Where do you begin a tour of a $2.45 million house?

You begin outside, near the front of a wooded, 2-acre parcel, where a stone-bedded creek carries pumped water from the front fence down to an elegant koi pond. It's one of the first things you see when the privacy gate rolls back and lets you roll in to 4823 Camilla Drive.

"It's beautiful," says Eric Markel.

Welcome to his baby - a six-bedroom, seven-bathroom, 6,977-square-foot home. It is one of Charlotte's most beautiful houses - spectacular from copper roof to basement home theater - lovingly built in a desirable South Park neighborhood in 2003, when the city's real estate market was in full sizzle.

But 4823 Camilla hasn't sold. The $2.45 million house is now a $1.65 million house. The koi? "Long dead," Markel says.

Multiple Listing Service data don't provide information on which houses have spent the most time on the market, but at almost eight years, Markel's house has hung on the vine longer than any home Realtors across Charlotte can recall. Most said they couldn't think of a house that's close.

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