: 2,800

Cabarrus County

6314 Chamar Circle, Kannapolis
Sold price: $531,000
Square feet: 6,040

Gaston County

1043 Marguerite Drive, Lowell
Sold price: $287,500
Square feet: 2,398

Iredell County

281 Wood Duck Loop, Mooresville
Sold price: $500,000
Square feet: 2,100

Lincoln County

1910 Yacht Club Drive, Denver
Sold price: $530,000
Square feet: 3,228

Mecklenburg County

2024 Wellesley Ave., Charlotte
Sold price: $1.38 million
Square feet: 6,286

Montgomery County

253 Whisper Lake Drive, Badin Lake
Sold price: $810,000
Square feet: 4,278

Stanly County

842 Stanly St., Stanfield
Sold price: $215,000
Square feet: 1,834

Union County

4027 Blossom Hill Drive, Weddington
Sold price: $1.2 million
Square feet: 6,886

 Home sales data and photos are copyright 2012 Carolina Multiple Listing Services Inc.