For investors with $1M+ in retirement accounts, the tax code allows specific strategies that can reduce your tax exposure once RMDs begin—but only if used before then. 

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It's that week. UNC move-in started yesterday — you've probably already noticed the minivans, the mattress toppers strapped to roof racks, and the traffic on South Columbia. Move-in runs through Sunday, August 16, with New Student Convocation that evening and the first day of classes on Monday, August 17. Weeks of Welcome events run through September 7. Full details at housing.unc.edu.

For CHCCS families, the countdown looks like this:

Thursday, August 20 is the big day before the big day. Elementary schools hold Meet-the-Teacher, and middle schools run orientations and walk-the-schedule events. Times vary by school — check your school's website or watch for a message from your principal. High school 9th-grade and new student orientation dates are set by each school individually, so if you haven't heard from yours yet, reach out now.

If your student missed Chromebook distribution in late July, check your school's website for makeup pickup dates.

Monday, August 24 is the first day of school for grades K–12. Pre-K and Head Start families have a slightly later start — half-days begin August 27, full days August 31.

A few reminders: rising kindergarteners, 7th graders, and 12th graders all have immunization requirements that need to be current by the first day. Bell times haven't changed — elementary starts at 7:50 a.m., middle at 8:25, and high school at 8:55. And fall athletics are already underway — practices started July 29.

Supplies lists and full back-to-school details are up at chccs.org/our-district/back-to-school.

One more week, parents. You've got this.

From Meri Lynch, REALTOR® | Coldwell Banker HPW

Chapel Hill home prices weren't an accident. They were a decision — one made decades ago. Here's the story, and here's what's changing.

If you've ever driven out of Chapel Hill toward Hillsborough and noticed how the neighborhoods just... stop — how the town gives way to fields and forest almost on a dime — you've seen the invisible line.

It's called the rural buffer, and it's one of the most consequential planning decisions in North Carolina history that almost nobody talks about. Decades ago, Orange County and the towns agreed to deliberately restrict development in a ring of land between Chapel Hill/Carrboro and Hillsborough. Most of the county got zoned low-density rural residential. The goal was noble and largely achieved: no strip-mall sprawl, protected farmland, a town with edges.

The trade-off? Supply. When you cap the land you can build on, but demand keeps growing — a flagship university, a major health system, some of the state's best-known public schools — prices do exactly what you'd expect. Today the typical Chapel Hill home value sits around $605,000, and available inventory is astonishingly thin: roughly half a month's supply, in a market where five to six months is considered balanced.

That's the backstory. Here's the news: the line is finally starting to move — from the inside.

Chapel Hill's Town Council has passed its first significant zoning reforms in two generations, beginning to unlock infill density inside town limits — more homes on land that's already developed, rather than sprawl into the buffer. The town has also started deploying its 2024 affordable housing bond, with an initial $4.185 million supporting nearly 200 affordable units and a stated goal of 900 new affordable homes in five years.

And the biggest domino of all: Carolina North. UNC's long-planned 230-acre campus expansion got its green light this year, with groundbreaking expected in summer 2027 — including employee housing and a 15% affordable workforce housing commitment.

Meanwhile, the buffer philosophy scored a win of its own this summer: the developers of South Creek permanently conveyed 80 acres near Southern Village to the Triangle Land Conservancy — the largest privately owned tract inside town limits ever protected from development, with a four-mile trail system planned.

That's the Chapel Hill paradox in a single summer: more homes and more protected forest, at the same time, on purpose. It's the town trying to grow the way it's always done everything — deliberately.

If you've been priced out of Chapel Hill, the changes won't transform the market overnight. But for the first time in a generation, the supply story is genuinely shifting. Worth watching. Worth planning around.

If you drove by Breadman's last week hoping for breakfast, you found a padlock instead. The Orange County Sheriff's Office closed the Elliott Square restaurant on August 6 after the owners defaulted on their lease. Court filings show the Castro-Juarez family owed back rent to the shopping center's management company, and a magistrate sided with the landlord in July. The space originally opened as Breadmen's on Rosemary Street back in 1974 before relocating. Whether this is permanent or a chapter break, nobody's saying yet — but the doors are shut and the notice on the glass doesn't leave a lot of room for optimism.

The BLTs are going golfing. Merritt's Grill — a Chapel Hill fixture since 1992 — is opening a full-time second location inside the clubhouse at UNC's Finley Golf Club. It's the first permanent spot beyond the flagship on South Columbia Street, though Merritt's has already been running "Merritt's in the Pines" at Kenan Stadium's Gate 2 since last season. Upgraded grill area, indoor and outdoor dining, and to-go options. If you've ever sat in the bamboo out back on Columbia and wondered when they'd expand, this is the answer — they just went where the golfers are.

Einstein Bros. Bagels opens its first Chapel Hill location today at the Eastgate Crossing space that used to be Bruegger's. That spot has been empty since Tropical Storm Chantal's flooding forced Bruegger's to close permanently last summer.

You've probably heard that Chapel Hill released its long-awaited LUMO rewrite on July 16. Here's the short version of what it means: the draft would allow triplexes and fourplexes in many existing neighborhoods, reduce the amount of land required to build a new home, and eliminate minimum parking requirements — all part of the town's push toward more housing diversity and less car dependency. This is the first comprehensive overhaul of Chapel Hill's land use ordinance in over twenty years, and a Town Council vote is expected in November. The first public open house is next Monday, August 17 (details in events below). Read the full draft and leave feedback at engage.chapelhillnc.gov.

We've been tracking this one: Rani Dasi will resign from the CHCCS Board of Education after its August 20 meeting and is set to take the oath of office as Orange County Commissioner on August 25, filling the District 1 seat left vacant after Jamezetta Bedford's passing. Dasi was selected unanimously by the commissioners after the Orange County Democratic Party's recommendation. She will serve through December 7 and is expected to run for a full four-year term in the November general election. The school board will now need to fill her seat — expect an open application process.

Mark it: Saturday, August 29. The Tar Heels open the season against TCU at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, as part of the Aer Lingus College Football Classic. It's UNC's first-ever international football game — and Bill Belichick's first college season opener. The game airs live on ESPN.

New students are hauling boxes into dorms this week. In ten days, elementary kids will be walking into classrooms to meet their teachers. A restaurant closes; another one opens across town. The LUMO draft asks us to imagine how our neighborhoods could look in ten years. None of it waits for us to be ready — it just starts. The beginning is always today.