HOT LISTINGS
COVID SEEMS TO HAVE CRIPPLED just about everything in 2020 except Charlotte’s runaway train of a housing market, and Lake Norman maintained its status as an area for mid-priced to high-end homes with all the space and amenities a buyer could ask for—and lake access to boot. Sales dipped in the lockdown months of April and May and even into June, according to data from Canopy, the main Realtors’ organization for the Charlotte region. But the Lake Norman market rebounded hard as the year progressed: By year’s end, the number of closings had grown by 8.2% over 2019, and inventory had dropped by more than 60%, an astonishing figure. “Fifty percent of our business went away in April and May, and we still surpassed last year’s (sales) total,” says Stephanie Gossett, a Cornelius-based Allen Tate regional vice president who has worked in the Lake Norman area for most of the last 25 years. “It was nuts.” Gossett says she believes the lockdown in spring, normally the peak season for home sales, actually created pent-up demand that was freed once COVID restrictions eased. And even that wasn’t the primary reason why sales shot back up.
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She credits a combination of factors: historically low mortgage interest rates (as of late January, generally less than 3% for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan); a continuing shortage of home inventory, exacerbated by a slowdown in building; “and on top of that, we’re still one of the most popular places to live in the country,” she says. “It’s been the perfect storm for the housing market—in a good way.” In some ways, the pandemic may have heightened the appeal of the spacious new builds Lake Norman is known for. Gossett stresses that her evidence is anecdotal, but she’s heard from professionals who before 2020 lived in places like Mooresville and Davidson and commuted to and from their jobs in uptown Charlotte. COVID forced many of them to work from home, a trend that figures to continue—and much of Lake Norman’s housing stock allows for conversions and additions to accommodate home offices and workspaces. Far from dousing the area’s housing market, COVID and its consequences may have added fuel to it. “In the field right now, multiple offers are more the norm than the exception,” she says, “and we’re talking about 15 offers, not two.” —Greg Lacour
COURTESY
An expanded roundup of desirable real estate in and around Lake Norman
