Are you a thalassophile? If you are someone who loves the sea or ocean, then you might have learned a new way to describe yourself, and you are probably a person who loves the Outer Banks. According to Yahoo Finance, a recent poll earlier this spring mentioned the Outer Banks was tied with Disney World for the second most searched travel destination in the world. In case you were wondering, the number one searched travel destination was Yellowstone.

During the past year, millions of people have changed their priorities about where they want to live and travel. The majority of the people who left the cities moved closer to beaches or mountains. As this trend continues, more and more people are vacationing and purchasing properties here in our little piece of paradise.  Even Bill Gates is known to visit Corolla each year. 

In local news, the Outer Banks did not escape the gas panic crisis.   Shortly after the Colonial Pipeline hack that slowed gas distribution, the lines of cars stretched far beyond the stations.  Many towns ran out of gas just a few days after the shutdown.  So far the state of North Carolina had more gas shortages than any other east coast state in the US. Over 65% of the gas stations were out of gas by May 12. We hope this is just a short-term issue, but only time will tell.  If you’re traveling to the Outer Banks, it might be wise to stop and refuel before crossing the bridge until that storm has calmed down.    

In real estate news, the extraordinarily low level of inventory is the ongoing headline.  Previously, obtaining a loan to purchase a property was the most excruciating process of buying real estate.  Now, that is a mere speed bump in comparison to finding an available property along the Outer Banks.  Locating the house and submitting the offer in time before the property is under contract is a difficult task in itself these days!  The OBX Homes Teams has been busier than ever typing offers on same-day listings or listings that have been on the market for only a few short days.   Another interesting note about this market is the noticeable volume of luxury home sales.  As of mid-May, there were 127 properties that sold with a price tag of over $1 million recorded in the OBAR MLS!  There are currently 90 listings under contract with an asking price of $1 million and over.  Although there is no guarantee that the under-contract listings will end up as a sale, that is still potentially 217 listings above the $1 million price before this year is halfway through!  In all of 2020, which was a record-breaking year,  there were 174 properties sold at or above the million-dollar price tag. 

Should we be concerned about a housing “bubble”? Is this market sustainable?   According to Forbes economist, “the fundamentals of the current housing boom are relatively, structurally sound even in markets where prices ostensibly seem like they’re spiraling out of control.”  In other words, not quite.   Of course, there are no guarantees with any market conditions, but as long as someone wants to sell and someone wants to buy, we will be here to assist with any real estate needs you may have!

We’ve included the OBAR statistics for April* 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.

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

Blue skies and warmer temperatures are finally on the horizon!   Hoping everyone can go outside and enjoy the great outdoors!  Even the federal government delayed tax season for a month so everyone can enjoy April!  Okay, maybe that wasn’t their reasoning, but we can pretend, right?

Did you know that a part of our local history will expand beyond the realm of not just our country but our planet?  For the aviation enthusiasts who are reading this, a piece of the Wright Brothers will be heading to Mars!  According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a small part of their plane will be a part of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. Another piece of their plane was onboard the famous Apollo 11 mission to the moon in July 1969.  Interesting to see how our small part of the world and its history is still preserved and highly respected with each major aviation advancement.

In other local news, the lawsuit that brought a lot of attention to the Town of Duck last year has resurfaced.   This time the North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed the original ruling and has now decided that the Sea Breeze beach access in the Duck subdivision of Sand Dollar Shores is, in fact, private.  After the ruling was announced to the public, the plaintiff said he plans to appeal the decision, arguing that his tax dollars for beach nourishment are unfair since he cannot access the beach.  This will likely bring about more publicity as this continues to be a hot topic for the town.

In real estate news, the lack of inventory continues to be a huge issue. At the beginning of last month, according to The National Association of Realtors, its membership count actually exceeds the number of homes for sale.  There are literally more people to sell homes than homes to sell!  The demand for second homes across the country has skyrocketed since last January – up to 84% year over year, according to Redfin. Pending sales along the Outer Banks at the beginning of March increased 63.1% from March 2020.  Let’s break this down in a way that really explains the current market.  A few weeks ago, our team had two different clients offer on the same property in Corolla, and that listing agent let us know the sellers had over 19 offers presented to them.  There is no denying it, this is a seller’s market!  However, the lenders are starting to tighten up on their end.  A few weeks ago, Fannie Mae announced that as of April 1 they will limit their loans to second homes and investment properties to no more than 7 % of their lending portfolio.  This will make it tougher for borrowers who are more than qualified, to be approved for these mortgages.  This directly impacts our local market since many of the properties here are second homes or investments.   The upcoming months will indicate how much impact this will have on the current market conditions.  As of now, the only reason our sales volume is slowing down is that there are not many properties on the market.

We’ve included the OBAR statistics for March* 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.

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

Good news everyone, spring is almost here! The bad news is we cannot promise the weather will improve and coincide with the date on the calendar. As Henry Van Dyke reminded us, “The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.” We truly hope March brings in the warm weather and the sunshine soon. The past few weeks have been cold and rainy and not as appealing as other times of the year, and we are ready to enjoy the outdoors again. Happy St Patty’s Day to everyone who is Irish or likes to pretend for the day!

This past winter was vastly different from any other before. There was not a remarkable change in traffic or vacant homes during the colder months, thus making it harder to notice the usual indicators of an upcoming season. This is directly attributed to the latest real estate market and the pandemic. As we mentioned in our last owner note, many new and existing homeowners have removed their homes from the rental market and are using their homes only for personal use. It doesn’t seem like it would make a huge difference, but this new pattern is creating some concern for local businesses and town representatives. For local business owners whose business is geared towards tourism, the decrease in available rentals will create a ripple effect resulting in a diminished income for them. These businesses will have to learn how to adapt to this transformation quickly, and possibly come up with a new strategy. In addition to the local businesses, the county representatives who come up with the town budgets are being forced to generate other sources of revenue to offset the possible loss of income from occupancy taxes. Fewer rentals equal fewer occupancy taxes creating a decline in revenue that needs to be addressed. Only time will tell if things return back to the normal ebb and flow of seasonal changes, but for now, it is apparent that this transition is going to impact more than real estate along the Outer Banks.

In real estate news, the crucial issue right now is the undersupply. The number of properties for sale continues to decrease to levels never seen before. Two years ago in February, there were 1547 residential listings active on the market. This past February only had 413 residential listings for sale. That is only about a quarter of the listings available from just two years ago! People are going to the extremes right now to buy properties along the Outer Banks. We have been requested on behalf of buyers to reach out to homeowners and all but beg them to sell their homes. Almost every time, the answer is an emphatic no, they are not ready to sell their home. After talking with many local agents, they have said the same thing, people just do not want to sell. As this trend continues, sellers are able to aggressively price their properties, and many buyers are spending significantly more to purchase them.

We’ve included the OBAR statistics for February* 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.

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

Happy 2021 everyone!! We wanted to start the year off with a special thanks to you, our wonderful clients, for making 2020 such a fantastic year. The OBX Homes Team finished 2020 with over 47 million in sales, the top producers at Twiddy & Company for another year, and in the top six agents on the OBX. What a busy year it was for real estate on the Outer Banks and we are looking forward to what we hope will be another fantastic year in 2021!

Some exciting news for this year. We have added a new member to our OBX Homes Team. Crystal Swain, who is a Broker Associate in our Duck office will be joining us for 2021. Of course, we will all be working together so you’ll start to see new names on some correspondences, as we also added a contract administrator, Jeannine Maridon, to our team.

We are happy to announce that the OBX Homes Team is the proud corporate sponsor of the Outer Banks SPCA for another year.

We have a favor to ask of you. If you haven’t already, we would LOVE your reviews on Zillow and Realtor.com. It’s amazing how many new clients are finding us on these sites, and your reviews help tremendously.  You can visit each site and pull up Heather’s profile (search agents) to add a client review/rating. Thank you again to those of you who have written reviews for us! We truly appreciate it.

If you’ve been thinking of selling, are looking to purchase, or have friends or family interested, please don’t hesitate to reach out, as we can send a free market analysis for your property and also add prospective buyers to the auto-email notifications for specific types of properties here at the beach.  If you’re not able to visit in person, we offer virtual showings and are more than happy to preview a home for you and send some notes/videos etc. For those thinking of selling, now is the time! Inventory is extremely low and buyer demand is high! We are happy to complete a FREE market analysis for you, and for those who requested one earlier this year, we would love to update the report for you, as home values have gone up in the last 5-6 months.

We’ve included the 2020 Year End statistics for your review. If you would like a more tailored report with specific figures for your neighborhood, please let us know, as the report we send contains figures from Corolla south to Nags Head.

Please don’t hesitate to call or email us if you have any questions or should you need anything at all. Thank you again for your loyalty and business over the years. We are so grateful and are looking forward to a wonderful 2021 ahead!

Stay safe and stay healthy,
The OBX Homes Team

As everyone is trying to get a grasp on the election results and predict what the future may hold, we want to set all politics and business aside and wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you’re able to enjoy this holiday and please know we are thankful for you!

In local news, things are slowly starting to feel back to normal for this time of year. The weather hasn’t been ideal, but we will take the cooler temps and rain over any tropical storm or hurricane. Several annual events were canceled for this year, but we believe next fall they will be back in full force. We do anticipate a normal uptick in visitors for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, but not sure if it will have too much of an impact on the local businesses as in previous years due to statewide restrictions still in place. Little by little we revert back to our routines or a way of life we can relate to.

In real estate news, the market continues to show no signs of slowing down. During the month of October there were over 700 residential listings in our MLS that were under contract. To put that into perspective, last year in October there were just about 300 homes with pending sales status. This is more than twice the amount from the same time just a year ago! On another note, the average days on the market for new listings has decreased a significant amount. The current days on market medium is just below 60 days. The lack of inventory and low interest rates are the driving factors for this thriving market. If the rates change or more houses are listed for sale we might notice a slight adjustment in the market, but there is no telling when that might be or if that will occur in the near future. This market still tips to the seller’s side much more favorably, but deals are still being made on the buyer’s side as well.

We’ve included the OBAR statistics for October* 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 provide a virtual showing of a property to you 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 well,

The OBX Homes Team

“And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.” Quoting Oscar Wilde might be the best ways to describe how fall arrived this year. One day we were experiencing a heatwave, and the next it was time to scramble for our jackets. We hope everyone is settling back to a normal way of life and enjoying the cooler temps.

In local news, tourism continues to remain strong throughout the fall season. Several rental companies are reporting maximum capacity through the end of October! Even with many of the annual events canceled due to Covid-19, renters continue to travel to the OBX to take advantage of the beaches and outdoors. Another great triumph for our community is the addition of North Carolina to the list of states that will have a ban in place to block drilling for gas and oil for the next 12 years. This was a united effort by both of the major political parties and will be considered a huge victory for our coastal communities.

In real estate news, the local market is stronger than ever! New listings are going under contract at record rates. One key factor for this is lack of inventory. Lower numbers of active listings creates pressure for buyers to consider increasing their initial offers to compete with multiple offer situations. Sellers definitely have the upper hand right now and are able to price their properties aggressively. If you were thinking about selling in the next few years, this might be the best time to get your house on the market. Nobody really can predict how long this wave of activity will last, but we all know that most good things will come to an end at some point. In addition to scarce inventory, the other two components adding fuel to this market are attractive interest rates and the ability to work remotely. The new working from home option is a unique feature for prospective buyers who normally wouldn’t be looking into purchasing a house so far away from their work but are now able to explore distant living opportunities. The real estate market is often changing as it adapts to keep up with the demands of today’s world, but this is a new one for many of us! Location was the biggest ingredient for previous buyers, whereas now it’s connectivity and being able to link to their jobs online.

We’ve included the OBAR statistics for September* 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 provide a virtual showing of a property to you if that is of interest to you.

Please don’t hesitate to call or email us if you have any questions or should you need anything at all.

Stay well,

The OBX Homes Team