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Realtor Magazine Online today has an interesting short piece on buying a fixer-upper - pulled from Inman News, a Calif.-based real estate Web site and news service.

Seems like an odd thing to focus on when everyone's dooming and glooming about the state of the housing market and the subprime collapse. But since buyers are still biting and sellers aren't suffering quite as much in the Triad area as in other parts of the state, I figured I'd toss this up for anyone who might be in the market for a deal and willing to put in a little bit of work.

If you're going to buy a fixer-upper, the report says, go for a home that's at least 30 percent below market value compared to other homes nearby. Go for three or four bedrooms (and, I'd add, make sure there's more than one bathroom and, if the house is two stories, make sure there's a decent bathroom downstairs). Choose a fixer-upper that's mostly in need of cosmetic repairs instead of major overhauls.

And - I thought this was particularly interesting - make sure the house is within an hour of your current home so you can monitor repairs, in person, on a daily basis.

Check out the full story here.

Winston-Salem-based Lowes Foods will host nutrition education programs at all its stores Saturday to launch the 11th year of the company's "Be A Smart Shopper" program.

The program focuses on teaching children ages 4 to 12 to make healthful food and drink choices. Saturday's kickoff event, which will include food samples and tips on healthful eating, will center on buying breakfast foods and eating breakfast daily - with an emphasis on "natural" foods. (The program is sponsored by Kellogg's this year, though Lowes has partnered with a number of other groups, including the state agriculture department and the American Heart Association.)

Every participating student will receive materials to take home, including a 28-page booklet with breakfast recipes for kids and tips for parents.

Saturday's event will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at area stores, including two locations in Greensboro, four in Winston-Salem and one in High Point. To schedule a store tour for a class or group, head over here or call (800) 987-6409. The program is free for all children's groups in the target age bracket, including school and at-home classes, after-school groups and clubs.

Steven D. Bell & Co.'s sale of $677-million worth of apartments includes a Greensboro complex just off Pisgah Church Road.

Woodland Park, which county property records value at more than $8 million, is one of 29 properties the Greensboro-based real-estate investor is unloading. The major deal includes four other N.C. apartment communities: The Lodge at Mallard Creek in Charlotte, The Quad in Wilmington, Cypress Pointe in Wilmington and Woodland Crossing in New Bern.

Bell principal Jon Bell told me in a phone conversation today that Bell didn't sell the complexes with plans for any major upcoming purchase. The company originally bought the apartments as short-term investments of five to eight years and held them for about that amount of time before divesting, according to a news release.

In his breakout hit, "My Baby," 11-year-old rapper Lil' Romeo made some aggressive predictions about what his life would be at 18. (Think lots of women and a pro basketball career)

There was nothing in the song about owning a snack company.

But 18-year-old Lil' Romeo, whose real name is Romeo Miller and who has pretty much dropped the "Lil" part of his trade name, has bought Rap Snacks Inc., the Greensboro-based food company that bills its potato chips as "The Official Snack of Hip Hop."

Rap Snacks founder James Lindsay said in an announcement today that a deal took place for the privately held firm. A report from Allhiphop.com indicates that the sale might have taken place as early as August; however Lindsay said today that the sale took place three weeks ago and he sat on the announcement. Reports on rap-related Web sites were early leaks.

Lindsay didn't disclose the purchase price for his company, which was founded in 1994 and sold, according to Lindsay, more than 150 million bags of chips last year in 7-11 stores and independent distributors nationwide. Each package of chips features an image of a rapper - from Yung Joc to Master P to Romeo - and messages to encourage kids to stay in school.

Lindsay will stay with Rap Snacks and run the company's daily operations. The pair hopes to expand the Rap Snacks product line to include healthy snacks for aspiring rappers in schools.

And Lil' Romeo, Lindsay said, could be appearing more often in Greensboro now that he heads up a local company.

GREENSBORO - Replacements Ltd. is stepping beyond its main showroom for the first time since the company started in 1981, in a move that might herald future retail expansion.

The Greensboro seller of china, crystal, silver and collectibles plans to run a store on the first floor of Four Seasons Town Centre, near Belk, from Sept. 15 to January.

The mall location will feature discontinued patterns and overflows from Replacements' packed warehouses. Shoppers will be able to place orders and search the company's electronic pattern database there.

Setting up shop at a mall will let Replacements tap into a new segment of area shoppers, said Keith Winkler, the company's showroom manager. Many Replacements' customers are travelers or online shoppers.

A news conference has been scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday at Battleground North Apartments, a community developed and managed by Roy Carroll's companies.

The conference is likely, in part, to focus on area residences built to environmentally "green" standards. Battleground North, at 4048 Battleground Ave. in Greensboro, is built to environmental standards recognized by the National Association of Home Builders.

Trone, a High Point advertising and public relations agency, has added two new executives to work with its Uniroyal Tire account in the Hispanic market.

Pilar Viatela, a new assistant account executive, comes to Trone from Que Pasa, North Carolina's largest Hispanic media company. She has a master's degree in mass communications from the University of South Carolina. Viatela is a native of Bogota, Colombia.

Helga Moya has also joined Trone as an assistant account executive. Moya is a native of Santiago, Chile, Moya was an honors student at Elon University.

Trone said that its Hispanic practice is directed through, La Conexion de Trone, its multicultural division.

Its clients include Liverpool, Mexico's largest department store chain. Trone helped the company launch a new service in Los Angeles so Mexicans living in Southern California could buy Liverpool merchandise online or through a call center and have it delivered to their relatives and friends in Mexico.

For Uniroyal Tire, La Conexion guides the Hispanic components of the nationwide youth soccer
program, which links soccer families with local Uniroyal dealers. The department created a cartoon superhero known as "Llanta Man" (Tire Man) to serve as the spokesman for a Uniroyal public service campaign about proper automotive and tire maintenance.

The cartoon is produced in the style of a "historieta," a Hispanic-style comic book popular in Latin America and Hispanic neighborhoods in the United States.

I got this too late for last weekend's column, but it will be over before the next one runs.

Talbots at the Shops at Friendly Center will host a fall fashion show from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday. Shoppers can learn about fall trends - including feminine takeoffs of menswear, boots, wide headbands, plaid, vests and lots of grey - view fall styles on models, compete for prizes and sample refreshments.

Featured styles include items from the retailer's petites, misses and plus-size lines.

Talked to Scott Fleming over at Replacements Ltd. yesterday, following up on the company's announcement that it will open a mall store for the holidays.

Fleming, the company's president, said Replacements doesn't have any firm plans for future retail growth outside its showroom on Knox Road. But traffic at the 12,000-square-foot showroom has declined somewhat in recent years, he said, and the company is looking for other ways to appeal to shoppers.

Enter Four Seasons, which Replacements chose among all the area retail centers because of the mall's bustling holiday traffic. The mall's shoppers likely aren't making trips out to Replacements' full-time outpost, so Fleming is hoping Four Seasons will help the company capture some new consumers.

If the temporary Four Seasons experiment is a wild success, it's possible the company could open future outside retail stores. "Any plans to continue or to build upon this will obviously be driven by what success we have in this time frame," Fleming said, adding that "if it were successful, that presents us which another set of challenges and opportunities in terms of managing other locations."

Fleming said company officials have not had formal discussions about the nature of any future retail ventures - namely, whether stores would be franchises or company-owned. But "I can almost assure you they would be owned by Replacements," he said.

Though this marks the Greensboro-based company's first venture into a brick-and-mortar outside store, the company is not new to retail experiments. Take the company's adventure into listing tablewares on Amazon.com - a partnership Replacements ended in April. And Replacements already takes the bulk of its orders by mail, phone or online. Fleming said revenue growth driven by the company's online operations more than outweighs any losses in sales at the Knox Road showroom.

"We obviously think there's an opportunity for this company to grow more than it currently is growing in terms of sales," he said. "And we're open to trying all sorts of different things."

Stuart Parks, who is developing Kernersville's "village within a village," Carrollton, on N.C. 66, said Tuesday that the list of new projects on the books in Kernersville isn't so much a growth surge as it is a planning surge.

In a conversation at his small office on a side-street in Winston-Salem, the soft-spoken Parks talked about the big development that begins a new phase in Kernersville's housing and commercial growth.

At least three high-profile developments are planned, including his, all made possible by new utilities and planning guidelines that clearly define what kind of development the city wants for its future.

Kenersville planners and the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners made it easy to sell a well-planned development, Parks said.

"The land was there and the town and the county had already envisioned the future," he said, by proactively planning for every detail of the kind of growth it wanted. "It was very easy for us to slide in in a collaborative way with them."

His company, PM Development, is just now grading the first stage of the $200 million project.

The 500-acre Carrollton will include:

-- 400 apartments
-- 125 acres of high-density, for-sale housing
-- 500,000 square feet of retail space in four phases: a grocery neighborhood center; a pedestrian-scale town center; a bigger store anchor and several retail/office parcels
-- 70 acres of workplace/office development.

Parks, a Kernersville native, will recruit a variety of developers and builders as the projects proceed, which he describes as "layered." And he expects it to take many years.

Carrollton has already been five years in the planning stages, from assembling land to starting up the earth-movers.

But "it's still going to require a lot of patience" Parks said.

International Textile Group's Burlington WorldWide division has formed a partnership with an Indian manufacturer of worsted wool fabrics, with hopes of expanding the Greensboro-based company's hold on the Indian market.

According to a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, ITG has entered an agreement with OCM India Limited, a Amritsar, India-based company that, like the local textile operation, is majority owned by WL Ross & Co. LLC. Under the terms of the agreement, Burlington WorldWide will help OCM develop and promote new wool fabrics using, in part, technologies developed by ITG. Some of these fabrics could be exported for sale in the U.S. European and Asian markets.

In exchange, OCM will be licensed to make and sell wool fabrics using the Burlington brand name throughout India. The Indian company will pay ITG royalties both for using the brand name and employing Burlington WorldWide's technologies to produce new fabrics.

And, of course, there are other financial facets to this deal. OCM has agreed to pay ITG a quarterly service fee of $75,000 through the end of 2007. Next year, the Indian company will up that quarterly fee to $150,000.

T-Mobile USA plans to pay $1.6 billion for SunCom Wireless Holdings Inc., in a move that will expand T-Mobile's wireless network in the southeast and bring the company new customers in North Carolina.

T-Mobile, which said in a news release that the total deal, including assumed debt, is worth $2.4 billion, also will pick up SunCom customers in South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Bellvue, Wash.-based T-Mobile plans to transition SunCom customers over to its services and products as the company grows its coverage area and cuts roaming and operating costs through the acquisition.

SunCom is based in Pennsylvania, but a large number of its subscribers and employees are located in North and South Carolina. According to a news release, the company had more than 1.1 million customers as of June 30, with a total revenue of $242.5 million during the first six months of 2007.

T-Mobile, the county's fourth largest wireless carrier, is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of next year.

GREENSBORO - Replacements Ltd. has again received a perfect score from a national civil rights organization focused on sexual minorities.

The Greensboro-based retailer is one of 11 companies that have received a perfect score every year since the Human Rights Campaign Foundation established its Corporate Equality Index in 2002.

The index rates how major U.S. companies treat employees, consumers and investors who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

Check out the just-released 2008 index here.

The Greensboro Builder Association is launching a celebration of its 50th anniversary this week, with plans to mark its history at events through the spring.

The group, which was chartered as the Home Builders Association of Greensboro on Sept. 16, 1957, will top off its celebration with the Golden Anniversary of its annual Parade of Homes event next year.

The association comprises nearly 300 licensed building contractors, along with almost 500 other businesses associated with the building industry.

ASHEBORO -- Klaussner Home Furnishings is revamping its online presence during High Point Market beginning Oct. 1.

The corporate site, www.klaussner.com, will be redesigned to reflect the new look of the Klaussner brand and made into an easier site to use.

The retail Web site, www.klaussnerhome.com, will specifically support Klaussner’s new chain of Klaussnerhome licensed retail stores. The company said visitors to the site will get a first hand view of what they can expect to find at a brick and mortar Klaussnerhome store.

Consumers want to see products online before they shop, said Zach Ausband, Klaussner's project manager of marketing and information systems. "Consumers now want to see the product and price prior to entering a store to buy," he said. "They want all the information before they leave the comfort of their home so they can simply go to a retail location and make their purchase."

RALEIGH - Unemployment in the state fell last month for the first time since February, according to figures released Friday by the Employment Security Commission.

The unemployment rate here hit 4.8 percent in August, down from 5 percent in July and at its lowest level since March. But the state rate continues to outpace national numbers; the U.S. jobless rate was 4.6 percent last month.

About 215,700 people filed for unemployment in the state last month, according to seasonally adjusted figures. Overall employment was nearly 4.3 million - down by about 3,500 workers, although employment in North Carolna has grown during the past 12 months.

The commission will release a county-by-county breakdown of jobless rates next week.