Market voices: Trends in residential Tina Caul, Founder, The Caul Group

Tina Caul

Founder The Caul Group

The Carolinas have traditionally been an affordable market. Though prices have incrementally increased over the last 10 years, it’s still more affordable than other markets with a similar attraction rate. For example, Florida, the Northeast and the West Coast markets are drastically more expensive. Our region also offers diverse topography and our residents enjoy the ability to travel from the mountains to a beach in less than three hours. We are also surrounded by diverse higher education, top medical providers and research facilities in addition to multiple technology hubs. The Triangle is a beautiful place to call home and it’s still affordable, though that may change in the future.

In 2020, people put a greater emphasis on homes because that is where they were; they were not going to the office anymore, nor the gym or restaurants. The living room, the home office, the kitchen table, the home gym, all those things increased in importance almost overnight. People not only began looking around for upgraded spaces but people who were not homeowners realized that now was the time to become one. We had already been seeing that trend in the Raleigh-Durham market because it’s a desirable place to live, but 2020 kicked it up another gear and we are still feeling the effects well into 2021. Johnny Chappell

Owner & Broker Chappell powered by Compass

Jennifer Spencer

Owner Spencer Properties

The market is like nothing that I have ever seen before. I’m thankful that we handle the volume of transactions that we do because it has allowed us to pivot quickly. A year ago, really even 60 days ago, what would be a winning offer is drastically different from what that is now. I’ve been sitting down with buyers and telling them to be bold due to what is happening in the marketplace. Right now, the winning offer in our market for the most part is 10% or more over list. The idea that we would have this kind of offer with nonrefundable due diligence deposits of $10,000, $20,000, $35,000 or more was unforeseeable. It’s a wild market.

The inventory crisis is national and not unique to the local market, but it may be more intense in our market due to our population growth. Our focus is equipping agents with data, skills, and experience to win offers for our clients. In addition, we help our buyer-agents embrace that their No.1 Job is finding inventory by discovering sellers before they even make the decision to list properties. We have embraced an active approach to identifying potential homes for sale and created positive results for clients. Kevin Woody

Chief Operating Officer Keller Williams Legacy

( ) still seen as affordable, especially compared with other major metros. Although both Durham and Raleigh each dipped one place in RealtyHop’s affordability ranking, both still offer properties with a median mortgage repayment of one-third of the median salary or less. But as housing prices continue to rise, will this still be true? Probably not, as foreign buyers also enter the fray. In the Triangle market, foreign buyers have consisted mainly of immigrants looking for a new primary residence, rather than a second property, and studies found that they were willing to pay higher amounts than in-country buyers. “In a 2020 report that we worked on alongside the NAR (National Association of REALTORS®), the dollar volume of foreign buyer purchases in the Triangle was around $420 million,” said Andrew Sims, CEO of the Raleigh Regional Association of REALTORS®, in an interview with Invest:. “Sixty-nine percent of those foreign buyers already resided in the United States. Regarding the Triangle, 28% were from Asia and 19% from Latin America and Europe, with China and Mexico being the Top 2 countries bringing investment to the Triangle. When you talk about foreign investment, society thinks it’s about people dropping money for commercial property or residential investment, but 60% of the foreign buyers right here in the Triangle were purchasing property for primary residential use. Out of that 60%, 42% were all-cash buyers. The impressive fact is that the median price of those purchases is about $383,000.”

It is possible that more inventory could be brought online by the Opportunity Zone plan that was set up in 2017. The program was designed to incentivize developers to invest in underserved areas, allowing

Affordable housing in Raleigh-Durham continues to be in high demand as the region’s population rapidly increases.