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CHARLOTTE – A staple in the North and South Carolina real estate market is shutting down. Simonini Builders announced Friday that it would discontinue its home building and renovating operations.

The company built luxury homes and has been entrenched in the market since the early 1990s. The news took some realtors by surprise.

"To see them go out is not good for our industry at all," said Binny Orrell, of Prudential Carolinas Realty.

The high-end home building company had been based in Charlotte for 16 years, building more than 700 homes around the city priced from $475,000 to $6 million.

Simonini plans to finish 14 homes under construction, sell 21 in its inventory and finish all renovation jobs.

The company gave no indication what will happen to dozens of open plots.

"The catastrophic changes we've seen in the overall real estate market over the past two years could not have been anticipated and are unlike anything i expected to see in my lifetime," said part-owner Alan Simonini in a statement.

"I really thought they were going to make it through this," said Orrell, who has sold more than a dozen Simonini homes. “The high dollar range where Simonini was, which is basically over a million dollars, that market is just virtually shut down."

A 30-year real estate veteran, Orrell says it looks like the Charlotte housing market won't see a significant improvement for another two or three years and that doesn't bode well for other small building companies.

"We had a lot of really fine small custom-home builders,” said Orrell. “I don't think any of them are going to make it through this. If they do, it'll be a miracle."

News 14's calls to Simonini Builders were not returned.

According to the company's prepared statement, Simonini still plans to co-host this fall's HomeArama 2010 with the Home Builders Association of Charlotte.