Oakwood, Mordecai and Five Points

Oakwood was built up mostly between the 1870s and the 1910s on the streets northeast of the Capitol, and in 1975 it became the City's first historic overlay district. Mordecai, north of it, was laid out in the early twentieth century on land that had been the Mordecai family's plantation, whose house still stands in Mordecai Historic Park. Five Points is an intersection on Glenwood Avenue, and the name covers the neighborhoods around it, Hayes Barton, Bloomsbury, Vanguard Park and Roanoke Park among them, each of which is listed on the National Register. 3 guides are listed below.

The three are governed three different ways, and the difference is the first thing a buyer here has to understand. Oakwood is a historic overlay district: the Raleigh Historic Development Commission reviews exterior changes and has to issue a certificate of appropriateness before the work. Mordecai and the core of Five Points East are neighborhood conservation overlays, which fix lot size, setbacks and height but not materials or design. The National Register districts around Five Points carry tax credits for qualifying rehabilitation and no local review at all, and where no local overlay applies, older houses here are enlarged or replaced often enough that the lot is a large part of what the price is for.