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LOCATION: 5101 Monroe Road

5101 Monroe Road

Property Value

Realtor discovered her own rough gem among the old houses-turned-offices on Monroe Road

THE NAMESAKE OAKS in the Oakhurst neighborhood are just starting to bud on a spring morning. Cars zip to and from a long string of businesses on Monroe Road in southeast Charlotte, where tax preparers, hairstylists, counselors, and tattoo artists work.

This is a commercial corridor. But unlike so many other business districts in a city obsessed with the shiny and new, these businesses occupy single-family homes that date back to the 1920s and ’30s.

Their break rooms are family-style kitchens—some renovated, some not. Office bathrooms are still outfitted with tubs.

Holly Kimsey Evans and her wife considered South End and uptown three years ago when they hunted for a new headquarters for Evans’ real estate business. But a corporate setting just didn’t feel right.

They pulled up to a 1928 Georgian xerupper at 5101 Monroe, at Eaton Road. The pair looked past the wood rot, overgrown hedges, and half-buried swimming pool and instantly saw the possibilities.

Now, it’s the stately, gleaming-white headquarters of the Kimsey Evans Team, with re nished hardwoods, a second oor training room that holds 20 in non-COVID times, and a parking lot in the backyard where the swimming pool used to be. Evans says buyers and sellers are more relaxed during closings at her o ce than in a commercial o ce building.

“When people walk into a commercial space, it just seems so serious. … You feel like you have to whisper,” she says. “Here, they usually walk in and they’re like, ‘This is so beautiful!’ And they talk and enjoy the moment.” —Cristina Bolling