We hope you are enjoying your summer! July has been quite an interesting month for us here on the Outer Banks, which has already experienced some tropical activity. Thankfully the storms have fizzled out or passed through without much damage. We hope this trend continues, and no area is impacted by storms!
In local news, the lawsuit against Dare County from nonresidential property owners has been resolved. Mediation between the attorney representing the property owners and the Dare Board of Commissioners was successful. The terms of the agreement state that non-resident property owners can access their property during health emergencies, but not during natural disasters, and Dare County agreed to pay legal fees; however, they will not admit any fault or liability.
In real estate news, there are no signs of activity slowing down. Typically, this time of year there is a significant drop in activity levels due to the difficulties of showing properties in between rentals and issues with traffic on the weekends. We are in an unconventional market, but as long as we are on the better side of things we will not complain. A recent prediction from FreddieMac stated there is a very strong chance lower interest rates will continue into 2021. If that is the case, we can expect to see above-normal buyer activity and the possibility of homeowners deciding to sell sooner than later to take advantage of the sellers’ market. The biggest component worth mentioning with our current market is that the time frame from when the contract is ratified until it closes is noticeably longer than normal. A normal transaction of purchasing a house would average about 35-40 days. Now, agents are being asked to extend due diligence and closing dates to almost 50-55 days.
We’ve included the OBAR statistics for July* for your review. If you would like a more tailored report with specific figures for your neighborhood, please let us know.
If you’ve been thinking about selling, we are happy to assist you with a free market analysis of your property. If you or anyone you know is interested in buying a property, we would love to help find the perfect home on the Outer Banks. Please note we are more than happy to preview homes for anyone, and we can video call from a property if that is of interest to you.
The OBX Homes Team is making an effort to help the environment and decrease our paper output. If you’d like to help in reducing our paper use, please send us a current email so we can add you to our paperless mailing list. We will send you an email each month with a copy of our updated owner note and statistics report. We appreciate your effort to help with this and thank you. We will continue with owner mailings to those who wish to receive them by mail.
Please don’t hesitate to call or email us if you have any questions or should you need anything at all.
Stay safe and stay healthy,
The OBX Homes Team
