Cheap highs.

• Position: Greensboro, North Carolina high-rise buildings

How far downtown Greensboro's property values have fallen was never more obvious than when two high-rises sold there this year.

For $110,000, tobacco worker Linnie Vickrey bought the 66-year-old, 13-story Guilford Building. For $200,000, the Durham-based Center for Community Self-Help got a 24-year-old, 10-story building that had housed First Union's local offices.

The closest attachment Vickrey, 61, had with the Guilford Building was having had her hair done there in the late '50s. "I've fixed up some old houses and sold them, and those went pretty well," says Vickrey, who is retiring this fall from her carton-boxing job at Lorillard.

The Guilford Building opened in 1927 as home of the old Greensboro Bank and Trust. Jefferson-Pilot Corp. and 1st Home Federal Savings and Loan Association bought it in the '80s. When they discovered how much renovation would cost, they "donated" the building to county government.

The county couldn't find much use for it, so it auctioned off the building. Vickrey's offer topped the Greensboro Preservation Society's...