Current Real Estate Conditions Along the Crystal Coast

In this blog, you will find essential information from the inside scoops on buying and selling houses to how to live with the ocean, rivers and sounds that define the Crystal Coast. Today’s episode is all about current real estate conditions here on the Crystal Coast. Whether you visit here occasionally or live here full time, current real estate conditions is a story that deserves telling. Before I begin, please subscribe to my blog now, or at the end of this episode.

You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing and you don’t need a real estate agent to tell you that it is a seller’s market here on the Crystal Coast. There are several indicators not the least of which is lack of inventory. Prior to Hurricane Florence, over 13,000 properties were for sale in our local multiple listing area. Immediately following Florence, the number of available properties dropped to under 9,000 as thousands of homes for sale were now damaged by high winds, rain, storm surge, and in need of major clean-up. Two more named hurricanes inflicted even more damage in 2019 and 2020. Homeowners were, and some still are, faced with a rough road of recovery of returning to a waterlogged home, making an insurance claim and deal with all the restoration work.

Selling a home after a home is damaged by hurricane is an overwhelming process and it is important that homeowners keep calm and focuses on what they need to do to return the property to a sell able condition by re-recreating a space that buyers will enjoy spending some cash on. Most homes with hurricane damage have warped hardwood floors, waterlogged electrical equipment, furniture, and sheet rock along with soggy mattresses and carpets and ALL needs to be discarded immediately. The scope of repairs required after such a disaster is so overwhelming that homeowners will need to seek the services of contractors, inspectors and restoration companies specializing in assessing damage and work on rebuilding the home.

And, that leads to another bottleneck: finding qualified contractors, and contractors finding qualified journeyman carpenters, electricians, painters, roofers, etc. And, while the work is being done, a limited number of building inspectors are traveling the length and width of Carteret County approving repairs. All of these steps, from returning to a water-logged home, to contacting an insurance adjustor, to finding a contractor takes time. And, then of course, there is the shortage of building materials. Even if homeowners could jump through all the previous hoops without falling, finding lumber, shingle, nails, hardware and so on remain a challenge more than two years after Florence left the area. No wonder, numerous homes damaged by Hurricane Florence remain in disrepair. Oh, and the Crystal Coast also had to deal with named hurricanes in 2019 and 2020.

But hurricanes, alone, are not the only force precipitating this seller’s market. Another force is low interest rates. Mortgage interest rates are closely related to Treasury yields, and right now the treasury rates are historically low. Low interest rates make mortgage lenders very competitive, which means buyers can look forward to getting mortgage loans with very favorable terms. That brings out more buyers. And, with low interest rates, buyers can now qualify for more mortgage. Both factors give homebuyers more buying power. Homebuyers will be able to purchase larger homes for the same amount as a small house or condo more than a year ago. This makes it very ideal for buyers who face difficulty in looking for a home within their price range, as more options become available.

Home sellers benefit from declining interest rates as well, since more potential buyers will be able to afford their home. It’s an optimal time to put a home on the market, especially with mortgage rates not expected to increase dramatically.

As if a decreased inventory and lower interest rates weren’t enough to precipitate a sellers’ market here along the Crystal Coast, a virus named COVID 19 made its presence known in early 2020. And this brings me to the third and perhaps most important reason for the current sellers’ market and that is LOCATION. Carteret County and the Crystal Coast are the eastern most part of North Carolina and the United States, for that matter. No one travels through Carteret County to get to anywhere else. In other words, as I like to describe it, we are a destination spot. Maybe not like St. Martin, the ideal vacation destination spot, but a destination spot nonetheless. But, isolation is not enough. Our President decided to ignore COVID 19 and his inactions enabled the virus to explode across the entire country, especially in populous areas. The President’s inactions forced forward thinking Governors like Roy Cooper here in North Carolina to temporarily close businesses, churches, schools and other places where people gather. And, with people working remotely from home and children learning remotely, well suddenly whole families can choose where to self-isolate. And would you rather self-isolate in a major inland city or self-quarantine at an isolated beach like the Crystal Coast which has experienced very low numbers of COVID 19 incidences? The answer to this question explains why many potential sellers along the Crystal Coast have either taken their homes off the market or never put them on the market once the impacts of COVID 19 were fully understood.

Together, all these factors: hurricanes, making repairs to water logged homes, low interest rates, seeking refuge from COVID 19 make the real estate market here along the Crystal Coast a massive sellers’ market. I recently showed two clients a couple of homes. The first had been on the market for 7 days and already had 6 offers. The second had been on the market for 5 days and it, too had multiple offers. Both selling agents told me that the homeowners had set the next day as the cutoff for offers to purchase meaning I had less than 24 hours to get my buyers up to speed on these two homes, get them qualified for the offers they would be making and getting those offers written and in the hands of the selling agents by noon the next day. And, of course to add just a tad more pressure, my buyers said, “Get us that house!” We didn’t get the first house, but I was able to craft an offer that rose to the top of six other offers for the second home. My buyers closed on their new home this week, some seven weeks after their offer was accepted. Whew!

If you liked what you learned about buying and selling conditions on the Crystal Coast, visit my website, www.EmeraldIsleHomesforSaleNC.com and sign up for my blog. Ready to buy or sell? Call me at 919-308-2292.Explore the video tab for my weekly uploads to my YouTube channel. Subscribe to my YouTube channel and receive a free donut at my Flip Flops Donut shop. Text your email address to 919-308-2292 and subscribe to my newsletter.