Wilmington NC Real Estate BlogRecently posted or modified blog posts in the category - Monday Morning Coffeehttps://www.buddyblake.com/blog/Copyright BuddyBlake.com2024-03-12T06:41:15-07:00tag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:18897Monday Coffee March 12 2024Firstly, if you haven't heard already, Wilmington and the surrounding Cape Fear area were recently voted as one of the top cities in the entire country! It's a testament to the charm and appeal of our region, and I've included a link to the article below for your perusal.<br /><br />
TOP WATCHED VIDEOS & DOWNLOADED REPORTS
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/i-want-to-sell-but-where-will-i-go/" data-custom="link">I Want To Sell, But Where Will I Go?</a>
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/due-diligence-and-earnest-money/" data-custom="link">Due Diligence vs Earnest Money</a>
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/unlocking-massive-tax-savings-on-your-home-sale/" data-custom="link">Navigating the Real Estate Tax Exemption: A Guide for Homeowners</a>
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/maximize-your-real-estate-profits-with-a-1031-exchange/" data-custom="link">Maximize Your Real Estate Profits with a 1031 Exchange</a>
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/buying-new-construction-vs-used-homes/" data-custom="link">New Construction vs. Resale Homes: Understanding Negotiation Dynamics</a>
<br /><br />Links Mentioned In Video
<a href="https://www.southernliving.com/wilmington-nc-8597998" data-custom="link">Wilmington, North Carolina, Is The South's Best City On The Rise</a>
<a href="https://www.embassysuitescarolinabeach.com/" data-custom="link">Anchoring the North End of the Carolina Beach Boardwalk</a>
<a href="https://overlookatriverplace.com/" data-custom="link">Downtown: Overlook at River Place</a>
<a href="https://wrightsvillecommodore.com/" data-custom="link">Commodore Club at Wrightsville Yacht Club</a>
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// ]]><br /><br /><a href="https://reviewmyagent.org" target="_blank"><img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/asdfasdfsaf.png" width="600" height="450" alt="reviewagent" title="review" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></a>2024-03-11T21:34:24-07:002024-03-12T06:41:15-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:18413Monday Morning Coffee Jan 8 2024This week's Monday Morning Coffee, Buddy Blake of Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Advantage shares his philosophy of when and how to use technology and how important it is more than ever to have real conversations for things that really matter. 2024-01-08T09:19:27-07:002024-01-08T09:53:40-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:18350Christmas Eve Trivia Contest Winner DrawingCongratulations to Diana Morgan of Leland, NC, on winning our $100 Christmas Eve Live Drawing. <br /><br />2023-12-24T18:49:49-07:002023-12-24T19:01:44-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:18346Christmas Eve 2023 TriviaLet's Have Some Fun!
On Christmas Eve, my family and I will select one winner from all the correct answers.<br /><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/7028105910559236" target="_blank">JOIN US ON FACEBOOK LIVE at 8 PM</a><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/7028105910559236" target="_blank"> (Eastern)</a><a href="https://www.facebook.com/buddyblakedotcom" target="_blank"></a><br /><br />2023-12-23T07:40:07-07:002023-12-23T08:56:13-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:18312Monday Morning Coffee with BuddyThis week Buddy shares that mortgage rates are now in the 5's and 6's with good credit, but check with your lender. Also, we will have a big Christmas Eve drawing for $100 we will venmo to you that night.
<br /><br /><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrIwJorM5G_reL3gQBOXDJCL755ByLNU0jJqtl1fsU9VOO-g/viewform" target="_blank">CLICK HERE TO PLAY TRIVIA</a>
<br /><br />Are You Thinking About Selling or Trading Your Home Soon?<br />See your latest home value and estimated equity now.<br /><br />
We are happy to prepare a free no-obligation market review for your Wilmington area property
2023-12-18T11:17:45-07:002023-12-23T07:05:00-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:18262Monday Morning Coffee - Dec 11, 2023Happy Monday
🎄CHRISTMAS TRIVIA WINNER🎄
Congratulations to last week's Christmas Trivia Winner:<br />Teresa Sanders of Castle Hayne.
We had many more entries last week and look forward to seeing even more this week if you would like to participate visit <a href="https://forms.gle/MH5MRVB6jfm8RqTa7" target="_blank">THIS LINK</a> to play.<br /><br /><br /><br />
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Are You Thinking About Selling or Trading Your Home Soon?<br />See your latest home value and estimated equity now.<br /><br /><br />Ask about Buddy's Trade Your Home Program
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Things That Make You Say Huh?
Do NOT let your young kids watch this video2023-12-10T19:14:10-07:002023-12-22T05:56:13-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:18230Monday Morning Coffee December 4 2023Congratulations to Nancy Pane of Leland, NC, for winning last week's Christmas Trivia drawing! <br /><br />As we enter into the last month of the year, we are seeing some moderate changes in mortgage rates, as the FHA & VA rates are in the 6s again for the first time in a while. Also, we are seeing an unusual increase in homes coming to market this time of the year compared to regular holiday season percentage changes. Usually, fewer properties come to market, but it looks like more sellers are getting wise that it's sometimes better to come to market before the rest of the crowd does in the New Year and Spring. Fewer buyers are looking in the holidays, but usually, the ones that are are more serious, as they have a "need" to move versus just a "want" to move.
<a href="https://buddyblakerealtor.com/mmc120423" target="_blank">CLICK HERE </a>to download the PDF of my presentation
<a href="https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:113363d5-6ad8-4c88-9b7c-774de1026da6" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a> to download the customizable Market Review I did for Wilmington. We can do one of these for your specific neighborhood at no charge and with no obligation, as we are just wanting to serve you for as long as it takes to earn the opportunity to be considered when the time is right for you. 2023-12-04T13:36:54-07:002023-12-04T14:13:43-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:17996Monday Coffee Oct 16, 2023Thanksgiving Pies & Cool Cars<br /><br />We are looking forward to seeing everyone for this year's Thanksgiving Pie Day. To reserve your Apple Pie to pickup at our event on Wednesday, Nov 22nd, from 11 a.m to 3 p.m. <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/pieday/" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a>2023-10-18T17:20:35-07:002023-10-18T17:27:58-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:17771Market Update for September 11, 2023Market Update from Buddy Blake
The below chart just released by the Area Association of Realtors shows that sales are substantially down year over year. But keep in mind that much of this is due to very limited options for home buyers and interest rates soaring into the 8% range.
The good news is that while it is taking longer to sell homes with the restricted number of buyers that are able or choosing to pull the trigger, we are seeing an increase in the number of online views for the listings that are on the market.
Normally, we see in-home showings follow online showings over the next week to 14 days - especially when we are utilizing <a href="https://youtu.be/Yr3Z7pm1Kuc">price marketing </a>(improving the price incrementally to stay top of mind with home buyers and agents)
Also, median home prices are still strong, and some price ranges are still increasing.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/chart091123.jpg" width="600" height="362" alt="chartyoy" /><br /><br />Fortunately for our team, over the years, we have navigated market shifts numerous times, and we can utilize our curated database of 30,000 plus home buyers, whereas many agents do not know what to do. Our database systems are constantly watching for behavioral cues that buyers are performing (e.g., looking at the same home or price range X amount of times over a period of time, putting their current home where they live on the market, etc.). Please let me know if you would ever like to see a behind-the-scenes look at how everything works.
2023-09-11T08:03:43-07:002023-09-12T18:33:42-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:17610Monday Coffee with Buddy for August 23 2023Happy Monday to you this is Buddy Blake here in Wilmington North Carolina realtor with Coldwell Banker.
If you are out there and you're thinking about selling your house I want to share with you one of the tactics that we're using and we're using it very well is price marketing I realized for the last two or three years up until the last year or so you set a price everybody comes in makes offers go above and beyond pick the highest and the best and you work it out when you get 10 offers well that's not the market now if you're thinking about selling your house what you don't want to do is put your house out there and yeah I get you're going to try to get an aggressive price because you know your neighbor did your friend did or your relative did or maybe you did it a few years ago and were able to get whatever you wanted well listen to your realtor and price it according to what your realtor's saying not necessarily what somebody automated systems including ours are saying because they're not always up to date and especially now when we got a market that's moving kind of trending down where the median price inventory starting to pick up but what I want to talk about is Price Market don't put your house out there and leave it at a price because let me tell you how it works your home buyer their first showing is going to be online whether it's on our website whether it's on Zillow whether it's on realtor.com whether it's on ABC realty they are going and they've got some system that's sending them updates on houses that not just come on the market that fit their criteria but also that have price adjustments the magic number that we've seen is about every 14 days you need to have a planned price Improvement adjustment reduction whatever you want to call it that sounds more palatable but don't put your house out there and just leave it priced Forever at a certain price because what happens is the market forgets your house and I get that some people say oh I don't want somebody to think I'm desperate well here's the deal I'd rather get offers on a property and not be able to work them out because they came in too low then they get no offers at all so you kind of pick your poison there but we think 14 days and we're kind of seeing it in our Market where if you do it it and adjust it every 14 days and it doesn't have to be massive price reductions if you adjust it every 14 days you're going to see initially you're going to see your online views they go up and they go down they go up and down with the price adjustments versus the straight line where you see it just goes down down down down down and then everybody thinks there's something wrong with your house but the other thing is usually a week or so behind the showing activity you're going to see the actual visits agents showing your house activity this is the one that's critical now a lot of people bought houses over here just off viewing during covet but it's not the case now they're coming to take a look at the house because they want to be more selective they don't want to make a mistake because they realize they're probably paying a higher interest rate if they're getting a mortgage or if they're paying cash they're taking their cash out of something that might be earning five percent or six percent in some cases if you look at the treasury market don't put your house out there and just leave it forever at a price it's not the way to do Marketing in today's world because people get those notifications of things that change prices if they've looked at it before maybe they've saved it every time something happens to it every time a price is reduced they're going to get a notification and you want to stay top of Mind in this market so that when the buyer is ready to do something or in many cases has to do something you're going to be top of mind and ready to go I hope this is helpful if you have any questions about this and you'd like to see our strategy kind of laid out how we do it you can click below or you can give us a call or shoot us an email thank you so much2023-08-28T09:58:21-07:002023-08-29T08:26:17-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:17519Monday Coffee with Buddy for August 14 2023
Navigating the Wilmington, NC Real Estate Market with Buddy Blake
Are you curious about the <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/market-trends/market-reports/" target="_blank">current state of the real estate market in Wilmington, North Carolina</a>? Look no further! I'm Buddy Blake, a dedicated Realtor with Coldwell Banker, and I'm here to provide you with a comprehensive update on what's happening in our local market.<br /><br />Navigating the Wilmington, NC Real Estate Market with Buddy Blake
Are you curious about the <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/market-trends/market-reports/" target="_blank">current state of the real estate market in Wilmington, North Carolina</a>? Look no further! I'm Buddy Blake, a dedicated Realtor with Coldwell Banker, and I'm here to provide you with a comprehensive update on what's happening in our local market.
The Current Real Estate Landscape in Wilmington, NC
As we delve into the real estate landscape in Wilmington, it's evident that there have been notable shifts in the market over the past couple of years. The housing market has experienced a decline both compared to last year and the year before. While there are numerous factors contributing to this trend, one of the key elements is the relatively high-interest rates we're facing at the moment.
It's important to note that these interest rates, though higher than they were, are not remarkably high when put into historical perspective. I remember purchasing my first house with an interest rate of eight and three-quarters, which puts today's rates in a more manageable light. However, despite this, we've witnessed a year-over-year decline of approximately 37 percent in sales, leading to a corresponding 37 percent decrease in inventory.
Factors at Play
One might wonder why the market is showing these trends. The answer is multifaceted. Many homeowners are hesitant to put their properties on the market due to various reasons. Some are not ready to part with their current homes, while others are hesitant to leave behind their current interest rates. Furthermore, some potential sellers are finding a lack of suitable options to move to, which can impede their decision to sell.
Predictions for the Future
Looking ahead, it's worth acknowledging that the coming year may bring its own set of challenges, particularly given the upcoming election season. Regardless of political affiliations, we can anticipate a degree of uncertainty in the market. However, amidst all this uncertainty, there's one constant: the intrinsic value of real estate.
The appeal of Wilmington, NC as a destination for retirees, vacationers, and homeowners remains strong. The demand for our area continues to persist, even in the face of economic shifts and political changes. Despite the market dips we've seen, Wilmington remains a sought-after location, and the demand will persist as soon as potential sellers feel ready to make their move.
Navigating the Challenges
While there's no crystal ball to predict the exact trajectory of the real estate market, one thing is certain: real estate is a finite resource. This scarcity inherently contributes to maintaining a certain level of demand for properties in our region. After all, they don't make more land.
For homeowners in Wilmington, it's essential to keep a few things in mind. If you're contemplating selling your home, it's crucial to be proactive and reach out to us. We've developed tools and resources, like our innovative home Equity estimation tool, to help you gauge the potential value of your property. This tool, while based on AI and data, provides a useful estimate of your property's worth.
Protecting Your Investment
Furthermore, for those who own homes in Wilmington, don't overlook the importance of updating your homeowner's policy. Whether you've recently paid off your mortgage or are still in the process, having a conversation with your insurance agent about the replacement cost of your property is vital. With inflation and property values on the rise, it's crucial to ensure that your policy adequately covers the cost of rebuilding in case of unforeseen events.
Conclusion
As we move forward, the real estate market in Wilmington, NC might encounter challenges, but its fundamental value remains constant. With my experience as a Realtor, I'm here to guide you through the ever-changing market dynamics, helping you make informed decisions whether you're buying or selling. The intrinsic appeal of our region, coupled with innovative tools and resources, ensures that even in uncertain times, real estate in Wilmington holds its own.
Whether you're ready to take the next steps or just seeking information, don't hesitate to reach out. We're here to help, and we understand that each individual's journey is unique. Let's work together to navigate the real estate landscape and ensure that your investment remains secure. Here's to a prosperous future in Wilmington, NC!
Buddy Blake, Realtor<br />(910) 395-1000<br />buddy@buddyblake.com
Disclaimer: The estimates and predictions mentioned in this blog post are based on available data and market trends at the time of writing. Actual market conditions may vary.
2023-08-14T11:00:22-07:002023-08-17T17:20:39-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:17393Monday Coffee with Buddy for July 24, 2023Unraveling Real Estate Insights with Top Realtor Buddy Blake in Wilmington, NC
Hello, this is Buddy Blake, your trusted realtor with Coldwell Banker in Wilmington, North Carolina. In this blog post, I'll be sharing some valuable insights from the latest happenings in the Wilmington real estate market. If you're considering selling your house or looking to buy, you won't want to miss this. We've observed some intriguing shifts, and it's essential to stay informed to make the right decisions in this dynamic market.
The Current Real Estate Landscape
Interest rates continue to hover in the sixes and sevens, depending on your credit scores and loan type. While they are expected to remain steady for a while, we anticipate a potential easing in the future. More buyers are getting comfortable with the current rates, realizing they can refinance later when rates eventually settle down. As for housing prices, the rapid surge we saw in the past has tapered off, particularly in the higher price segments above $600,000. In contrast, houses below $500,000 to $600,000 remain in high demand, and prices are projected to continue their upward trajectory. <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/wilmington-area-real-estate-market-july-2023/" target="_blank">WATCH THE FULL 14-MINUTE MARKET OVERVIEW HERE</a>
Timing Matters
If you're in the market for a home under $500,000 to $600,000, the window of opportunity is now. Prices are likely to keep rising, and waiting for a lower interest rate might not be feasible given the persisting demand in the Wilmington area. Many buyers are leveraging their home equity from previous sales to make cash purchases, making the interest rate less of a concern for them.
Strategies for Sellers
For sellers in this market, we have some fantastic strategies that have proven to be effective. We've combined time-tested approaches with innovative new techniques to ensure our clients get top dollar for their homes and a quick sale. Our team of agents is dedicated to assisting you in every step of the selling process. From listing your property to expert negotiations, our focus is on getting you the best results.
Check Your Home's Value
Are you curious about your home's current value in this evolving market? Click on the button below to access our cutting-edge AI-powered technology that will give you an estimate of your property's worth. While the technology may not account for recent updates, it will provide you with valuable insights.<br /><br />
Experience the Difference with Our Team
As a real estate professional, I spend significant time engaging with people like you. My team and I are always available to have conversations, whether you're planning to make a move now or in the future. We take pride in our exceptional customer service and focus on helping you achieve your real estate goals. From finding your dream home to strategizing for a successful sale, we're here to assist you every step of the way. <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ocf-crosspoint-podcast/id1339399907?i=1000434443001" target="_blank">Listen to their inspirational podcast here.</a>
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post. In the video linked below, you'll find a wealth of information about the current state of the Wilmington real estate market. If you have any questions or need assistance with your real estate endeavors, please don't hesitate to reach out. My family and I have recently been inspired by a touching experience at <a href="https://www.hopeheals.com/camp" target="_blank">Hope Hills Camp </a>in Alabama, and I encourage you to explore their story through the provided link.
Here's to a great week ahead, and I look forward to helping you navigate the dynamic world of Wilmington, NC real estate!2023-07-24T16:49:01-07:002023-08-17T17:19:01-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:15085Monday Morning Coffee - Dec 5, 2022WILMINGTON, NC - Quick video overview from Buddy Blake of Waypost Realty in Wilmington NC. Buddy and his team serves all the real estate, homes and property needs of buyers and sellers in the great Wilmington and surrounding areas: Leland, Hampstead, Carolina Beach, Castle Hayne and more.
Are We In A Buyers Market?<br /><br /><br /><br />Hi, this is Buddy Blake for another edition of Monday morning coffee first off, I want to wish you and your family a wonderful Christmas season ahead wish you a Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year also, I want to address kind of the market conditions we get calls and emails and texts and chats and social media messages every day asking us what's the market like well the biggest question is, is it a buyer's market or is it a seller's market?
It just depends down below is an article that I wrote that kind of highlights what's going on in the market right now, and also, you're going to find that I've started a series of <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/a-time-for-patience/">real estate stories</a> I've always found that success leaves Clues and so if we can just speak into another buyer another seller another agent or something like that and just give some experiences I think that it helps.
It is more of a buyer's market in certain price ranges once you get over the five and six hundred range, we see more negotiations, we're seeing some price reductions we're seeing Home Inspection negotiations and things like that, but still, we're struggling to have enough, inventory for things under the 400 Mark the only thing that's coming out in a lot of cases is some of the new construction, and a lot of it's just not even ready yet the interest rates they spiked up to almost eight percent there for a week or two now, they're settling back down in the fives and sixes, which is not as good as it was a year ago, but it's still a very good rate historically if you're thinking about buying or selling in this market feel free to reach out happy to be a resource in any way but down below you'll find some articles, and also there's a link<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/about/market-reports/" target="_blank"> to the latest Market statistics for our area </a>so you can see the trend lines yourself.
Happy to talk more about it otherwise, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.2022-12-05T10:20:14-07:002022-12-05T10:44:17-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:14405Conversation with Justin Fulford of Fulford Heating and CoolingJustin Fulford of <a href="https://www.fulfordhvac.com/" target="_blank">Fulford Heating And Cooling</a> sits down with <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/agents/22/buddy--blake/" target="_blank">Buddy Blake</a> to talk a little about important tips and tricks to know with maintenance on your heating and air conditioning system. There are a lot of people who don't pay attention to the ongoing needs of their HVAC and only deal with issues when they break down. A yearly maintenance plan can greatly increase the life of your equipment and prevent overloading the system that causes many of the problems that cause breakdowns. Some things as simply as making sure to change your air filters every month and not to use filters that restrict too much air flow are key maintenance tasks that home owners should make sure to keep an eye on.
There are big government changes coming in 2022 and 2023 that regulate the efficiency and refrigerant that air conditioning systems use that will require new types of equipment to be manufactured and installed bringing on price increases across the board around 35%. If you have a weak system, now might be a great time to purchase a replacement before these increases take hold. Try and get your unit replaced within the next year or you will face a significant cost increase over the current market prices.
<a href="https://www.fulfordhvac.com/" target="_blank">Fulford Heating and Cooling</a> is a local service company started in 1974 in the Supply, NC area and now expanded to cover the Hampstead, Wilmington and surrounding areas. They are family owned and take great pride in their focus on providing great service and customer support without high pressure sales.
Justin Fulford is a native Wilmingtonian, and is married to Christina with three beautiful girls. He spends his time enjoying the outdoors surfing, fishing and hunting. If you are in need of anything related to heating to air conditioning, please give Justin a call at (910) 842-6589.2022-08-30T06:00:00-07:002022-08-30T08:23:35-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:13861Monday Coffee with Buddy Blake - June 20, 2022
Hi, my name is Buddy blake and I'm here in Wilmington North Carolina with way post realty, if you are looking in the real estate market to buy or sale. I want to share some information with you, not just local to our area, but nationally real quick.
I'm gonna bounce over to my screen and I want to show you showing time is probably the most use service across the country. And this is systems where real estate companies and mLS systems use to schedule showings for houses. And this is really helpful to kind of see where things are in the market place because there's a lot of people that still think that we're operating at the level that we were a year ago or even six months or even three months ago and I kind of wanted to share what's going on first off. You can see in here. This is the last few years. Covid wrecked havoc in here. It just took off like 2020. You can see showing each line of these represents, showings the orange line is what was going on right now. So for instance, here's june 20th right now. But long story short is, you can see that we're back into a normal pattern now. It's much lower. The number of showings are quite a bit lower than they were last year at this time and certainly way lower than they were two years ago at this time. Just understand it's not the same market that we had a year ago, even months ago Now we're headed in. We're gonna see this little bit here and then we're gonna see the 4th of July drop here just like we always do and then we're gonna see the real activity happen but you can see everything has peaked.
So what does that mean for you? So if you're a home seller and you're thinking about selling your house you need to get in the game now. You don't need to wait anymore. Now if you're not thinking about selling I get it. But if you're thinking about selling, taking advantage of probably the best opportunity in the next several years you need to go ahead and get it done now. You're not gonna get the numbers and have the level of activity and the number of offers that we were seeing six months or even just three months ago. It's just gone okay you can't change it. It's gone. It was a wonderful run for sellers and agents and everything else. But that time is gone now. Does that mean it's bad? No it just simply means things are normalizing and that's a good thing because this thing just couldn't keep on forever.
Now if you're a buyer what does it mean? You need to understand what's going on the mortgage rates. These babies are moving within hours not just everyday. We have an in house mortgage company and it's called Waypost Mortgage and Paul Bowers is our lead mortgage officer and he shared with us just this morning in our meeting that the rates moved four times last friday alone, it was swinging from the fives up to the sevens just depending on certainly credit score and what type of loan and things like that. So what does that mean for you as a buyer? Let me tell you what it means. You need to have somebody that's local to the area you're buying in that you're communicating with a real person, not some automated mess because that automated mess isn't going to call you and let you know that the rates just moved and you need to lock in. You need to have a real mortgage person you trust. And if you're in our area, I highly recommend Paul. And if you don't want to use Paul, I got a few others I can recommend to but you need to be using somebody that knows what's going on, that's watching those rates all the time. Not some automated system because their goal is to lock you as high as they can get you because that's how they make money is to spread of what the feds charging and what the bonds are paying what they're paying and how much they can get from you. So if they catch you at the right time where they lock you at a high rate and the rate drips the next hour. Well they're able to really take advantage of that. Now that's business. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying is business, but you need to have someone working for you in that situation. So if you're a seller sell your house, if you're a buyer know about the mortgage, what's going on the mortgage rates?
So we're going to see more properties coming on the market. We are seeing more but this is not gonna be 2007 where all of a sudden we see all these bank foreclosures hit the market short sales and all that. We're going to deal with some mess. There's no question about what's gonna head what's ahead. But it's not gonna be the same. So if you're thinking about selling it's past time, get it done or prepare to hunker down or prepare to get less money than what your neighbor did or what your family did or whatever. Somebody's yelling in your ears or what the media said. But that's not bad. It's just you just didn't time it. Well, unfortunately nobody can time this thing right. I do this. I've done this for 25 years and I still can't figure out a time this thing guys. If we can help in any way, let us know there's a couple of tools down below that you're free to use on your own and we'll be glad to help you in any way. We can thank you so much for watching this video. Have a wonderful week. God bless to you and your family.2022-06-20T10:38:00-07:002022-08-02T13:35:13-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:13411Real-Time Online Real Estate Bidding NOW HEREMonday Morning Coffee - April 18, 2022
"It is challenging to live a humble life while consumed with living in the epicenter of the selfie". <br />
- Phil Ortego (paraphrased)<br /><br />NEW LISTING - ONLINE BIDDING STARTS THIS FRIDAY We will be bringing to market a lovely single-family home in the Middle Sound / Ogden area of Wilmington (28411 zip) this week as a LIVE ONLINE BIDDING Auction sale.
The property will hit the MLS and the address announced this Wednesday, April 20th with showings and online bidding starting on Friday, April 22nd. We will be having an open house on Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 4 each day. Online bidding will be open until Tuesday 4/26 at 5:00 PM Eastern.
If you are currently working with a real estate agent/broker please disregard this information and contact your agent. Otherwise, if you would like to learn more about this upcoming auction or how our online bidding and auctions system works please visit <a href="https://waypostauctions.com/contact/" target="_blank">https://waypostauctions.com/contact/</a>
Waypost Auctions is a DBA of Waypost Realty, LLC Auction Firm License NCAL #10554, Auctioneer NCAL #8822 <a href="http://WaypostAuctions.com" target="_blank">http://WaypostAuctions.com</a>
<a href="https://waypostauctions.com/register/" target="_blank">Preregister Your Bidding Account Here</a><br /><br />Hey guys, this is Buddy Blake, and I come to you this week because we are getting ready to do something we've never done before. And as far as I know, it's certainly never been done in our market. And I've not seen it done nationally, together. First off, I want to introduce you to Lauren Johnson. Lauren.
Yeah, hey.
Lauren is with our company Waypost Realty. But Lauren brings us also, he has a, he's a licensed auctioneer, has been for a long time.
2009.
2009. Of course, back then you did it for a different kind of market.
Right, absolutely.
Well now-
Because you had depressed market.
Well now, we've got our firm auctioneer license. And one of the issues that we just keep seeing happen is we've got so many buyers looking at properties. They're wanting to make offers. They don't know what to make the offer. We don't know what kind of backend deal's getting done.
It's not transparent at all.
Not transparent. You don't know whether to offer 100,000 over or 2,000 over. Or you don't really know if there really is a buyer out there, if your offer's being shopped or something. So what we are doing is, we're going to be doing it this weekend over in Middle Sound. We're not going to tell you the property yet because it's not going to go live until this Thursday, so I can't tell you where it is, just because we got to abide by all the rules.
Absolutely.
But we will tell you. It's going to be for under $400,000 starting.
That's right.
And what we're going to be doing is an online bidding. It's going to be for sale, but also it's going to go through the bidding process, AKA option, technically.
Which will be a five-day bidding period.
Okay. [crosstalk 00:01:36] Let's walk through it for a minute. You guys are going to have an open house. Tell us about that.
Yeah, we're going to have an open house Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 4, this coming Saturday and Sunday, 12 to 4. The time period in which folks can see it is during that time period. And then the bidding starts, online bidding starts that same day.
In other words-
Saturday at noon.
So we're going to put it in the system so it gets out to all the websites, in the MLS, it'll be in the MLS. And we encourage people to have their agents.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. You will work through an agent. We love agents. Your agent is going to have a lot of information that's in what's called agent remarks. And documents of how to do this will be in the MLS system. And if you don't have an agent, you can reach out to us and we can certainly help you through that. They're going to be able to place bids online.
And see what everyone else is bidding at the same time.
That's exactly right. In other words, you'll see this thing run up and it's going to go for five days so everybody gets a shot to actually buy something.
And it's going to be in $3,000 increments too.
Because of the price range of this one.
Correct, correct.
Okay. And then what are they going to need to do? Let's say somebody wants to bid on the property. It's a new term for us.
Exactly.
We've always used it loosely, but officially we couldn't use it. But now we can.
Yeah, exactly. In order to regis- first thing you do is register on the site. And in order to be approved, that is a waypostauctions.com. In order to be able to bid you register on the site. You also provide us with either proof of funds or a preapproval letter. If you don't have one, Paul Bowers here at Waypost Mortgage can help with that. There's also a 2% buyer's premium that would be added to the final bid. And that form needs to be signed and agreed to as well. Once we get those documents, then you'll be approved for bidding.
Now, if they're working with an agent, they need to-
Have that agent do that.
They need to register their agent and then we will coordinate with that agent. We're never going to cut the agents out.
Correct, absolutely.
So if you're working with an agent, do not try to bypass your agent in any condition whatsoever.
Right.
Let's talk about the buyer premium, because that is a term that you guys in the auction world are used to, like 5 to 10%. If you've bought cars or houses at auction-
Or anything on Ebay.
Well, that's exactly right. There's always a 5 to 10% premiums. So what does a 2% buyer premium mean?
Okay, let's say, for instance, the winning bid, the highest bid, winning bid was $400,000.
Okay.
2% of that $400,000 is $8,000. That would be added to the 400,000 so the sales price is actually 408,000.
408,000. And the 8,000 is for the auction fee.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, in this situation, if they got an agent, that agent will still get compensated through the MLS.
That's correct.
Okay.
That's a separate [crosstalk 00:04:31]
Nothing's different from the agent.
Correct.
Okay. They got to have a preapproval.
That's right.
They have to have a proof of funds. And if you don't know what proof of funds means, that means you're buying cash. There has to be proof where it's coming from. And if that is a shocking news for you, then you haven't been trying to buy property.
That's right.
Because no seller is going to take their house off the market without some kind of proof that you can actually [crosstalk 00:04:53].
Just your word.
Yeah, exactly. I know that offends some people who ... "Do you have the money? I need to see that you've got the money." And they get all offended. And I'm sorry, but this is the way it works.
[inaudible 00:05:05] Show me the money.
Let's think through some of the, what are the issues that we're going to have around this of can people ... Let me ask you this. Let's say an agent's got a buyer and they want to present a regular offer to purchase ahead of time. They could still send it in.
Correct. That's right.
But just to understand, it's still going to go through the auction process for that five days.
That's right.
Okay? And you actually, there's a countdown on that at waypostauction.com for that particular auction or that property.
That's right.
And because this will be our very first one coming up, and they will see the countdown.
Right. And this was going to be, it's going to close Wednesday at 5:00 PM.
Wednesday at 5:00 PM. Eastern standard time.
That's right.
And then basically you'll be able to increment your bid. And let's say that you go in there and you make a bid, and you're going to get notified if you're out bid so that you always know what's going on.
Automatically.
Yeah, it'll send [crosstalk 00:05:59] That's exactly right. And so you're going to see, you're not going to see who the people are, but you're going to see the bids as they go up.
Correct.
Now, what happens after ... All right, it's done. You got somebody that bid up here. What happens then? Is it closed and done? Or what do you do them?
No. Everything's going to be the same as a traditional real estate transaction, as far as the documents and the forms and whatnot. But they're going to need to provide us with the due diligence fee.
Immediately.
Immediately.
Right.
And then the earnest money. And then as far as the terms of the auction, they got to file the terms of the auctions in their contract they present.
And then we work with their agent if they have one, or with us.
[crosstalk 00:06:45] Due diligence [crosstalk 00:06:46].
The offer to purchase is the same. They still get the due diligence period. And now the difference in this model too is some of the terms are going to be laid out by the seller ahead of time in this.
That's right. The buyer will have to agree to that as well.
That's exactly right. For instance-
Due diligence [crosstalk 00:07:03] no reason to be if they're not going to agree.
Right. If you're not going to put up X amount of due diligence fee, it's going to tell you what the due diligence fee is going to be. The seller's going to go ahead and name that ahead of time, so really all we're talking about is price.
That's correct.
All the other terms are worked out.
Are already spelled out beforehand.
That's exactly right. Now, closing date and things like that-
That can be, that's, yeah.
But now do keep in mind, let's say that the seller, which a lot of sellers today need to be able to stay in the property 30, 60 days afterwards, what's called a seller possession. If the seller, if our client, the seller needs that, they're going to stipulate that as part of the sale up front.
That's right. That's part of the terms.
Don't even bid if you're not going to be good with that.
Right.
Correct?
That's right.
This really clears and cleans up. The word that keeps coming up ... We just had our big mastermind around, okay, we're getting ready to do this. What are all the unforeseen errors that we're going to see or problems or questions around it. And really the word that kept coming up is transparency.
Absolutely.
You're going to see, I'm going to send an email out about the exact property later this week once everything is kind of ready to go. And it'll go into the MLS, so this is not a hidden thing. It'll be all out there. Everybody will see what's going on.
It's going to be transparent it too, the whole process.
Yeah, exactly. So if you have any questions, all you got to do is go to waypostauctions.com and click the tabs at the top, how it works, strategies, all these kind of things. There's a lot of ... You can answer there. You can get your answers there. Or feel free to just reach out.
Absolutely.
Hit the contact button on there, fill out your question or your information and Lauren will be fee- he'll be handling those.
Getting back to you as soon as possible.
Lauren is the auctioneer, handles the auction side of it. In this case Cheryl Baucom is the listing agent.
Correct.
She will be handling the listing side of it, so it's going to be an interesting run.
It's going to be [crosstalk 00:08:58].
It's going to be fun. But open house two days, Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 4. And everybody's going to have a shot at buying this thing. These properties in this area, it's literally almost right across from Ogden Elementary, so they just don't come up very much, so this is going to happen. And we told our sellers, "Listen, you're going to be our very first guinea pig on this so we're probably going to run into some things that we're not used to." Anyway, it's going to be fun. If you would like to learn more about this, give us a call, reply back to this or just reach out to us.
If you're thinking about you would really like to sell your property this way, or you'd just like to learn more about the process, please let us know because we're trying to really create more transparency because we've got a lot of buyers that are just getting really frustrated.
Frustrated, oh yeah. Giving up.
Because they don't know the game. It's like, "Okay, I can play monopoly. But I don't know here what the game is."
Right.
But guys, thank you a lot. I hope you have a great week ahead. And if you have any questions, please let us know. And we're here to help. And we may get this a few things wrong the first time, but we're going to fine tune it. And we're looking for more people to do this with because we want to do things differently. It's a different market.
Absolutely.
And we want to do things differently. And we want sellers to be able to sell their house before these interest rate crank up much more, which takes out a lot of buyers. We don't want to see what happened in '07 seven where a lot of sellers missed it and had to wait 10 years to get back to where it is. So guys, if we can help, let us know. Thanks.
Thank you.2022-04-18T14:22:00-07:002022-04-18T15:10:41-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:12982Straight Talk for Buyers & SellersMonday Morning Coffee with Buddy<br /><br />WILMINGTON, NC - February 21, 2022
Hi, this is Buddy Blake with <a href="http://waypostrealty.com" target="_blank">Waypost Realty</a> right here in Wilmington, North Carolina. I hope you and your family had a great weekend and looking forward to a great week ahead. We're going to see some really nice weather actually up towards the eighties this week, which is super exciting, but I wanted to give you some updates on what's going on in our real estate market and around the country because it's pretty much everywhere now. In our market, it is continually busy, we're not seeing as many deals done only because we don't have homes to sell.
In Wilmington, right now, as of two minutes ago in the Wilmington area, which is not the city limits, but actually anything that has a Wilmington address, which is around 200,000 population, there is 135 single family properties available. So, we are seeing multiple offers on properties, we're seeing site unseen offers on properties, we're seeing frustration built-in with backdoor deals that are going on where some buyers don't know about a property, we are also seeing a number of for sale by owners that are selling to people that are just tying up their property and then the deal falling apart because they don't understand everything that's going on.
So I'm going to make some suggestions for you, whether you're a buyer or a seller. If you're a buyer in this market, you need to understand that the interest rates hover around 4% now and a little more than that, depending on your credit score and what type of loan you get. So we've moved past the twos, they're gone, but there are still some good mid-three rates if you're doing an FHA or a VA rate. The big thing that I would recommend right now is getting with a lender and getting an extended rate lock because everything's taking a little bit longer, especially if you're looking at new construction. To give you an example, we own our own mortgage company. It is called <a href="http://waypostmortgage.com" target="_blank">Waypost Mortgage</a>, and it is backed by Movement Mortgage, which is one of the largest mortgage companies in the country.
Paul Bowers is our loan officer and the manager of our office, which is right here in Waypost Realty. Paul is able to do now, with Movement's help a 90-day rate lock. It doesn't cost you any extra deal, there's nothing added on the back end, the rate is not adjusted. You can do a 90-day rate lock for free. So if you're thinking about buying something, you will need to get with him as soon as possible. He will need an address. Now, the other thing that he can do, and this really is for new construction or if it's an extended closing, he now has the opportunity to do a one-year rate lock. There is a cost to it, okay? You'll need to call Paul and get all the details around it. I can't give you rates or anything like that, but there is a cost, but you get it back once you close. It's not a big cost.
But with this, one year, you're able to lock today's rate for one year and that's going to be super powerful for new construction. And in that year, you get a one-time float down option, where if all of a sudden something happens in the economy, the rate drops, you're able to take your rate down one time during that process. So it's a great opportunity, especially for new construction. Make sure that you're really in tune with your lender, and you're really in tune with your agent right now because things are moving quickly. And as the interest rates go up, that's going to mean you're going to be able to afford fewer houses and house prices are going up. So be very careful.
Now, if you're selling in this market, all right? I'm going to make it really clear. I know you can sell your house by yourself, FSBO, or to your neighbor or on Facebook or on some group or something like that, but I am going to tell you that there are horror stories we're hearing more and more of where yes, we sold it. Well, you didn't get enough, okay? You thought you got enough, but you didn't get enough. You didn't get enough deposit, you didn't do a site unseen, you didn't have the right contract, somebody did what's called tie your house up. And then all of a sudden they didn't close on it, or they ghosted, disappeared, or they beat you up on the back end with home inspections, or quite honestly, you only had one or two buyers look at it and you didn't get exposed to the whole market.
In today's world, it has never been cheaper for a seller to hire a real estate agent, no matter who it is. Hire a real estate agent, they're going to more than exceed their value in the commission that's involved, just in the fact that they're going to bring you more offers, they're going to walk you through which ones to choose, and they're in more in tune with which loan programs and which situations are going on because everything matters right now. We have a wonderful plan. We've started doing these massive open houses every Saturday morning, and we roll out brand new listings so that every buyer has a shot at it. So we have a lot of people come and we have a lot of people interested. We are sold out of everything we've done this with now because we get multiple offers, significantly over the asking price because we are doing something different.
We, me, <a href="http://buddyblakecoaching.com" target="_blank">Buddy Blake</a>, and the agents at <a href="http://waypostjobs.com" target="_blank">Waypost Realty</a>, we're paying for a home inspection upfront because we know for a fact that will get you more deposits and a higher price offer, and more offers on the table, especially from all the site unseen West Coast and Northeast buyers who don't have time to get here and don't want to miss it. It is the best thing you can ever do. We are seeing offers $30,000 $40,000 $50,000 higher just because there's a home inspection and they don't have to worry. Known is always, always more comfortable than the unknown. We do that, we pay for it upfront, the seller doesn't pay for it, we do the pictures, when we put a property on the market, everything that's there is a transparent situation and it is to be sold as-is. We're not even going to deal with the backend negotiation on these things. If the appraisal comes in lower than it should, that's the buyer's issue, not our issue because we're going to have enough money on the due diligence to cover that.
These are just some tips that I wanted to share with you because I'm seeing more and more mistakes. Sellers think they're winning and they're bragging about it and telling everybody, and then I'm thinking in my background, "Wow, you have no idea how much money you left on the table," or, "You have no idea how big of an advantage you got taken off." So anyway, there might be the rogue ones, the unicorns that just did something, but I'm just going to tell you that I am absolutely certain, and I'll put my money where my mouth is that if you list your house with me and our team here at Waypost Realty, we will get you significantly more money or you don't pay us anything. Because I know we can get you more than you can get on your own because we're going to do it right and we're going to get you exposed to the entire market, not just try some back door quick deal so we can try to get a little more commission on our end or something like that.
Call us. Challenge us. I dare you to give us a call. Have a great week. And if I can help in any way, please don't hesitate to reach out.2022-02-22T05:16:00-07:002022-02-22T05:27:34-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:12754Monday Coffee with Buddy Blake WILMINGTON, NC - Monday Morning Coffee with Buddy Blake, owner of Waypost Realty.<br /><br /><img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/cbvswilmjan22.png" width="600" height="334" alt="chartofinventory" title="CarolinaBeachvsWilmington" />
Learn more about our just released <a href="http://approvedbuyers.com" target="_blank">APPROVEDBUYERS.COM</a> website now.
If you are looking for a career change, <a href="http://waypostjobs.com" target="_blank">WE ARE HIRING at waypostjobs.com</a>2022-01-31T14:33:00-07:002022-01-31T14:40:08-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:12264Monday Coffee Move Ticket Contest and Christmas Photo Booth
WIN 2 PREMIER TICKETS
for Saturday December 4th at 7:00 PM
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Join our family in launching our Christmas season this December 4th. "The Chosen" team has created a special episode about the birth of Christ through the eyes of Mary and Joseph. You'll also see an extraordinary lineup of musicians perform both new and classic Christmas songs from the set of The Chosen, including: Phil Wickham, For King & Country, Brandon Lake, Maverick City Music, Cain, Matt Maher, Bryan & Katie Torwalt, Jordan Feliz, We The Kingdom, The Bonner Family, Leanna Crawford, Dawson Hollow, and One Voice Children's Choir.
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<br /><br /><br /><br />Hi, my name is Buddy Blake here in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I am the broker and owner of Waypost Realty. And we're a residential real estate firm that specializes in coastal North Carolina. That's all the way from the state line of South Carolina, all the way up through Topsail, Wrightsville Beach, Wilmington, and also all the way up to Jacksonville and even New Bern in some cases. I just wanted to reach out and thank everybody for stopping by last Tuesday for our incredible Pie Day. We had a record number of people show up. It was really obvious folks were really, like us, wanting to be around people once again. And it was just great, never seen so many laughing faces, smiling faces. It was so good to see some folks I hadn't seen in a long time.
And I want to congratulate Tim Denny and his family. We had a drawing from all the folks that participated in our photo booth, which was really cool, and we're going to be doing more with that, in just a minute I'm going to tell you about it. But anyway, congratulation. He won a stainless steel smokeless solo stove that we gave away from a random drawing with my daughter. If you haven't seen it, it's on Facebook. You can click below and get a link and take a look at it. But real quick, I wanted to let you know that we're going to do a contest. Last Christmas we did it, and this week we're going to do it again, starting over.
In our area, there is a movie starting this coming week, and it's only going to be here for one week. It's The Chosen, the Christmas edition. It's going to be at Mayfair Theaters, which is the recliner theater. And I have purchased a block of tickets and I'm going to be given some away. So if you're interested, click below and do the contest. And out of all the correct answers, we're going to be drawing some folks to win some pairs of tickets to see The Chosen movie, the Christmas movie. It was just announced recently and they're really hard to get these tickets, but I've already got them and I just want to share that with folks who are interested in it.
Anyhow, otherwise, there's down below there are some market stats. The market is still very busy. We got a lot of buyers wanting to buy. We don't have many houses and folks don't list as much during this time of year, which personally, I think it's a great time, especially right now in the current environment, because we have such low inventory. It's a great time to stand out. You can always pull it off the market once we get into January or something like that and bring it back into spring. But you can pretty much name your own terms right now. And take advantage of this market condition, because we don't know how long this is going to last. With the low-interest rates, the shortage of inventory, and the high demand of buyers, we don't know how long that's going to last. We do know it won't last forever.
Anyhow, have a great week. I can't wait to see everybody's pictures online of their Christmas decorations and things like that. And if you would, reply back to this and give me some insight into what you think of these videos and how we're doing as far as marketing our company and our area. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.2021-11-29T18:21:00-07:002021-11-29T18:45:03-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:11798Market Update - October 2021WILMINGTON, NC - In this video <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/about/" target="_blank">Buddy Blake</a>, the owner of <a href="http://waypostrealty.com" target="_blank">Waypost Realty</a> in <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/homes-for-sale-wilmington-nc/" target="_blank">Wilmington NC</a>, shares the latest local and regional housing sales data and gives his outlook on what has happened, what is going on, and what may be to come. <br /><br />If you would like to view the report featured in this video <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jNC6bg8hg5oANEAlQmZaWg5VHDeBBUgs/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a><br /><br />Hi. This is Buddy Blake, here in Wilmington, North Carolina, coming to you from Waypost Realty. This is my latest and greatest market update as of today, which is October the fourth, 2021. It is crazy how quickly this year is going. It has just been the nuttiest year. After last year was of course a crazy year, but it was much slower, seemed like it was dragging on. This year's just flying by. Anyway, I want to give you an update on what's going on. I'm going to switch over to my screen share mode in just a second, but I also want to let you know that you're going to be hearing from myself and our team as we are going to be reaching out to everyone in our database, which if you're getting this email, that means you're in our database because we want to make sure we've got everybody's latest and greatest home address.
We're going to be mailing out our Pie Day invitations, which if you have never done it, that is for people that are locals, that live in the area, or going to be in the area around Thanksgiving. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving Thursdays, we always open our office up, all of our folks are here and we invite in our clients and our friends and folks in our database to come in and pick up a free, delicious pie that you can just throw in the oven and go. Just so you know that we're going to be doing that, so make sure if you just want to reply back to this email that we have your home address.
If you've not received anything from us in the past, in the mail, make sure you send that back if you want to participate and get a free apple pie. They are delicious, we love them. And anyway, we're going to go through hundreds and hundreds of pies this year and I just can't wait to see everybody in person this year. We will be wide open. We opened our new office right as COVID hit last year at the beginning of the year. And we really haven't had a chance to invite folks in and we're just looking forward to it because we really like our office and we've done some nice things and we've got a great team here. I think you'll really like us if you haven't met us in person yet.
Anyway, so I'm going to switch over to the screen mode so that I can go through these stats because there's a lot of interesting things going on and I've got my thoughts on kind of where we're at and a little bit of crystal ball gazing if you will if there is such a thing. But anyway, I'm going to go to it now. Okay. Let's get started with the latest market data that I was able to pull from our local systems, as well as a few insights from our own web systems. So first off, remarkably, the average price in our three-county area, and you'll notice up here, three counties, over the last five years, this shows a five-year trend, each data point is a month, and it's showing that we've gone from... We've almost doubled our average house price in the last five years.
Now, keep in mind, we had a really interesting market. We've had a very low number over the last six months of homes under 300 available. And we've had a lot higher price homes available in the luxury markets, waterfront stuff, and things that go for well into the seven figures. So that has skewed that a little bit because we just haven't had the inventory coming in the lower range. And there's a lot of other things I'll talk about as we get into this. I do think there's some phantom activity that's sitting out there that's not being registered that normally would be. But anyway, I'll just give you my perception.
Right now we're average price three-county area of a closed property as of September the 30th, September was $429,776. And I want you to pay attention to this run right here. This is the run, this was the initial COVID run off when the world just started shifting and everybody started displacing and moving and buying elsewhere from where they were. So we'll get into that in a few more minutes. Here we go, this is over the last year. This is the number of closed sales month by month by month. And you can see, in the three-county area again, in September, our market, we were down 16% in closed sales. Now that's for September, there was 1481, last year, 1239. The absolute peak during COVID was July of last year with closed transactions. And then in this year, it was in June. So keep in mind all of this, you'll see the normal trough during the holidays and first quarter.
So now, the next thing is pending sales. These are new contracts. These are properties that are going under contract. This is typically kind of the tip of the spear where things are. Now, here's where I'm going to start talking about a little bit of the phantom activity that I think is in the marketplace countrywide that we're not hearing. Keep in mind, sales were down 10% in new contracts. But keep in mind, we're in a new paradigm. About March, which was our peak in contracts for this year, last year, it was around May. This year it was around March, number of contracts. But what's happened here, I think that this fall right here is a little bit mix skewed, because March and April are when many of the new home builders in our region quit doing presales.
So what that means is they were doing catch-up on the stuff that was under contract and then they started building inventory homes that they were not going to release until they're almost ready. Whereas before you put them on as soon as they pull the permit, might be six months ahead of time. So we've been going through a window of time since March, April, May, where we normally would be seeing presales, where somebody selects a lot, they select their home plan and they go in and they start building it. They wait six to eight months or whatever the timeframe. Or in today's world, it can be as long as 18 months in some cases. What that means is we've gone through a period of time where we're not seeing those contracts in the market.
So that is skewing things dramatically and we usually see 20% to 25% of the activity in our area is new construction. So we're just not seeing those presales like we were. We are starting to see some builders come back online and start doing presales as they're able to catch up and move through their inventory. And then you're going to see that whenever the market does kind of shift over and the world realizes it, I happen to believe the market's already started shifting a few months ago. We're definitely not seeing the craziness that we were seeing back in the spring and deep summer. Certainly, we're busier than normal, but it's nothing like it was back then. It is just so different. We're not seeing totally crazy stuff like it was before. Still some crazy, but not as crazy.
But you're going to see some of that shift around a little bit because what's going to happen is you've got a lot of developers that feed the builders lots that they've been building these things. They've been getting the neighborhoods ready, getting the lots ready. And the one thing that they're going to want to do is they're going to... Builders are going to want to push through and get contracts with non-refundable money, locking people in, because what they do not want to do is get stuck with a bunch of dirt. We learned that in '06 and '07, that builders, developers do not want to get stuck with the land. Because even when you sleep, that interest clock keeps on ticking. You can't slow down production when you've already got the lots and the infrastructure and all of that done.
So you're going to see people start moving back to that model at some point soon. And we're already seeing some of the builders doing it, especially the larger national builders. New contracts are down, but here's the real trick, and this is the same thing countrywide. This is a three-year run and this shows the peak of our inventory, which typically runs somewhere between 3 and 5,000 units in our three-county area was in August. But just year over year, this September versus last September, last September there were about 2,600 homes available. Okay. For sale, that means not under contract. This September, we're down to 1,368 in all three counties. So what that means is it's off 48%. And when you look at these numbers back here, it's just staggering how far it's off.
So that's also a big part of the problem. When you start overlaying this, there's no question you're going to see closed sales down, contracts down. But a good amount of these homes available, keep in mind, I think there are two things that are really holding back our market from making more sales. One is we don't have the new construction sitting out there to do presales. I think that's a bigger factor than people want to talk about. And then the other thing is there's a lot of sellers that would like to sell, they just don't know where they're going and they don't feel comfortable going out there and playing in this crazy market that they've been hearing about, their friends have told them about and everything else.
So what's really going on? Are there new properties being listed? Are properties just not being listed like normal? That's the interesting thing, is this is a five-year run. This is the number of new listings each month. And if you look, okay, we always see our peak listing months in the spring. Okay. People start listing in January and then kind of the apex of that is going to be in the spring, the March and April world typically. And of course, the bottom is going to be the fourth quarter when you see people that for holidays, they don't bring them out, they're not putting them out. Look at this. We're still seeing about the same number of listings hit the market that we normally do. This looks like a heartbeat, a good, healthy heartbeat. Up down, up-down, up-down. This is pretty consistent.
Yeah, it's off a little bit, but it's not off crazy bad. Right now it's down 12% versus September versus this time last year, which is not horrible, especially when you consider we're off 48% in total inventory. Here's the issue. And I was going over a meeting with our team this morning and I'm going to equate it to a really nice rib-eye steak. A really nice rib-eye steak is what the market is usually made up of. And what that means, you've got years of marbling on it, of fat and things like that, that's part of that helps make the taste up. In a normal market, most of the buyers don't buy and don't eat the fat. Okay. Most consumers don't. They just eat the lean meat that's inside with the good tasting and things like that and they cut off the fat and they just ignore it.
What that means is usually 30% of the houses that are on the market in our normal world just don't sell. They expire, then they come back and the seller gets real about their price or the condition. They get it right and then they put it back out there and then it finally sells. It takes times, four to eight months of inventory. Well, what's happened is we've gone through a really, really time crunch where we've probably taken five years or more of demand and jammed it into one to two years. Okay. Probably about an eight-month window of absolute fanatic buying where people just felt like there was going to be no more steak at all, no more rib eyes ever. So they were consuming the fat, they were consuming everything. Kind of like when you go and you buy toilet paper that's as thin... You buy the store brand that's so thin you can see through it. You buy it because you're scared nothing else is going to be out there and you're going to run out of some kind of toilet paper and going to be using leaves or something.
Well, now the world realizes, yeah, there's not as much toilet paper, but here's the deal. I'm going to buy the Cottonelle, I'm going to buy the Charmin, I'm going to buy something that's more comfortable, not just to have something. So I think that's where we're at. My combination of rib eye and toilet paper is probably not a good analogy, but for me, it works. But just understand, it's going to take some time for that fat and that marbling to develop again. We're starting to see it. We are seeing inventory, even though inventory's low, we're starting to see a larger segment that's sitting on the market a little longer. We're talking days longer, not months longer right now, and weeks longer, but it's putting out there.
Because the sellers think, they come in on the market, they heard that their friend or their neighbor down the street or their relative, they just absolutely have 50,000 over asking or something like that. And they think they're going to do it too without doing anything to the house. And well, guess what? That's not really the same world we were in back in the spring of this year. It's changed. Now, who knows where it'll be next year, but right now it is definitely not what it was in spring of this year. They're coming out, they're having to do price reductions. We're seeing as many price reductions as we are seeing listings now. We didn't see any price reductions for a long time, but now we're seeing them.
The other thing is when we get a seller that calls in, a good agent, before, there's an awful lot of things over the last six months to a year that we'd tell a seller, you don't really need to do that. Do you need to paint? Maybe not now because somebody's going to buy it because they're buying all the fat. They don't really care. They're buying even the thin toilet paper. They don't really care. Well, what's going to happen is you're going to see more times now where you're going to have to do a few things to get your number, especially if you're trying to stretch the number. We're going to see more arguments with sellers... Just frustrations I should say, not arguments, where they're frustrated because their house hasn't sold in two days. They didn't get 10 offers. We're already seeing that.
We're seeing more contracts fall out. We're seeing more problems with buyers wanting things on home inspections more. There for a while, it was like, you're going to ask for something, are you crazy? We're not doing anything. I got nine other people that'll buy this house. Well, that's shifting around and so we're starting to see the tension on both sides now. Before all the tension was on the buyer's side. Some of the tension's starting to play back on the seller side. So you got a combination of desperation, greed, you got all of it coming together, and then the normal things that we all deal with, the human emotions. We still have people, unfortunately, passing away, you've got estate situations, we got divorce situations, we got health situations. Those things still are out there.
So you got a lot of things starting to play into the marketplace that really has been overshadowed because of the velocity of the buyers. With all that said, here is... You're saying, okay, what's going on? One of my agents, Tyler, asked me, he said, "Buddy, be really nice to know, let's go really to the tip of the spear, where is buyer's activity? What is their... Are they still looking as much or whatever?" So I said, "Hey, you know what? Let's run an analytics report."
This is our website. I'm going to show you what our website data is. From January 2020, right before COVID to the end of this last month. This is sessions visitors. This is people going online, looking at real estate on our website. So what we're going to do is you can see in January, this is kind of normal. February is fine. March, the world fell off. They quit looking. Well then, the whole world went nuts and they're just hammering the websites. And listen, I can only speak to my website, but I suspect that any real estate website is going to be somewhat similar in the overlay.
Slowed down, here's where we had, if you think about it, this is where we had the holidays came in. And also you had the... There was a huge COVID run right back in here. All right, then you got back into here. It started going crazy again, typical seasonality. It went really crazy in January, February. We had delta variant hit and some of that slowed some things down, but now we're starting to see a seasonality of slow down. Okay. We didn't really get it as much last year, the normal one, because the school didn't go back in the same way it normally does. People could travel and still send their kids to school. So we had that, but now we got a lot more traditional things going on from the season. So you've got more of that. We definitely see overall buyer activity and traffic and showings are slowing. Some of that is because of the inventory level because we don't have enough to really generate some showings and activity.
But do keep in mind, go back to this. We're still seeing very similar new listing activity for reselling listings. So once the new homes start working back into it and sellers start feeling some comfort, I think we'll see that ease up after the first of the year. I think there'll be more people, sellers coming to the market before spring this year, trying to beat the spring rush, because I think there's going to be a massive spring rush probably. So which is going to start letting some things up. But the fat will build back in. And listen, I want to give a big shout-out to Paul Bowers in our office. We have a mortgage company in the house that we have, and Paul is wonderful to work with. Even if you're already working with a lender and you're thinking about preapproval, call Paul for free. He'll give you another opinion.
One thing you do want to do with your mortgage and your home insurance is, in our area, are you want to shop it. And I know that you may like your lender from where you are. I highly recommend that you use a local lender that understands all of our different coastal issues, insurance issues, just things like that. Because somebody not from a coastal area does not understand it and they may line you up with an insurance policy that's paying two, three, four, five times more than what you should. Highly recommend you speak with Paul. If not Paul, I've got a list of a whole bunch of other local mortgage lenders that I really like and have used for many, many years.
Okay. I hope the information was helpful. And if you would like more information on this or a report in PDF format so you can look at and share with anybody that you might know that might need the information and would like the information, just click the button down below and it'll take you over to where you can download it at no charge and use it as you will. Anyhow, thanks a lot. Have a great week. Have a great October ahead and I can't wait to see you next time.2021-10-04T11:50:00-07:002021-10-04T17:37:12-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:11343Monday Coffee - It's All CASH To The Seller<br /><br />In today's market, a buyer utilizing all cash to buy a property can help the buyer win the property when up against other offers with similar terms --- but only if the price and terms are the same or better. Some buyers make the mistake of thinking if they have all cash that they can buy for cheaper, but whether cash or mortgage - IT'S ALL CASH TO THE SELLER.<br /><br />Hi. Buddy Blake here, Wilmington, North Carolina coming to you for your Monday morning coffee. I hope you're doing well no matter where you might be. The world is completely upside down. Everything on the news is a mess, whether it's health with COVID or international. Our prayers go out for all the folks that are fighting COVID and families or loved ones that you've lost or are in the hospital. Certainly, our family, our prayers just go out for just everybody around the Afghanistan thing. It's hard to watch that or to hear about it. I can't imagine what's happening and what's going to happen. It's just unbelievable no matter what side of the spectrum that we're on.
But anyway, Wilmington, things are good. Kids are back in school. Public schools started today. A lot of the private schools started last week. So for parents, it's kind of the first time in going on two years where there's a little bit of, it feels like anyway, a little bit of normalcy as far as to schedule and kind of being able to make plans to do some stuff. Obviously, next month, the schools in the Northeast start going back to school. So we're still got vacation season here for a few more weeks. It's been a really busy summer. It's been one of the busiest summers on record for us.
Things have slowed down some. We are seeing fewer purchase contracts across the board, but still in certain price ranges, under 400, it's still, especially if it's in the ones and twos, it's crazy still. But we have seen some people pulling back just because a lot of people have made the decision of what they're going to buy and they've already done it. Interest rates are still phenomenal, between two and a half and 3%, in most cases 4.30, which is crazy.
Our in-house mortgage guy, Paul, is doing an amazing job of helping people. Even if he doesn't get the loan, he's able to help them get better rates and better deals from the lender they're going through because he basically takes a look and gives you a nice little comparison. Being that he's in-house and we own part of the company, we're able to do that service for free for our clients, whether they use him or not. So it's a great system.
But what I'm coming to you for today is we're starting to see some people that don't understand that when you're a buyer, especially some investors and I should say newer investors, a lot of people are coming in with cash because they sold something elsewhere. They have this assumption that because they're cash, that they are going to get a better deal or going to be able to get it for less money than somebody buying it with a mortgage. Just understand that to the buyer, it's all cash. It doesn't matter. The only time cash makes a difference is if you've got two offers that's pretty doggone equal or similar, and one's a mortgage and one's cash, the seller might say, "Well, I don't have to go through the appraisal process."
But do keep in mind, cash buyers sometimes, especially as the price gets higher, could still do an appraisal. They have the right to do an appraisal. I mean, they're paying for it. They don't have to. It doesn't happen in most cases, but we've seen that in some situations because they don't want to buy something that is not worth what they're buying, especially if they're not from here. So please, please, please. Unfortunately, some of the investors are coming in and they're doing it and they're making offers 10% less than asking, or even 2% less than that, or anything less than asking in some price ranges, and they're having to learn it the hard way.
So just know that cash doesn't mean you're going to get it for less right now. It may mean you get it if you're on par with the other offers because the seller may feel better or the listing agent may feel better too. But just know that that doesn't mean you're going to get a discount. It's just probably not going to happen in this market. There'll be a time when that does make a difference again. But right now, we're not in that time and we got a long way to go. Is the market moving towards more of an equal market? Yes. But just to understand, we're still deep into a seller's market.
Even though things have slowed some, and most of that's because we just don't have the inventory. If we had the inventory, we'd have sales contracts. So anyway, I just wanted to get that out there because there are some people that just don't understand that it's all cash to the seller. It doesn't matter. It's all cash to the seller at the end of the day. Whether it's a mortgage company or a buyer, they're getting money at the end the same way.
Anyway, I just wanted to get that out there, and also let you know, we've got some upcoming events coming up in September that we're going to be doing. Then as we head into fall, we're going to be doing some fall events again, which is exciting. But if you have a need for real estate or just information, selling, buying, whatever, or refinancing or purchasing and getting a mortgage, give us a call. Reply back to this email. We would love to help you and your family in any way we can. Again, our prayers go out to everybody for everything that's going on.
I forgot. The hurricane hitting the Northeast. How often does that happen? Holy cow. So just everything that's going on. We're just, prayers, deepest prayers, and just sympathies. Just know we're thinking about it. We're all going through a mess, so. But stay strong. There's light. If you look around, there's always light available. Light is always available even in the darkest hour. Thank you so much. Have a great week. I look forward to chatting with you soon. Thanks.
2021-08-23T14:07:00-07:002021-08-23T15:47:25-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:11251August 2021 Market UpdateWILMINGTON NC - In this video, <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/about/" target="_blank">Buddy Blake of Waypost Realty </a>breaks down the latest trends in the real estate and housing market for <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/homes-for-sale-wilmington-nc/" target="_blank">Wilmington </a>NC, and surrounding areas such as <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/homes-for-sale-hampstead-nc/" target="_blank">Hampstead</a>,<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/homes-for-sale-leland-nc/" target="_blank"> Leland</a>, Castle Hayne, Rocky Point, Burgaw, Warsaw, Wallace, Whiteville, Oak Island, Southport, <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/homes-for-sale-carolina-beach-nc/" target="_blank">Carolina Beach, Kure Beach,</a> <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/homes-for-sale-wrightsville-beach-nc/" target="_blank">Wrightsville Beach </a>and more.<br /><br />Hey, it's Buddy Blake here. Happy Monday to you and your family, wherever you may be. I just wanted to give you an update. Things are busy in Wilmington, North Carolina, and it's hot. It's hot, hot, hot. So stay inside and enjoy the air conditioning. But this week I'm going to jump into our monthly market stats, so that you can see what's going on.
Things are definitely... A shift is afoot, contrary to what you may hear or somebody may tell you. Nationally, locally, and regionally, things are shifting. And we're going to see that continue. It's been a wonderful ride, but the ride is just slowing down a little bit. The merry-go-round is slowing down, and just make sure you don't get slung off one of the horses.
So anyway, so we'll jump in. Okay. We're going to do a deep dive now into the latest happenings. And this is as of August 1st of this year, so it's really fresh, but I wanted to get in here and talk about this. First thing I want to talk about is pending sales in our three county area, which is pretty much Southeastern North Carolina, the coastal areas, and it actually reflects nationally, as well, if you look at the reports from the National Association of Realtors. You can see that the new pending sales, this doesn't mean what's closing now, what's closing last month or something like that, or next month. This is the tip of the spear. This is the number of new contracts.
And it peaked in April of this year in our three county area, and it peaked around May nationally, it looks like. But if you look over here, a lot of that is due to the new inventory that's coming on the market. Seasonally, people obviously slow down listing their house as you get through summer. So we've had that fall back.
But also, the other thing that has happened too, I think, is new construction locally and nationally, a lot of home builders, national and regional and local, have changed the way they do business. You don't see the pre-sale contracts, meaning that you go select a lot, and then you pick a house plan, you pick the updates. That mechanism doesn't exist in many areas now because the builders don't want to get behind the rising costs, nor do they want to miss any of the potential realized profits.
So, what's happening is they're not bringing them to market until they get to the cabinet stage or drywall stage, in many cases, when they have a really good idea of what their cost basis is, and allow themselves to be able to make sure they don't leave any money on the table for a potential retail price for the house. So, we're going to go through a period of time where we just simply don't see presale contracts. And that is a large part of the marketplace, and it has been during COVID because a lot of sellers, there just wasn't a lot of resale homes out or used homes out there. So people moved into that. And also builders, for many months, were the only ones that would accept flexible financing, or even now today, do VA loans, FHA loans, and things like that, just due to market conditions.
So I don't think that's going to change. I certainly think the market has peaked out, and also you've got the buyers' frustrations. A lot of buyers are pulling out of the market because they just simply don't want to deal with overpaying. And there's certainly the greed factor, where a lot of sellers have come to market higher than they should have, just to test the market, or quite honestly, listening to people that probably don't have a pulse on the market, and that's happened. Or some sellers go to market, and they'll go... Like I've always said, if you're going to test the market, I think you ought to test it as a for sale by owner if you're really going to crazily test the market, go way high. Because you don't damage yourself. Because what's happening now is we're seeing more price reductions than we've seen in well over a year. So people put it up there, and then it starts coming down.
But the problem is, in a normal market, if something's sitting on the market for four or five months, you start wondering what's wrong with the house. Now, if it's on the market for a week or two, agents and buyers alike are wondering what's wrong with it. So just be really careful where you price your house. Yes, I don't leave you to leave any money on the table, but just be realistic with it. And don't be too greedy, because you're going to start chasing off buyers.
And so, anyway, so next I think I want to look at is the absorption reports. This is in the New Hanover County area, which is where Wilmington proper is. And if you're not familiar with these reports, there's a link down below this video, you can click and actually see the PDF of all of these. You can see right here, just pay attention to this column over here. Gives you the ranges here. And this tells you that there's less than one month supply of houses. Let's pretend that not one more house was going to be listed in this area. That means when eight-tenths of a month, three weeks, we would run out of houses in that price range.
Now do keep in mind, a lot of these numbers are just skewed... Whoops. I went too fast. Are skewed because there's just very little act... In New Hanover County, there's only 373 listings whereas normally, we'd have well over 1,000. And 466 are pending, and you can see the 2,400 have closed in the last six months.
This is Brunswick County, the largest county in North Carolina. When this goes basically from the Cape Fear River all the way down to the South Carolina state line and inwards also a bit. But you can see that the price range is extremely hot, all the way up to a million.
Now there are a number of houses that are sitting because they were priced too high or there's something significantly wrong. So that is... These numbers are inching up again. So if you can call days inching up. And then you've got Pender County. You've got a gap here. You just don't have the real ultra high end that New Hanover County in some parts of Brunswick has in that area. But you can see, once you get to certain price ranges, once you get up to about 800, it starts slowing down in the Pender County area. Just don't have the big buyer pool for that.
Wilmington, this is mailing address. This isn't city limits. This is Wilmington mailing address, which would include unincorporated areas like down towards... If you know where Monkey Junction is, towards Carolina Beach. And it would also include Scotts Hill and places like that and the Ogden area. But you can see, and this is really the hottest area, there's only 322 homes available. 415 are under contract, most of those being under contract for only 30 days. So that is just a phenomenal number of velocity of sales. Under 600 is the meat of the market here. And once you get over 600, you've got almost twice as long days on market. And then once you get over a million two, it jumps even more.
Now that is dependent on location. Waterfront or true waterfront intercostal properties are still moving a unique type property. So even at the high end, they're moving, but there are some areas where things are starting to slow down, and it's becoming obvious now.
Let's see. Leland, this is the Leland market. So up until you get to about 500, you're pretty much less than 30 days on the market. The more meat of it would probably be around the three and four.
Now this is where we're at right now. This is national. This is a national chart. We're still deep, if you look down in here, we're deep in a sellers market, and this is nationally. But keep in mind, we've bounced a good bit. Well over half a percent or a half a month, we've increased in days on market. So, it's hard to even imagine this market here, which was where we typically operate for the last 25 years for me. But right now is still deep a sellers market.
So anybody has been thinking about selling, it's a wonderful time to sell still. You still got to deal, well, where are you going to go? But we're starting to see more inventory on the market, which is good. And we're going to see that come on more and more, because more, you're going to see some of the foreclosures come to market, now that the evictions have started again and the foreclosures. And you're going to see some landlords able to sell their house now. They've been sitting on a tenant that hasn't paid them because of the laws or the mandates. So now they're going to be able to free it up and be able to take their money off the table and do things like that and take advantage of this market.
Now this is going to be a big one for investors and for people who have owned property for, I would say, over two years. We've been riding almost a double digit appreciation annually for the last couple of years. It is already peaked in June this year, the appreciation. That doesn't mean prices have gone down. That just simply means the rate of increase has significantly changed. This is nationally and it's locally.
So what we're seeing is the rest of this year, we expecting, according to prognosticators, the people that are much smarter than me, around a little under 9% appreciation, but then it's going to almost cut in half. And keep in mind, normal appreciation is 4% to 5% a year. So we're going to be back to that next year or even... So what that means is if you've been writing your house up and you're trying to figure out when do you jump off this wagon? The answer was probably back in April of this year was probably the time to have done it, but it's not too late now. But waiting from now to next year is most likely going to make a really big difference.
Let me go right here. This is just an interesting scenario. And I don't know where you sit, but the average person in the last year, household has gained $33,000 in equity without doing anything else to their house, without improvements, just by having it. And the average household has $216,000 equity. And this is going to play into another slide that I'm going to share after this. But the real interesting thing is the ownership of homes. I've never seen, almost 40% of the houses in the United States are owned free and clear. So that means there's no mortgage on them at all. So that is just incredible.
Let's see. Home equity cash out. This is the slide I was talking about. Back in '05, '06, '07, you see the red. What that means is a lot of people, too many people, were pulling out every penny of equity they had in a property to go do something else, make an investment, to flip it, to do all that.
When you start hearing about all your friends, relatives, and agents, I might say, getting into the flipping business, that's when you start wondering if this thing is getting ready to have a problem because the music does run out sometime. So if you're starting to hear the word flip a whole lot, that's when you might want to say, "Is that a red flag?" Pulling equity out. But this time around, percentage of equity has not been pulled out. So if you're needing cash, and I am hearing some people, friends of mine, what they're thinking about doing is going out and setting up and doing a cash out, or getting a [inaudible 00:11:21] getting an equity line on their balance. Just for the rainy day. Not to pull it out right away necessarily, but to have it available and ready to deploy while the interest rates are very low.
So, that is something to think about. I know, perfect example, my wife and I are doing it to be able to position ourselves moving forward, because we do anticipate a tremendously different market. We're already seeing it in our business. Our numbers of contracts, typically, for our team runs anywhere between 30 and 50 contracts a month. And we're not doing that now. It's down around half of that or a little less in July, actually. It's not because we're not working hard. It's not because we're not doing a great job. It's just because there's a lot of people vacationing. There's a lot of people pulling back from the market, buyers, and the sellers, quite honestly, are just waiting and waiting because they don't know where they're going to go. And they also just... Some people are just greedy. Just the way it works.
So anyway, let's see what else we got. Mortgage update. If you have any information... We have a joint venture with Waypost Mortgage, Paul Bowers. So he's right in our office, which is wonderful. He does pre-approvals for free. And he also, what he does as a service, because we do believe in giving service away and hopefully earning people's business, he actually will... If you've got a preapproval on something, he will do an analysis on it to make sure that you're not paying points that you don't need to be, and that there's no junk fees or anything like that. And he does that for free. It doesn't cost you anything. So obviously, he's trying to earn your business, but it's just really good service because there are... We've seen some situations that sure seem predatory to me, especially with out of town and internet lenders.
So just be very careful, no matter where you're buying or refinancing, use a local lender. Period. I don't care who it is or what it is. Use a reputable local lender. So everything just goes better if there is a human that you can call and talk to, and especially if it's somebody in your market.
So anyhow, I hope that's helpful. You guys have a great week and a great August ahead. A lot of people going back to school, so that is good. Get some normalcy back. And in person, which we're super excited about in our house. But anyway, take care and thank you so much.2021-08-06T12:48:00-07:002021-08-06T13:40:51-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:10779Monday Coffee - May 2021 Housing UpdateHey, everybody. Happy Memorial Day week. Hope you guys are doing great. It is so awesome to see the weather is warmed up. It's going to be a beautiful week here. Going to be a glorious weekend coming up. It is going to be busy and packed.
And our family's headed down to Carolina Beach to enjoy a very long weekend. It's our kids' last week of school.
Things are very busy in the real estate market. I'm going to go over a market update, kind of a monthly thing that I do. I give statistics. I just shared this with our team here this morning, going over some stuff that we're seeing in the market.
So the good news is, the interest rate is still down there around the 3% mark for most loans, even lower than that for 15-year loans. Real estate has become by far the number one vehicle for people that are putting their money into it.
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A lot of folks are slowly pulling their money out of the stock market. And they're putting it into what they know, they're putting it into the scarcest thing there is, which is land. That's the thing that isn't made anymore. You can't fake it. You can't make it.
I highly recommend, obviously, putting your money in real estate, especially now in the uncertain times ahead. This shows you a graph that since 2013, real estate has become the number one vehicle for folks for their true net worth savings. It has made more people wealthier than anything else out there.
Single-family homes, this is something that a lot of people don't realize. This '06, '07, that crash, created an environment where many home builders were not able, and developers couldn't get funding, couldn't get loans. And there just wasn't enough demand at that time to build new houses.
So the last 10 years, we've had half as many new homes built nationwide as in the previous decades before. So that's another issue that's leaned into and caused a lot of inventory shortages. Just keep that in mind. And the builders are trying to keep up with it now, but the problem is with all the shortages and delays it's making it a big struggle.
Year over year, this is listing inventory. This is national. Then I'm going to bring it down to local. National, we're seeing inventory finally come to bear. I actually saw a couple of posts in a couple of groups I'm in with other exp people from all over the country. And their areas are starting to report 20% increases in inventory.
So you have a couple of things going on. You have sellers feeling comfortable now. They're not worried about the COVID virus as much. So they're able to put their house on the market. Certainly, it's seasonal, you got the summer market coming. People want to take advantage of selling then. You also have the fear of missing out on sellers because it's an incredible time to sell. Certainly, you got to know where you're going if it's your primary residence.
But here's another one that we're seeing a lot of, people that have second homes, investment properties, and things like that, they're getting out now with the current capital gains tax rates. Or they're taking advantage of a 1031 exchange that there's uncertainty whether that's going to be there next year with the environment that's going on.
So this is a great time to sell, especially if it's an investment property because you can take your cards off the table, your chips off the table, and have a reasonably low capital gains tax compared to what it very well maybe in the future.
Freddie Mac is a big indicator for interest rates. They're probably the best at predicting it. You can see right now that it's already bottomed out. We probably won't see interest rates go down for a sustained period of time, back to where their low was, which was well below three.
But the good news is, it's still very good. And we're going to see the project. It's going to increase. And it is going to get more expensive to purchase a house. So now's a great time to buy and it's an amazing time to sell.
Homes forecast, this year is going to be another banner year, they're predicting. Next year is going to be really good, but it is going to start to slow some. A lot depends on certain tax rates and things like that, what happens. A lot depends on unemployment, what they do with some of the unemployment issues. So we'll have to wait and see.
But again, it's a wonderful time to sell. An incredible time to buy with the cost of money.
Days on market, this is local now, let's take it local. This is in Hanover County, which is our primary market that we serve right here. And our days on market are dropped down below a week. So for things that have sold, if a house is sitting on the market for weeks and weeks, or 30 days, or 60 days typically it's because it's overpriced. Somebody is pushing a bit too hard on the price, or there's something substantially keeping it from selling, whether it's a location, condition, or something like that.
Inventory is rising and Wilmington. This is Wilmington. It's going up month over month, a little over 3%, which is good because it's been plummeting, plummeting, plummeting. So Wilmington has been going up. The beach communities have been going up for a number of months. So Wilmington is following, just as we thought. Which is good. We need the inventory of houses to sell because we have absolutely zero shortage of buyers looking.
This is an absorption chart. Down below is a link where you can get all these broken out by counties and some of our major areas. This is the Wilmington market. You can see that we have less than two months supply of inventory all the way up through 1,000,002. And then once you get over that, you do see days on market higher than under, obviously.
But you can see there are very few properties under 200,000. For example, there are 13 properties for sale. And those are typically in need of a good bit of repairs and have some things that need to be done to them. But the good news is, inventory is coming to market. It is coming to bear. The builders are moving quickly as they can. The real thing that's out there is the investors that have properties, whether second homes, or whether it's a true investment, they are bringing them to market now because they want to take advantage of the current taxes, the capital gains tax rate, or be able to use the 1031 vehicle, even if they're going to pay more than they'd like on the buy-side of it, just to be able to pull their profit out and be able to better utilize it and deploy it for the future.
That's a monthly update here from Wilmington, North Carolina. And if you would like more information on our area, or anywhere in North Carolina, because we're able to service all of North Carolina with our EXP team now. We have a local team here and then I have a North Carolina team that's out and around all around North Carolina now, which is really good.
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So if you have any questions anywhere in the state of North Carolina, please reach out and we'll be glad to make sure that we become a resource for you in your upcoming purchase, or selling your property.
Thanks a lot. Have a great Memorial Day weekend. Stay safe. Enjoy the beautiful, beautiful weather here. And enjoy seeing people's faces again. It's absolutely wonderful.
And if you're out and about in our area, or down at Carolina Beach on Memorial Day weekend, say hello to our family. We will be out and about and enjoying the festivities alongside everyone else. Thank you so much.2021-05-24T12:23:00-07:002021-05-24T12:36:09-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:10420Market Update for 1st Quarter 2021<br /><br />Hey guys, it's Buddy Blake here with eXp Realty here in Wilmington, North Carolina. Hope you guys are doing well, hope you had a great Easter weekend and holy week right before it. It was absolutely beautiful here in our area. And the weather's going to be great here, we're going to be up close to 80 degrees most of this week, sunshine. So it is finally springtime, and pollen is just crushing me. Anyway, I want to go over some stuff real quick that we went over with our team today. We kind of do our first week of the month we go through our recap of what's going on in the market. So I'm going to bounce over here and work through this. Let me just kind of move this over here a little bit. So let me go through real quick. Let's see. Let me get over here to our closings.
First off mortgage update. Mortgages continue to have stabilized somewhat, we're seeing around the three, three, and a quarter, in many cases. Of course, you have to check with your credit and your lender, but we highly recommend Paul here in our office. If you haven't refinanced in the last year, or you're thinking about purchasing something, you definitely want to reach out to Paul. He has got some really great rates, some great investors that he works through. Even the whole second home or investment property rates, he's got a couple of investors that are not hitting it the way Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are. So you don't have to get penalized the way you would go through some of the more larger banks or lenders.
So I'm going to work, do our market update. This is interesting. This is the US inventory levels back in January of last year. They were down, they rose, this was when the whole world was falling apart last spring if you remember, and now we're down to nationwide less than two months supply of inventory, which is really crazy. And this just talks about what's going on. One of the biggest problems that we're having with homes hitting the market nationwide is sellers, they want to sell and take advantage of the demand and they get low-interest rates and things like that, but they don't know where to go. I'll tell you in our area if you've got a property, we've got some really good plans to help you with that, where we're able to actually get you a house to move to and sell yours. And also in many cases, we're able to get you one, two, three, or even six months where you can stay in your house after it actually closes. So that really puts you in a wonderful position. And as a seller, these opportunities don't exist in normal market conditions. So you are able to command, not just a high price, but even more favorable terms for yourself.
But what I want to get into, is Hanover County, it's the smallest county in North Carolina but it's our coastal Wilmington County. You can see right here that in April, we have seen it drop down, days on market were down to around seven days on average on market, and that's all price ranges. You can see that it comes down because inventory has tightened up and our average price, or at least medium price I should say, is up over 340. That's about a $100,000 increase over the last two years. And then here, if you want it by the price you can really zoom down into, and you can see the red here that means we've got less than two months of inventory all the way up to 1.2 million and all in Hanover County, which is a few hundred thousand people or 300,000 or so homes, we've got less than under 200,000, there are only 14 houses available and that's all conditions, just know that. So if you're struggling to find something 200 or under, this is the reason why. And even with that, all of Hanover County, there are only 287 homes available. And that makes it all the way up, even over $3 million. So there are only 287 homes, 506 are under contract. So you can see the situation that we've got going on.
Real quick, Pender County, which is the Hampstead area, tops with beaches, those areas inventory is also falling. They're around two weeks supply of inventory across all price ranges, price levels have increased there also. And you can see the price ranges here all the way up, you got less than one month supply up to 500,000 in Pender County.
Brunswick County, which is the largest county in all of North Carolina, it's a huge swath of land. You can see that inventory has dropped here too, to just over two weeks of inventory and house prices have dipped a little bit there from what they were. But then I want to zoom in on the price range, again, you can see Brunswick County, there are only 500 homes available in all of Brunswick County.
Then we take a look at a little bit more details, like Wilmington address, there are only 245 homes available month over month, we're down almost 8%. And our month over month price has increased the median up almost 9%. So in Wilmington with an address, you can see we're approaching the half-a-million dollar mark. I think we've crossed paradigms that we're just not going to go back on even when things do shift, which they will at some point. And here you can see the price ranges. Here are the 242 homes available. And again, if you want these, down below is a link, you can look at these in a more detailed approach here.
You can see Hampstead, which continues to be one of the hottest areas right now. They only have 46 homes available, this keeps dropping. But what I wanted to do is I want to get down here to here's Leland, for instance, I want to get to Carolina Beach. I've always told people, this is the tip of the spear. I keep saying it, this is eight weeks in a row. The inventory has been rising in Carolina Beach. Now, this can be one of two things. It could mean that the shift is closer than a lot of us think because this is the first area that came out of the doldrums and it's also the first area over the last two cycles that went into it and this has just always been kind of my watchpoint. But what, when you may also have is, just because the prices have been increasing dramatically and we may be getting into a situation where the prices that sellers are starting to just push up so high that they're hitting the Wrightsville Beach price, the lower price point in some cases, so they may be just kind of pushing a little bit too hard and that can slow things down, but we'll see, we're just now beginning to get into our spring market.
So I don't know what this means yet, but I do know that it's the area that inventory has been rising in. But now we'll tell you this, we just put a property on the market over the weekend there, hadn't been able to show it yet cause it's rented and we've already had several offers on it and it's going to go significantly above likely asking price. So it is just crazy what's going on when you get something that's a really unique property, which this one is.
Anyway, links are below for the newest listings in our area. We also have some listings we're bringing online in the next week or two, some properties. So stay in touch with our agents so we can make sure you know about those. Make sure you get out and get your pre-approval done with your lender and make sure that if you're doing a VA or FHA loan, have a conversation with your agent and your lender about getting approved conventionally because we're starting to see some properties hit the market that is not being offered with financing terms of VA or FHA or USDA because of appraisal delays and appraisal issues that we're running into and they just simply don't offer a lot of flexibility. So some sellers are not considering some of those types of loan products because of the time lag and the delays.
Anyhow, give me a call, shoot me an email if you've got questions. I knew it just threw a lot of blame throw at you, but it's going to be a really fast-paced market, pretty much all around the country and certainly in the coastal areas. If we can help you in any way let me know. If you're thinking about getting into real estate, we need more agents on our team, we'd love to help you with that. Whether you're a seasoned agent, we'd love to have you on our team or learn more about eXp. But even if you're just getting into real estate school, we have opportunities where you can actually get paid while you learn the business and you train. So we need some folks because we are overwhelmed with buyers right now and we want to serve them all well so we need some more folks to help us with that, and it's a great time to get into the business because you can learn it quickly, really rapidly. So anyhow, thanks a lot. Have a great week. If you have any questions, give me a call. Bye-bye.2021-04-05T14:21:00-07:002021-04-05T14:57:48-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:10325Make Your Best Offer Even Better2021-03-22T14:46:00-07:002021-03-26T05:44:01-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:10216Monday Coffee - Market Shifting In these areasWILMINGTON NC - Hi, this is Buddy Blake here with Waypost Realty, which we're actually now brokered by eXp Realty, which is really awesome because we get to use their systems and everything else for our Waypost Realty team. So anyway, I wanted to reach out to you, happy Monday to you. It's obviously not Monday morning. It's been a crazy day, but I wanted to let you know some stuff that's going on in the Wilmington area. I don't know if we're seeing a trend, but I'm going to show you my screen and kind of go over with you in just a few minutes what I went over with my agents this morning on our team. We're seeing something, I don't know if this is a sign that we've crossed over kind of the tip-top and things are changing, but there's been one reference point that for over 20 years that I've watched.<br /><br />And I'm going to show you in just a second, but first I want to give you a little tip. If you're buying a house, I don't care if it's resale, used, new, whatever it is, doesn't matter where in the country now, if you're buying something and you're a buyer, I highly recommend you have your agent, preferably one of our agents, if it's in our area. And our area is much broader now, by the way, with the eXp, we're able to cover a much larger landscape here. I mean, pretty much all up and down the east coast of North Carolina now, most of it. But anyway, here's the deal. If you're buying something and you're on the buyer side and you've got a buyer mentality, you want to make sure that you are asking for the appliance, the washer, dryer, and refrigerator. In North Carolina, the washer, dryer, and refrigerator are not fixtures of the house.
Yes, the dishwasher is. Yes, the microwave is if it's built-in. Garbage disposal, things like that, if they're built-in. But here's the deal, the reason why is, everybody just assumes, because we've always been able to that you can just lollygag right on down to your Lowe's or go online to Lowe's or Home Depot. Or in our area, Atlantic Appliance or Island Appliance, and just buy appliances and have them delivered in the next 30 days or however long you're closing is. Well, that's not always the case now. Due to the supply chains that are going on, still from the COVID and then the housing boom, a lot of folks aren't getting them. So you very well could move in without a refrigerator or a washer and dryer, if you haven't figured that out. So I highly recommend, and we're suggesting this with our buyers now, moving forward, make sure you ask for them.
Typically, you're not going to be able to not buy a house because the seller won't sell you the washer and dryer and refrigerator. That's not usually a stopping point. Yes, it's negotiable. People work through it, but it's not usually what happens. Just factor that in. Now, if you're on the seller side and you're moving somewhere else, which most sellers are moving somewhere else, the same applies for you. You need to not sell your washer, dryer, and refrigerator. The worst case is, let's say you're able to find something, or you're buying new construction, or you buy something with it. You can always sell them online on Facebook Marketplace. We don't recommend Craigslist any longer, but Facebook marketplace or whatever, or give them to Habitat for Humanity or do something. Or you could always give them to the buyer or negotiate after the fact on it. But just remember that if you're buying, try to get the washer and dryer and refrigerator. If you're selling, try not to sell the washer, dryer, and refrigerator.
So just depends on which hat you're wearing. Anyway. I wanted to give you that tip because that is an issue that's going on. We're running into it every day now. All right, guys, this is the same exact update and agenda actually that I do on Monday mornings with our folks here and our team. And I'm just going to kind of go through it with you. Right here is our market update segment. I won't go through the rest of it. Oh, I will bounce back and show you our mortgage update. If you're thinking about borrowing money or getting a refinance, Paul works right in our office. He is with Waypost Mortgage. He is phenomenal and he's partnering with us. He's fantastic. But anyway, market update, okay, this is Wilmington. This is as of late last night, 262 homes available that is flat line for the last two to three weeks now.
It was dropping. We're still month over a month down 26%, but just keep in mind for the first time in a long time, our inventory is flatlining. So we've kind of hit the bottom. And so, Hampstead is still falling. It is still falling. There are only 61 homes available there. And a good bit of that is going to be... You're going to be finding new construction. It has been on fire. A lot of folks moving into Pender County for a lot of different reasons. Be glad to chat with you about that. Here's the one I want to show you, Carolina Beach. And I circled it here. There are 148 properties. Now keep in mind, if you look at the month-over change, that is the only area around us right now that is going up and inventory. So this number has been going up for a number of weeks now, whereas everywhere else has been going down.
And I'm just going to say Carolina Beach, after years ago, after '96 was the first to fall. 2000 was the first to fall. And then the first to rise. 2006 was the first to fall. And then the first to rise. 2010 and on. And then this time it was the first to go crazy. And now it's been the first to slow. Now I don't know if it's going to continue, but we're going to watch this because this is something we need to keep an eye on because all good things come to an end. This has been a crazy run. Interest rates have been crazy low, they're inching up. Stock markets... today record numbers, they're giving away free money and it's going to make the stock market go up. Bond market is going to be shifted around, which means interest rates are going to be going up even more.
So hopefully it'll calm down some, and hopefully, this is a fluke, but this very well could be the indicator that I've been looking out for. So, anyway, just keep in mind if you're selling your house, you don't want to mess around too much longer. You want to get it out there. And if you're buying a house, you need to be thinking long-term. You want to think about those interest rates because one percentage point in interest rate shift can affect your borrowing capacity between 10 and 12%. So that's a lot of money. So all of a sudden you're not going to be able to afford a home in our area or-
Thank you so much for watching this report. And again, I'm going to keep watching the reports in Carolina Beach, because that has been our tip of the spear over the years. And I'll keep giving you the updates on everything else, but we're definitely seeing a leveling off in the major areas now, and we're seeing some increases in inventory in Carolina Beach. It might be a fluke, might be just pre-spring, but it's been going on for a few weeks now. So we're going to stay in touch on that and watch that because that, again, that's been my indicator over the years, first to rise, first to fall, it's just kind of our barometer here. Anyway. Thank you so much. Have a great week. If we can help you in any way, please let us know.
And if you are a real estate agent or you're thinking about becoming a real estate agent, whether you're in our area or any area, please take a look at the link below at the career page that we have. There's some really good information on it, about our team, about selling real estate, and certainly about eXp Realty. I think that every agent out there should take a look at it and we'll be glad to help you walk through that, and we'll just be glad to tell you why we did it. So anyway, thanks a lot. Have a great week, bye bye.2021-03-08T17:34:00-07:002021-03-26T05:45:20-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:10162Monday Morning Coffee March 1 2021Hi. Happy Monday morning to you and your family, wherever you may be on this beautiful March the first here in Wilmington, North Carolina. My name is Buddy Blake, and we're here with Waypost Realty, which we're now brokered by EXP Realty. If you have any needs for real estate or anything like that, no matter where you are in the United States, we are now able to help you, not just in our area, but we can also help you with an agent in your area as well. Anyway, the market here in Wilmington continues to be busy. We have seen our first week of leveling out with inventory. And there are some charts below that I'll be going over and you can take a look at. But you'll see in Wilmington, our inventory levels have stabilized. Last week was the first week we've seen where we didn't lose inventory, wherein other words, we sold more houses than came on the market, which is good.<br /><br />Maybe we've kind of bottomed out on that end. We still have a tremendous amount of buyer demand. Interest rates have gone up. They're over 3% again now in most cases, and so that is slowing some things down. And plus it's been really nice weather, so a lot of people have been out doing things other than sitting in their house and looking at homes. So they're getting out energy, seeing surfers out, seeing people running, walking their dogs, everything else. So springtime is almost here. Seeing a lot of leaves, seeing a lot of stuff like that around Wilmington. We expect a very busy spring and summer year. Home sellers are starting to put their homes on the market. We got more calls last week than we've had all year so far for people wanting to sell their homes. And they are going to be putting their house on the market because now they're getting more comfortable with COVID as far as letting people in their house.
And they also don't want to miss the market to sell their house, because once interest rates get up again 3 1/2, 4%, you're going to see the buyer activity slow down. It just will, because the buyer's buying power goes down significantly when you go up a whole point in interest. So, and there's going to be, just like in times of the past when you've had the high markets, everybody all of a sudden floods in after the market kind of peaks, so it'll be the same way this time. People just trying to time it and think they can hit it perfectly. So, which is really hard to do, even for somebody like me that does this all the time, I still mess up. So anyway, if we can help you, let me know. Take a look at the charts below. If you have any questions on these or you'd like us to run something a bit more specific for your neighborhood or your area, all you got to do is shoot me back an email and let me know.
And if you are thinking about getting in real estate and you're in our area, or actually anywhere in North Carolina now, let us know and we are looking for people to join our team. We've got way more opportunity than we can handle, which is phenomenal. But we're growing, and we're expanding and we now have some really cool stuff that we can option through the EXP platform, which is the reason we joined them. Things like retirement planning with stock options. There are also health insurance options that we now have the opportunity for, which we didn't have before. Anyway, if you'd like to learn more about our team, how we work, or EXP, or anything like that, shoot me an email, or you can watch some of the little stuff down below. Thank you so much. Have a great week and look forward to seeing you next week, or talking with you on the phone. Thanks.
View / Download Market Reports
<a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Wilmington.pdf" target="_blank">Wilmington</a>
<a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Leland.pdf" target="_blank">Leland</a>
<a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_New_Hanover_County.pdf" target="_blank">New Hanover County</a>
<a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Pender_County.pdf" target="_blank">Pender County</a>
<a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Brunswick_County.pdf" target="_blank">Brunswick County</a>
<br /><br />2021-03-01T10:19:00-07:002021-03-01T15:41:15-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:10040Monday Morning Coffee - Only 290 Homes AvailableWILMINGTON, NC - In this week's video Buddy shares the latest housing stats for the area as well as all across the United States. Available home inventory continues to fall while pending sales increase. Buyers are looking at fewer homes and having to act more quickly if they find what they are looking for.
<br /><br />So first off, I'm going to switch over and show you my screen so that I can bounce through this a little bit. So we're going to talk about our market update first. So if you go right here, first thing is, I'm going to show you, this is last week. If you look at the top left up here right up here it says February the 8th. This is last week. I'm going to show you in Wilmington. This is Wilmington, something with a Wilmington mailing address which is a lot of our area. It doesn't necessarily mean just in the city of Wilmington. This is February 8th. I wanted to show you this for reference. 342 homes available, which was down 22% from a month ago. A number of homes available in Wilmington. Usually, we have well over 1,200, 1,300 homes available.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/wilm.png" width="800" height="523" alt="wilmingtonstats" title="wilmingtonstats" />
This week. Okay? One week later, we're down to 297 homes available. That is down 28%. That's almost 30% in one month that we've lost inventory. So watch this too, because the prices, if you look at the month over month, in one month, an average median house in Wilmington is going up 12%, the value of it. So people are sitting on more equity than ever before, and it's just phenomenal. Now, this is January. This is something that our MLS released this morning, literally. And it shows you, if you look at the first graph, the number of listings is down almost 12%.
The number of pending sales, homes that have gone under contract is up 50%. So if you look at this right here, you can see that... We're going to continue to lose inventory. And I was going to show you this. It's not just Wilmington, it's all over the country what's going on. Or at least certainly the coastal, Southern, and Western areas, a lot of the buyers are coming out of the Northeast. It's just happening. A tremendous amount of them. They're just migrating to other places. They want to get out of the big cities in a lot of cases. But if you look at this over the last year, you can see existing home inventory, we're down to less than two months supply countrywide. And a normal market, you're looking at four to six months. So this is just unbelievable.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Jan-2021_Housing_Report_Graphic.jpg" width="646" height="563" alt="Housingstats" title="statschart" />
Buyers purchasing power, right now, right now the interest rates check with your mortgage person or better yet check with our mortgage person Paul that's in our office. Say it's two and three quarters. If you can afford a $1,200 a month payment right now, principal and interest, that would get you a $300,000 house. Now, if interest rates go up one point, it would only get you a $270,000 house. So you would lose 10% of your purchasing power if the interest rates go up. And they are going to go up. I don't think there's any question about that. How much? I don't know. When? I don't know. But this ride is not going to last forever.
So next thing I'm going to let you know about, you're going to see some names added to our Waypost Realty, which we created, but we're extremely excited to wrapping... And we're opening a broker branch office here in Wilmington, North Carolina, right at our main office. We're going to be right where we are. You're going to see our same signs, just going to be a little bit of difference on them. And what this is going to do, not only is it going to allow us to offer more expanded marketing opportunities for our clients, but it's really going to help our agents. Our agents are going to have access to health insurance, which if you don't know anything about the real estate business, we're all independent contractors.
So there really is no group insurance plan. So the beautiful thing is EXP has a health insurance opportunity that our agents are able to have. So I'm really excited to be able to offer that to our agents because that's something that's near and dear to me. And as well as my agents, because a lot of agents in the country are not insured because they either make a little bit more over the threshold than what the network allows them to do and do affordably or just it's unaffordable, especially in North Carolina, when you've got like one choice. And you just now, in our company, will now have retirement options and stock options. They can actually get stock, EXP, which is really good. It's going to allow us to expand our reach because they're a cloud-based technology. So we'll certainly have our physical office, but we'll be able to reach out further and serve a larger area and bring in other realtor partners with us on our team. So we can serve clients even better.
They're going to have access to live and on-demand training that's in the cloud. And live, which is fantastic with some of the top agents in the country. And of course, they'll have the design center and the marketing center and there'll be a whole lot more coming on that. And we'll tell you about that. Right now, we're just in the transition. So we're working through it, but you're going to see some stuff coming around and we're just super excited about it, to be able to allow our agents to kind of lean into the fastest growing real estate company in the history of the United States. I mean, it's gone from 10,000 agents to over 40,000 agents in a year, which is incredible. So we're just excited to be a part of and kind of on the front edge of that. So super exciting.
Guys have a great week. If I can help in any way, please let me know. It's busy. And my best advice is if you're buying a house and you found something you want, you need to buy it because we're seeing multiple offers everywhere. And if you're thinking about selling your house, I'm not really sure what you're waiting on, other than maybe you just don't feel comfortable, COVID and stuff like that, which I get. I understand, had a personal history with that now. But we would love to have a conversation with you because if you are thinking about selling in the next year, you do not want to just kick that can down the road. This is the year you need to do it. There is absolutely zero question in my mind anyway about that. Thanks, guys. Have a great week ahead. I can't wait to talk to you next week. Bye-bye.2021-02-15T12:06:00-07:002021-02-15T16:01:52-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:9952Monday Coffee for February 8 2021WILMINGTON NC - Buddy Blake of Waypost Realty in Wilmington shares his weekly Monday Morning Coffee. This week he is discussing how there are only 340 homes available in Wilmington. Also, he discusses real estate career opportunities in Wilmington and other areas.<br /><br />Hi, this is Buddy Blake with Waypost Realty here in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I want to wish you and your family a wonderful Monday morning. I want to give you a quick update. Real estate continues to just be nuts all around the country, and certainly here. Mortgage interest rates are just at an all-time low and refinance is up. And also, here's an interesting stat, almost 60% of the people in the United States have more than 50% equity in their house now. So that means that over half the people in the United States have over half of their house paid off based on the current values, which is phenomenal, and this is something that's unlike the last crash in '06 and '07, where a lot of folks were extremely highly leveraged. So, this is just a really good situation. People are taking advantage of the refinances.
And if you haven't done that, obviously we'd like you to sell your house because we need it just to sell to our buyers, but if you haven't refinanced and your interest rate is over, probably, 3.5% or 4%, you really need to talk to a lender, and if you don't have a lender in North Carolina, we've got a phenomenal in-house lender, Paul Bowers, with our mortgage company, and he sits right in our office and he is extremely helpful and he is responsive and quick and you can get them on the phone. You don't have to get a number or waiting line or something like that. He's phenomenal.
Otherwise, inventory is low and Wilmington. I just looked at it this morning. Month-over-month, we've lost 22% net loss of inventory. So, last month we're over 400 homes for sale. Now we're getting close to under 300. There are about 340 homes in all price ranges, and most of the ones that haven't sold are just overpriced or there's something else not great that's going on. To give you an example, we had another home that we just listed on Friday this week, put it on the market, did an open house Saturday, and it went under contract. The buyer walked in the door, bought it site right there that morning. Literally, the agent, fortunately, had offered to purchase in the paperwork, blank ones, and they wrote it up the old school by hand, which is the way I started with this business. So, I love it.
But it's busy. It's a great time to buy, it's an incredible time to sell, it's a great time to refinance, and it's a great time to be a real estate agent. And, if you're thinking about getting your real estate business and you're in our area, we'd love to have a conversation with you if you're in real estate school, or if you're an agent out there and you're just kind of looking at what might else be out there. We've got some really cool things that we're doing right now, and we've got some really neat things that I'm going to be announcing soon. I can't do it right now, just because the time's not right, but I'm going to be sharing some information about some things that we're going to be doing in Wilmington, and actually spreading out a bit. So, we're pretty excited about that. Very excited. Thank you for being a customer and thank you for being a friend, and having a great week. If we can help with anything or just be a resource or a phone call, just let me know. Take care.2021-02-08T15:52:00-07:002021-02-08T15:57:40-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:9744Monday Morning Coffee - 2021 Housing Forecasts
2021 Housing Forecasts
Hi, it's Buddy Blake here from Wilmington, North Carolina, and it's Monday, so it's Monday morning coffee. I want to let you know that the 2021 housing forecasts are out and all the big prognosticators, all the big syndicated banks and syndicated media that follows housing, they're predicting nationwide somewhere between a five and a 7% increase in the number of homes sold this year in 2021, which is quite remarkable when you consider 2020 was a monster growth over 2019 in the midst of a pandemic. It's going to be quite the ride this year. We're already seeing it. We've got so many buyers looking for property in our area. Of course, Wilmington is the number one place in the United States for inbound people to move because we have such an awesome area, awesome beaches, awesome downtown, and better yet, awesome people.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc-011221-price-forecasts.png" alt="2021 Price Forecast" width="1000" height="750" />
With those forecasts, there's a couple things to watch for. Watch the interest rates because they are extremely low. Some of the rates I just heard quoted for a VA loan was just unbelievable that our in-house lender, Paul, was able to secure for somebody. What that means is if you were to buy a house right now for $300,000 at the current interest rate which is extremely low, in five years using the forecast that the housing prognosticators have out there with the growth year over year for the next five years and the interest rate that you've got assuming the appreciation that they're indicating, which they're thinking this year is going to be somewhere around five to 6% in house price appreciation, that $300,000 house that you bought right now in 2021, in 2026 if you pay just your minimum monthly payment, you'd have an estimated $50,000 increase in equity. The challenge is you've got to find that $300,000 house right now.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc-011221-potential-growth.png" alt="Potential Growth Forecast" width="1000" height="750" />
Scared To Sell?
A lot of sellers, and if you're a seller and you're out there worried, you're scared you're going to put your house on the market because it might sell too fast and you don't know where you're going, we hear you. We're getting that information back from sellers. And just so you know, we've got a really neat program. There's a button down below, says, "scared to sell?" Click that and there's another video that goes over. We've got a really nice system that we can list your house, get it under contract, get it closed, you get your money, and you not have to move until you're able to find that next house, whether you're moving to a rental or you're finding something to buy, whether it's here or somewhere else.
This Week's Riddle
I wanted to give a big shout out real quick to last week's winner of our weekly riddle contest for the... Last week, it was a $25 Amazon gift card, and it's Tiana Sellers here in Wilmington. She's actually one of our clients, one of our Homes for Heroes clients, and she's working with Julia on a purchase of a house. I want to congratulate Tiana. And this week down below, don't forget to take this week's riddle. This is a bit harder. There's math involved and this week we're going to give away a $25 gift card to one of my favorite local places, to Ogden Tap Room. Looking forward to hearing everybody's answers on it. We get some doozies, I must tell you. Anyway, thank you so much. If we can help you in any way with your real estate needs or just information or relocation to Wilmington, whether you're working with us or not, we'd be glad to be a resource. We'd be happy to help any way we can. Thanks.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc-011221-riddle.png" alt="Riddle Of The Week" width="600" height="340" style="width: 100%; height: auto;" />
WIN ODGEN TAP GIFT CARD
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Congratulations to last week's winner<br />Tiana Sellers<br />of Wilmington, NC2021-01-11T06:00:00-07:002021-01-12T13:39:54-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:9655Monday Morning Coffee - Goodbye 2020
Welcome Paul Bower
Hey, this is Buddy Blake with Waypost Realty here in Wilmington. And this is Paul Bowers with Waypost Mortgage. Right here in Wilmington also. Wish you guys an upcoming Happy New Year. We hope your Christmas was fantastic. We're very excited about moving into a new year. I don't know about you, but we certainly are. And we're just really looking forward to helping folks. It's been fun. It's been energetic, helping find homes for folks and do loans for folks. And the refinances have been incredible.
So, I wanted to let you know, Paul has joined us here and we've got Waypost Realty, and now we've got Waypost Mortgage right inside our office. Paul works here a hundred percent of the time, and Paul is from Wilmington, just like I am. So we both are old school Wilmingtonians. Know a lot of the same people. Grew up here. We just want to let you know that if you're thinking about buying a home or refinancing, unlike a lot of places, Paul, we're getting started off fresh here and you've got bandwidth to do refinances now.
A lot of mortgage companies can't because they're too busy. Because they fall behind. And Paul offers competitive rates because he actually can shop it around with a whole lot of different investors. But we're real excited because we can give you a one-stop shop and Paul does the pre-approvals, whether it's for a refinance or to purchase a house, he does those for free.Doesn't cost you anything, and you can do it right online from the safety of your own home. It's super easy. And you can do it all right here. Even if you don't use Paul, you can use him as a resource to at least keep everybody else honest in their rates and things like that.
But anyway, we're real excited and Paul is going to be here. So if you're out in our way up into Porter's Neck area, stop by and say hello to Paul and myself. Our office is open. The only day we're closing this week is Friday for New Year's Day. But we're back at it. We're real excited. Also, don't forget to take a look down below at this week's trivia. So it's either true or false. So, it's a lot of fun. Take a look at it. And we look forward to seeing you guys in 2021.
This Week's Puzzle
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WIN $25 AMAZON GIFT CARD
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Congratulations to last week's winner<br />Kimberly Olson<br />of Leland, NC
FREE Mortgage or Refi Approvals
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Recent Reviews From Clients
Buddy and his staff continue to go above and beyond. Throughout the process we could always rely on their kindness, professionalism and attention to detail. This was our second time working with Buddy and his team-needless to say we highly recommend Buddy and the Waypost team!
Caitlin J
Very professional and friendly service; utilizes current ways of marketing and showing properties; extensive knowledge of the market. Used services as both a buyer and seller and we were equally satisfied with the results.
Pam B
Buddy recently sold my ICWW home on Bald Eagle Lane and I could not be more pleased with the expertise of he and his staff! I highly recommend waypost realty for any of your real estate needs!!
Renee B
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/about/testimonials/" class="btn-accent" target="_blank" style="padding: 0px 10px;">Read More Client Reviews</a>2020-12-28T06:00:00-07:002020-12-29T07:32:28-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:9578Monday Morning Coffee - More Christmas Fun
More Christmas Fun
Hi, this is Buddy Blake with Waypost Realty here in Wilmington, North Carolina. And happy Monday to you. And this is this week's Monday Morning Coffee. Real quick I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who participated in last week's puzzle game. It was a lot of fun doing that. The correct answer was snowflake. We put all the winners, and there were hundreds of participants and hundreds of correct answers actually, and we put them all together. We drew one name out of it electronically. Our system would just pick up somebody. Last week's winner was Candace Howlin from right here in Wilmington. So, she won the $50 Amazon gift card. Here is the next contest. So, hit the Play Now button. So, anyway, it's a lot of fun. Hope you can get it. And I look forward to announcing next week's winner.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc_121420_riddle.jpg" width="600" height="340" style="width: 100%; height: auto;" />
WIN $50 AMAZON GIFT CARD
An apple costs 40 cents, a banana costs 60 cents and ​a grapefruit costs 80 cents.
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Congratulations to <a href="https://waypostpuzzle.com/puzzle/1/" target="_blank">last week's</a> winner<br />Candice Howren<br />of Wilmington, NC
Sacred Shells
Otherwise enjoy the season and enjoy the people around you. And also, I want to give a plug, a shameless plug for my wife. My wife does these shells, and you may have seen them on our social media, but she has got a bunch of these that she's prepared. And this is what her little shell bag looks like. And it's got a number of little shells in it, a few shells, and they're all inscribed with really nice, meaningful messages, glazed over, painted. They're beautiful. She does nice ornaments. But down below, you can also see where you can click to get a little bit more information on that.
She just loves doing these. And I think you'll like them. They're really easy to put in stockings and things like that. And you still have some time. So, that's my shameless plug for my wonderful wife, because anybody that puts up with me, they got a lot going for them because I'm not easy to put up to put up with. So, anyway guys, thank you so much. Have a great week. I look forward to seeing you next week. If we can help you in Wilmington in any way, in any resource we can be, just let me know. Thanks.
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MOST SEARCHED HOMES
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Your Home SOLD In 60 Days GUARANTEED or We'll Just​ Buy It Now​*
*for more information about our guaranteed sale program click <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/sellers/guaranteed-sold/" target="_blank">here</a> and to learn more about our buy it now program visit <a href="https://expresshomesale.com/" target="_blank">expresshomesale.com</a>
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<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc_121420_supply.jpg" width="600" height="470" />2020-12-14T06:00:00-07:002020-12-14T12:17:22-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:9541Monday Morning Coffee - Christmas Fun<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc_120720_gametime.jpg" width="600" height="400" />
WIN $50 AMAZON GIFT CARD
Using the letters that are missing from this incomplete alphabet, work out what Christmassy word you can make:<br />B - C - D - G - H - I - J - M - P - Q - R - T - U - V - X - Y - Z
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Congratulations to <a href="https://waypostpuzzle.com/puzzle/1/" target="_blank">last week's</a> winner<br />THOMAS CURLEY<br />of Wilmington, NC
MOST SEARCHED HOMES
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2 Ways To Sell A Property
Whether you are in a time-crunch and need to sell your home FAST with NO HASSLES or if you are only focussed on getting TOP DOLLAR for your home... WE CAN HELP!
<a href="https://expresshomesale.com/" class="btn-accent" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px 30px; padding: 0px 10px;">EXPRESS OFFER</a> <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/sellers/" class="btn-accent" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px 30px; padding: 0px 10px;">TOP-DOLLAR SALE</a>2020-12-07T06:47:00-07:002020-12-07T08:20:23-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:9510Monday Morning Coffee - Welcome December - Puzzle Contest
Welcome To December
Hi, this is Buddy Blake with Waypost Realty here in Wilmington. I just wanted to reach out and say hello to you. I hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. It was beautiful here in Wilmington, just the weather cooled off just in time to do some decorating, and get ready for decorating, I should say. Anyway, the market continues to be busy. Actually, we just locked-in a buyer. We got a pre-approval letter for two and a quarter percent. That's 2.25% for a 100% USDA loan. That means no money into it and you're borrowing money for 30 years at two and a quarter percent. That is just phenomenal. I mean, if you'd have told me that a year ago, I'd have told you, you were crazy that that was even possible.
<a href="http://waypostpuzzle.com" title="puzzle1" target="_blank"><img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/12-Days-Gifts-Front.png" width="427" height="310" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></a>
Puzzle Contest
But I want to tell you something really exciting we're doing. Down below, you're going to see our new puzzle contest, the Waypost puzzle contest. So keeping with the theme of Christmas, what we thought we would do is down below is a quick Christmas trivia, and it's really simple. On the Twelve Days of Christmas song, how many total gifts are given away? So you have to listen to the song. You have to figure it out. Do a little math, maybe a little word problem. And what we're going to do is we're going to take all the people who get it right and we're going to take a drawing of that and we're going to give away a $100 gift card to wherever you want it to go to. It can be a Visa card, American Express. But we're also going to do something really cool for everybody who participates and gets it right.
I dare you to take our trivia contest. All you got to do is enter in, when you get to the site, puzzle number one. The very first one we've ever done, and we'll be doing many more of these coming forward, and let's just have a little fun with this email with this Monday morning coffee. So this will be our first try at this, so try to break our system, try to break our servers. So anyway, thanks a lot. Do the puzzle trivia. Stay safe where you are. If you're sick or anything like that, we wish you much health. We pray for everybody to be healthy and to heal. But otherwise, looking forward to hearing from you about possibly buying or selling.
<a href="http://waypostpuzzle.com" title="puzzle2" target="_blank"><img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/2.png" width="502" height="365" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></a>
Thinking Of Buying Or Selling?
And if you are thinking about selling, keep in mind right now, you can still get really decent photos, good photos with green grass, green outside. If nothing else, just take an exterior picture if you're thinking about putting your house on the market after the first of the year, after the holidays, because then you'll have really good pictures before everything browns out.
So anyway, we'll be glad to go ahead and do that. We're doing that for a number of people right now, just getting ready to put their house on the market as soon as Christmas is over, but that way we have some good photos. But of course, still, homes are still selling even during the holidays. Keep in mind that people that are looking during Christmas time are very serious. Will you get as many showings? Probably not. Well, of course, in this market, I don't know. Houses are lasting hours on the market, not days. In many cases, just hours.
One thing's for certain, somebody looking during the holidays is definitely very interesting. And we're seeing more people buy a home sight unseen and actually close them without ever physically seeing them. They'll have an agent go wherever do a video tour and they'll buy the house. They'll close on it from afar and never even see her. Crazy. Never seen anything like this in my life, but we'll take it. We're all learning new things. We're all learning how to adapt and to bob and weave if you will. Have a great first week of December. I look forward to reaching out to you in the next week or two. And if you have any questions or we can be a resource in any way, please let us know. Thank you so much.
MOST SEARCHED HOMES
​<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/new-hanover-county-entry-priced-homes/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Entry-priced homes in New Hanover County </a>
​<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/new-hanover-county-mid-priced-homes/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mid-priced homes in New Hanover County</a>
​<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/new-hanover-county-upper-priced-homes/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Upper-priced homes in New Hanover County</a>
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/new-hanover-county-icww-homes-land-by-price-over-2500000/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Intracoastal Waterfront Homes & Land in New Hanover County</a>
2020-11-30T06:00:00-07:002020-12-01T14:23:50-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:9301Monday Morning Coffee - Elections - Home Facts - Free Apple PieElection Day
Hey, happy Monday to you and your family, wherever you may be. This is Buddy Blake with Waypost Realty here in Wilmington, North Carolina, and it is election week. So, I don't know about you and your world, but we are really happy here that this week is here and this week is moving through. Somebody said today at our sales meeting, maybe we can perhaps deal with one less crisis going forward. So, or at least hotspot. Anyway, listen, we will get through this no matter who we wins, whatever seats, all these kinds of things, we will get through this. And then we'll do it again in another two years or four years.
Anyway, things are busy here. Our problem still continues to be, we don't have homes to sell. I'm going to show you some graphs in just a minute. It's pretty remarkable to be honest with you, but you know, we do see some storm clouds down the line and I'll talk about that a little bit more. There's going to be some issues, we've being kicking the can on for a long time as a country and, foreclosures, forbearances, evictions, things like these. They're going to have to allow those things to process through. We certainly don't want anybody to be out of a place to live, but also you've got landlords who own property who can't get rent, who can't make their payment for several months. And we don't want all these foreclosures to keep going and accruing interest and penalties, and sellers just kind of kicking that can, instead of taking it now while the market is very good and interest rates are very low, so they can actually get out with equity that is there now, if they'll just take it. But down the road, it may not be as much equity.
Preferred Lenders
So, anyway, so I'm going to jump right in. Today is Monday, November 2nd. Can you believe it's 53 days to Christmas? I am so happy about that. We had a great Halloween here, but I'm ready to move through election season and let's get on to Thanksgiving and be thankful and to celebrate Christmas. So I'm going to jump over our preferred lenders, just to give you guys a heads up. Certainly you can use any lender you want, but we recommend local lenders. We've got Waypost Mortgage, we've got Atlantic Bay, which is very good. We've been with them for a long time. We also have guaranteedRate. We've got some favorite folks over there, but one thing in common that all of these have is they are local. We deal with local appraisers. We deal with local loan officers. So you're able to get to people because we are struggling with out of area lenders, internet lenders, and even some credit unions now because they just won't communicate with us the way that they used to. So that doesn't mean all of them, but some of them.
Market - Last 7 Days
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc_110220_piechart1.png" width="800" height="455" />
Anyway, I want to kick on through this a little bit. This is interesting. This is homes that were listed in the last seven days here in Wilmington, under $500,000 because we keep seeing things go off the market. Now keep in mind it doesn't really take into account today's Monday morning, the houses that went under contract over the weekend. So there's another slot that those over the weekend. Almost half of the ones that were listed, 104 were listed, only 104, already under contracts, 43. And I think there's probably another 30 that probably went under contract over the weekend. So you're looking at almost, probably 60 to 65, maybe 70% of homes that are going under contract within the first week. So they're just flying off the shelf.
And the thing is, you just got to keep your mind if you're a seller and you've been out there for a little while, you're not getting showings or you're not getting offers, then you're overpriced. This market is extremely clairvoyant on price right now, because if your house isn't selling, it's price. Even if it's a tough location or condition is an issue, price fixes that. So my best advice to anyone is if your house isn't selling, you need to address the price. I know you don't want to, but if you don't address it now in small increments, you're going to probably have to address it later in a big increment. And you're going to have all the interest you've been paying every month while it's been sitting on the market.
Showings - Last 7 Days
Last seven days, what's showing? I pulled a showings report for all the area.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc_110220_piechart1.png" width="800" height="455" />
And you'll look up here, Carolina Beach, Wilmington, Hampstead, Leland. It's pretty much our major area. And you can see where the showing is. This is where no matter what company has it listed, this is where showings are going on in the last seven days. So you can see, I see pretty much under 600 is where the swath is right now, tremendous amount of showings.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc_110220_whatsshowing.png" width="800" height="500" />
And then when you go a little bit farther, I kind of red lined this. I mean, even up in these price ranges, up around a million, houses are getting an average of at least two showings per week. So if you're not getting two showings a week, no matter where your price range is, you might want to look at your price. So that's an issue.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc_110220_details.png" width="800" height="436" />
Next thing is I did a blog post, and if you want to look at that, you can go to my website, buddyblake.com, under blog. And there's a pretty detailed report there, I think is helpful for folks looking long range. I like to look six months to eighteen months out, what's going to happen? This is our billboard you're going to see up around Wilmington, popping up tomorrow. They switch over on election day because the billboard rates go back to normal on election day, as does radio and everything because the political ads will be gone. So they kind of consume everything and the prices go up for those.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/billboard.jpg" width="781" height="417" />
Market Shift
So fortunately, those will go away tomorrow, political ads, and ours will go up. Reminding people, sellers, local folks, that you want to do something before things shift. I don't know when the shift is, we could be already in it, but there is going to be a shift. We were destined for one long before this year happened and it's going to come. And everybody always talks about shift, it's never going to shift, but you don't know that things have moved until six months to a year after they've moved. So just plan on that and it's okay if you want to roll the dice, but you know, wait till the spring or wait till next year, that's your decision. But if the market shifts, it's going to shift fast this time, because there's going to be a whole lot of factors coming into it from COVID, from everything else that's going on.
Office Closed Tomorrow
Reminder our office tomorrow, our physical office will be closed. All of our staff will be working remotely tomorrow. We want to give everybody the opportunity to go out and vote without having to worry about coming to the office and things like that. So you're welcome to give us a call, emails and things like that. We'll still be working remotely though. Other than that, that's everything I've got for this week. I hope you and your family have a great week. Be safe out there and we'll get through this and I look forward very much to coming to you next Monday with a Monday morning coffee and be past the election, hopefully. So thanks.<br /><br />Additional Info
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/join-us-for-pie-day/" title="Join us for Pie Day 2020" target="_blank"><img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/Blog_Images/mmc_110220_pie.jpg" width="820" height="312" /></a>
2020-11-02T09:43:00-07:002020-11-02T12:15:09-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:9217Monday Morning Coffee Oct 19 2020
Market Absorption Report
Happy Monday. I just wanted to reach out to you and talk about a recent market report that I was looking at it this morning. This is an absorption report, which we create every Monday morning for price ranges, zip codes, and areas around us. Looking at the Wilmington absorption report and all of the Wilmington area, there are 523 homes available. Now that's across all price ranges. And in some price ranges, there are single digit homes available. I'll give you an example. If you're looking for a house between $900,000 and a million, you have nine choices. That is just unheard of. In all my 24+ years I guess it is I've never seen anything like this and it's causing a problem.
We've got a lot of people wanting to buy houses and we've got a lot of activity going on. I mean, homes are getting multiple offers. Literally a home goes on the market, especially in some of the sub $500k price ranges and you have six, eight showings the first day and throw offers at it. Some buyers go over asking price. Some buyers still believe it or not are coming in way low. But we've got a lot of people on pause. We also have a lot of people would just refinanced their house and they're like, "Okay." Especially the local people, "I'm going to stay where I am and I'm locked in at two and a half, two and three quarter. I'm not going anywhere."
We have very few houses. We almost have as many houses that are currently under contract as are available and that is unheard of. Some of the price ranges under $600,000 we've got less than two months supply. That means if no more houses were listed in the next two months, we'd have zero houses available. That's just unheard of. It's not really a wonderful time to be a real estate agent although people think it is. Yeah, if you've got a listing it's going to sell now, unless it's overpriced.
I'm going to go over this in another video a little more, kind of walkthrough it, but I wanted to just reach out to you and wish you and your family the best in the coming weeks. There are a lot of folks that are really uptight and are really anxious and are really worried. You have got to find a healthy place to put that and it's not burning something down or tearing something up. So for me and our family, it's our faith. We believe that God is much bigger than all of this.
Be a Positive Light
We believe there will be a path forward, but no matter who wins, who loses, hopefully we can come together. I've got folks that are on the different side of the aisle than me that have been my friends for years and they're going to be my friends going forward. We're going to move forward. Because it's all about relationships. It starts with the family and it moves out to your neighbors, your people in school, your people in work. Please don't let the relationships around you get destroyed by the news media, by social media or by the results of an election. And I'm going to also say reach out to somebody and be a positive light and force in their world. Because some folks that are in situations, they don't have anybody positive right now and all they got is what's on TV and what's on social media. That's not really a good place to be right now no matter what you think.
Pie Day 2020
Our agents and our team and our company at Waypost Realty, we're going to be reaching out to folks because we've got a big event coming up in November. It's our Pie Day that we do for our past clients, current clients, and just some of the folks that we're doing business with now, and our close sphere of influence where we give away a delicious apple pie right before Thanksgiving. So you'll be hearing some stuff about it. But that's what we're going to be concentrating on is reaching out to our folks and trying to be a bright spot in the day. Just having a conversation, not trying to sell you something or list your house, but really just how are you doing. Because that goes a long way now. We're seeing folks that sometimes they tell us on the phone that, "Gosh, it's so nice to talk to somebody that's not in my family, that's not a Zoom call, and that is saying something positive or just not being negative."
And so guys, the real estate market is nuts across the country. It makes no sense with the pandemic going on, but it's going well. A lot of folks are moving out of the big cities. They want to go to the smaller, more rural areas. We've seen more demand in places like Burgaw and Curry and Warsaw and Wallace and things than I've ever seen in 20 some years. If we can help you in any way, let us know.
We Can Help
If you're one of those folks that have a forbearance deadline coming up, you've lost your job or you can't afford where you're living anymore and you're in our area and you just want to have a conversation about options. Man, that's what we do. We have more conversations with people that we don't get paid on than you can imagine. And especially in these times, we'll be glad to have a conversation with you to help you have options. Because what you don't want to do, if you're in one of those situations is put your head in the sand and hope it goes away. Because right now if you're in a situation like that, there are opportunities to get out that may not be there six months from now if the market shifts. And we do think there's going to be a significant shift in the market conditions countrywide at some point in the near future.
So anyway, that's a long Monday Morning Coffee, but I just wanted to reach out and just wish some encouragement into your life because it is going to be an interesting coming few weeks. If you want to talk about real estate or talk about any situation you're in, we're happy to chat. Give us a call. And also there's a couple more video links down below. If you want to get a little deeper into the absorption reports I'm talking about, and also about our Pie Day about what's going on with that. So anyway, thank you so much. Thank you for watching this video.<br /><br />Additional Info
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/how-to-read-market-absorption-reports/" title="How to read market absorption report" target="_blank">How To Read Market Absorption Reports</a>
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/join-us-for-pie-day/" title="Join us for Pie Day 2020" target="_blank">Join Us For Pie Day 2020</a>
2020-10-19T05:00:00-07:002020-10-20T07:04:44-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:8949Monday Morning Coffee Sept 8 2020In this week's Monday Morning Coffee Buddy Blake of Waypost Realty, located in Wilmington NC, shares insight on discussions he and his agents have been having with current homeowners who want to sell their current home and then buy another home.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/price.png" width="600" height="360" alt="sales price" />
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/supply.png" width="600" height="356" alt="supply" />2020-09-08T17:08:00-07:002020-09-08T17:28:00-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:8210Monday Morning Coffee - Most Showings YTDWilmington, NC - The real estate market here in the Wilmington market continues to grow each and every week. As you can see from the chart below, just over the last week we had over 1,600 showings which the the most showings we've seen in a one-week period in 2020. With the showings, we are seeing more and more contracts with an increased number of multiple offer situations. With the increased activity we are seeing signs of frustrated buyers and buyer agents as our new listing and/or new home inventories are not keeping up with demand. This trend will likey continue and even get worse since so many sellers have recently refinanced at a historically low interest rate and plan to stay where they are for a prolonged period of time. Of course, some homes that may be over-priced continue to sit on the market as some sellers have become unrealistic in their expectations.
<br /><br />Weekly Showing & Contract Activity
<br /><br />LINKS TO AVAILABLE HOMES FOR SALE - Wilmington NC
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/homes-for-sale-wilmington-nc/for-sale-homes-in-wilmington-from-100000-to-200000/" target="_blank">Homes and real estate priced from $100,000 to $200,000</a>
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/homes-for-sale-wilmington-nc/active-homes-in-wilmington-200k-300k/" target="_blank">Homes and real estate priced from $200,000 to $300,000</a>
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/homes-for-sale-wilmington-nc/for-sale-homes-in-wilmington-from-300000-to-400000/" target="_blank">Homes and real estate priced from $300,000 to $400,000</a>
2020-05-17T18:26:00-07:002020-05-18T12:16:28-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:8164Monday Morning Coffee - We Are Back!I trust everyone had a great Mothers Day weekend. It was beautiful here in the Wilmington NC area. Our family was able to spend some quality time on the beach enjoying the weather, sun and seeing all the beautiful families spending a special day with their mothers. <a href="https://www.brittsdonutshop.com/" target="_blank">Britts Donuts</a> is open and just a tasty as ever. Best day for our family in two months.
The real estate and housing market in the Wilmington area continues to improve as we are now approaching normal showing activity, with over 1,500 showings last week - which is nealry three times the amount we saw at the bottom of the shutdown. Our office is open and our agents are busy working with buyers and sellers.
<br /><br />Weekly Showing & Contract Activity
2020-05-11T06:22:00-07:002020-05-11T08:28:32-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:8108Residents Fleeing Big Cities - Wilmington is Open for Home BuyersWilmington NC - We just completed the STRONGEST CONTRACT AND SHOWING WEEK we've seen since the Covid-19 shutdowns began. Activity is still down, but it's picking up dramatically every week. We have been working with dozens of homeowners over the last month or two to get their home's ready to go on the market and we recommended a start date of May 1st. So far we have SOLD 4 out of the 4 that took our recommendation, many with multiple offers and some for above asking price. Selling a home is not just about price, marketing, staging etc... THERE MUST BE AN ONGOING SELLING STRATEGY to make sure you are in front of the buyers you need to be in front of at just the right time.
Large City Residents On the Move
My wife's family is from Northern New Jersey and her uncle shared Saturday's newspaper frontpage headline saying that possibly up to 30% of NJ & NY large city residents will be moving to less populated areas in places like North and South Carolina. I've been talking about this for almost two weeks with our team and anyone listening. Our enormous website presence allows us to watch traffic trends for new visitors as well as returning visitors and we are seeing an incredible spike in visitors looking at homes, not just once but also saving, sharing and asking questions about them.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/NJpaper2.jpg" width="609" height="457" alt="newspaper" />
<br /><br />Weekly Showing & Contract Activity
<br /><br />ABSORPTION REPORTS
<img src="http://www.realmarketreports.com/charts/NC07001_Wilmington_01.gif" border="0" alt="Wilmington - Available vs Pending Listings" />
<img src="http://www.realmarketreports.com/charts/NC07001_Wilmington_02.gif" border="0" alt="Wilmington - Sold vs Expired Listings" />
<img src="http://www.realmarketreports.com/charts/NC07001_Wilmington_03.gif" border="0" alt="Wilmington - Sold vs Active DOM" />
<img src="http://www.realmarketreports.com/charts/NC07001_Wilmington_04.gif" border="0" alt="Wilmington - Median Sold Prices (last 6 mos.)" />
<img src="http://www.realmarketreports.com/charts/NC07001_Wilmington_05.gif" border="0" alt="Wilmington - Median Sold DOM (last 6 mos.)" />
Powered by <a href="http://www.waypostrealty.com" target="_blank">Waypost Realty</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Wilmington.pdf" target="_blank"> DOWNLOAD WILMINGTON BY THE NUMBERS</a>2020-05-03T05:02:00-07:002020-08-20T06:16:40-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:8073Monday Morning Coffee - Increasing showings, contracts and beaches openAfter several weeks of being closed, all area beaches will be open again for limited access. While we may not be able to take our chairs or fishing equipment to the beach, we can certainly take much-needed walks and shelling excursions. To learn more about the area beaches guidelines, click the links below:
<a href="https://www.townofwrightsvillebeach.com/" target="_blank">Wrightsville Beach</a>
<a href="https://www.carolinabeach.org/" target="_blank">Carolina Beach</a>
<a href="https://www.townofkurebeach.org/" target="_blank">Kure Beach</a>
<a href="https://www.wect.com/2020/04/25/take-deep-breath-report-ranks-wilmingtons-air-among-cleanest-country/" target="_blank"><img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/wilmingtonair.jpg" width="523" height="314" alt="Wilmington Riverfront" /></a>
Not only does Wilmington have breathtaking views, we apparently have breath-worthy air to go along with it. According to the American Lunch Association and it's annual US annual State of the Air Report, our area is ranked in the top 4 of places to live in our country for clean air. <a href="https://www.wect.com/2020/04/25/take-deep-breath-report-ranks-wilmingtons-air-among-cleanest-country/" target="_blank"> Read more</a>
REAL ESTATE ACTIVITY
The area real estate market activity continues to improve with showings, contracts and home prices rising each week. New listings to the market continues to be stalled which is pushing the average days on market for mainline homes ($200,000-$400,000) down to levels I've not seen in my twenty-two years of selling real estate in the Wilmington area.
<br /><br /><br /><br />ABSORPTION REPORT
<img src="http://www.realmarketreports.com/charts/NC07001_Wilmington_01.gif" border="0" alt="Wilmington - Available vs Pending Listings" />
<img src="http://www.realmarketreports.com/charts/NC07001_Wilmington_02.gif" border="0" alt="Wilmington - Sold vs Expired Listings" />
<img src="http://www.realmarketreports.com/charts/NC07001_Wilmington_03.gif" border="0" alt="Wilmington - Sold vs Active DOM" />
<img src="http://www.realmarketreports.com/charts/NC07001_Wilmington_04.gif" border="0" alt="Wilmington - Median Sold Prices (last 6 mos.)" />
<img src="http://www.realmarketreports.com/charts/NC07001_Wilmington_05.gif" border="0" alt="Wilmington - Median Sold DOM (last 6 mos.)" />
Powered by <a href="http://www.waypostrealty.com" target="_blank">Waypost Realty</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Wilmington.pdf" target="_blank"> DOWNLOAD WILMINGTON BY THE NUMBERS</a>2020-04-26T18:00:00-07:002020-08-20T06:28:55-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:8024Monday Morning Coffee - Showings, Contracts - don't be DrunkWILMINGTON NC - After several weeks of steady decline since the Covid 19 pandemic shutdowns began, you can see in the chart below we have likely found the bottom, with a week over week increase of in-person showings of 47% and a week over week increase in new executed contracts of 30%. Unfortunately, we are seeing new listings continue to flatline which will benefit the home sellers that are <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/mondaymorningcoffee040620/" target="_blank">ready to go</a> tremendously in the coming weeks and months. <br /><br /><br /><br />ABSORPTION REPORTS
<br /><a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/about/market-reports/" target="_blank"><img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/NC07001_Wilmington_Page_4.png" width="225" height="268" alt="wilmington absorption report" style="float: left;" /></a>Wilmington home buyers continue to search homes online in record numbers. While in-person house showings are down, buyers who need to move are still buying homes. In some cases, we are still seeing multiple offers within hours of a property hitting the market. As the Wilmington area and the rest of the country opens back up and begins to travel there is no doubt we are going to see a massive influx of buyers from large cities who want to relocate for more space, lower taxes, and more home for the dollar.
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/about/market-reports/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here for details</a><br /><br />
2020-04-20T05:05:00-07:002020-08-20T06:30:13-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:7987Monday Morning Coffee - Storms, Stats & EncouragementGood Monday Morning to you and your family from all of us here with Waypost Realty in Wilmington, NC. I pray you had a wonderful Easter weekend and are staying safe and healthy during these historical and difficult times.
ENCOURAGING NEWS
<br /><br />WEEKLY MARKET ACTIVITY SNAPSHOT
Over the last week we have seen showings continue to stay above 600 per week in the Wilmington real estate market. Contracts have slowed significantly as compared to the number we would expect for this time of the year. We are seeing less showings and contracts, but we continue to see more "serious" buyers who are already pre-approved for a mortgage. Mortgage rates are once again in historical territory with rates in the 2's and 3's for qualified buyers - depending on credit worthiness and term of the loans.
<br /><br />OTHER LOCAL & REGIONAL INFO
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/about/market-reports/" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a> for the latest market absorption reports
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/welcome-nick-goings/" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a> <a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/welcome-nick-goings/" target="_blank"></a>to meet our newest agent - Nick Goings
<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/covid-19-cdc-compliant-operating-guidelines/">CLICK HERE</a> for the latest Covid 19 info
<a href="https://www.wect.com/" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a> for local Wilmington area news
2020-04-13T09:45:00-07:002020-04-19T10:39:37-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:7931Monday Morning Coffee - Sellers: Make Sure You are a READY TO GO LISTING <br /><br />Wilmington NC - Today is Monday April 6th, 2020 and it is another gorgeous Spring day here in the Wilmington area with temps in the 70/80s and sunshine all week long. As we continue our social distancing strategy to wait-out the Covid-19 pandemic many places in the Wilmington area continue to be closed, including our area beaches. As a coastal area, us Wilmingtonians are accustomed to hunkering down and waiting things out, and this event is no different. One thing you will notice about our area is our passion for each other and our tremendous resilience. There is really a such thing as "Salt Life".
While overall showing activity and and new contracts have dropped, homes in high demand price ranges and areas are still showing and selling. For buyers, we have added the option to schedule visits to the home in-person or virtually. For sellers, we are doing in-person inspections and virtual inspections. We are recommending all sellers who have an interest in selling this year to get their home's ready to sell now. We created our exclusive <a href="http://readytogolisting.com" target="_blank">READYTOGOLISTING.COM</a> website where home sellers can schedule inspections, home measuring, professional photography and 3D Matterport virtual tours.
WEEKLY ACTIVITY UPDATE
You will notice that the last week saw less showings and contracts but we are still on pace with holiday activity and homes are still selling.
<br /><br />NEW LISTING TRACKER
You can see that March 2020 was on pace to be a record month for new listings hitting the market, even with the signifcant disruptions starting in early March. We were seeing a rebound in availability of homes coming to market to help with the massive demand we've been experiencing over the last eighteen months, but that came to an abrupt end in mid-March. <br /><br />AVAILABLE HOMES TRACKER
In this chart you can see that for the first time the number of homes available in Wilmington dropped below 1,000 homes.<br /><br />ABSORPTION TRACKER
You can see that we only have a little over two months of homes available in Wilmington. Once we move past the stay at home period in our area we are likely going to see a tremendous shortage of homes available as compared to the massive demand we are forecasting for the Summer and Fall of 2020. We had expected a strong year but now it appears we may see an entire year's selling being done in the third and fourth quarters, which will benefit "<a href="http://readytogolisting.com" target="_blank">ready to go</a>" sellers and put a lot of pressure on buyers to find and purchase homes. We expect homes in the Wilmington area that are priced in the $200's and $300's to see even more multiple offers and possibly run into challenging appraisal issues as prices may increase faster than historical home sales comps can be created. Even in the midst of this pandemic we are seeing areas continue to have multiple offers and new homes sell faster than we can put them on the ground. <br /><br />If You Are Thinking About Selling, Make Sure You Get "READY TO GO" Now, While Everyone Else Is "Waiting".
<a href="https://calendly.com/buddyblake/conversation-with-buddy?month=2020-03" target="_blank"><img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/connectwithbuddy.png" width="undefined" height="undefined" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></a>
2020-04-05T17:29:00-07:002020-04-09T16:56:34-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:7894Monday Morning Coffee - March 30th 2020Wilmington, NC - In this week's Monday Morning Coffee Buddy discusses North Carolina's position in regards to "real estate services" being designated as an essential service. Also, to keep everyone updated in real-time Buddy shares the latest weekly Wilmington real estate and showing activity, showings per listing and new contract activity. <br /><br /><br /><br />LATEST WILMINGTON REAL ESTATE ACTIVITY
This weekly report shows the latest week over week activity of in-home agent showing requests (does not include virtual or 3D Matterport showings done online), new executed contracts and an average showings per listings for homes and real estate with a "Wilmington" mailing address. This report includes single family residential, townhouse and condominium residential listings no matter what company has the listing.
<br /><br />AREA ABSORPTION REPORTS
Each Monday Buddy updates absorption reports for the most popular areas in Southeastern North Carolina. These reports show various price ranges, inventory levels, closing statistics, days on market and months supply calculations. Click the area for a viewable or downloadable PDF report:
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_New_Hanover_County.pdf">New Hanover County</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Brunswick_County.pdf">Brunswick County</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Pender_County.pdf">Pender County</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Wilmington.pdf">Wilmington</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28403.pdf">28403</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28405.pdf">28405</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28409.pdf">28409</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28411.pdf">28411</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28412.pdf">28412</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Pleasure_Island.pdf">Pleasure Island </a>(Carolina & Kure Beach)
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Leland.pdf">Leland</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Hampstead.pdf">Hampstead</a>
<a href="https://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Wrightsville_Beach.pdf">Wrightsville Beach</a>
<br /><br />HOMES FOR HEROES
First of all, THANK YOU to all those that are on the front line serving in the Military, Healthcare, Teaching, Law Enforcement and EMS/Firefights. As a way of giving back, Waypost Realty is one of the exclusive members of the national Homes for Heroes program that allows Heroes to receive significant Hero Rewards savings when you buy or sell a home with our real estate company. The average Hero Rewards Savings nationally are $2,400.
How It Works:
Step 1 - SIGN UP at <a href="http://www.waypostheroes.com" target="_blank">WaypostHeroes.com</a>
Step 2 - Work with a Waypost Realty agent
Step 3 - Buy, Sell or Refinance
Step 4 - Receive Your Rewards!
<a href="http://www.waypostheroes.com" target="_blank"><img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/signup.png" width="174" height="45" /></a>
<br /><br />If you would like to connect with Buddy by phone, facetime, Zoom or in-person click below
<a href="https://calendly.com/buddyblake/conversation-with-buddy?month=2020-03" target="_blank"><img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/connectwithbuddy.png" width="272" height="72" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></a>
<br /><br />
WAYPOST REALTY IS HIRING
Waypost Realty, a locally owned and operated residential real estate company, is growing and looking for licensed real estate professionals who value culture and the atmosphere of a small, local real estate company that provides cutting edge technology such as paperless transactions, video email, agent security, integrated cloud-based CRM and of course prospect opportunities. If you are a licensed agent interested in learning more about Waypost Realty email <a href="mailto:buddy@buddyblake.com" target="_blank">buddy@buddyblake.com</a> or call Buddy at 910-262-7006. All calls and emails are confidential.2020-03-30T08:59:00-07:002020-03-30T10:48:17-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:7837Monday - Encouragement & InformationIn these unprecedented times, it is more important than ever to encourage one another in personal and real ways. We should strive to be the light in someone's day so they also can be a light to us in our darkest times. This week I am reaching out to actively be an encouragement to folks in our network with a video, phone call, text message or even a Zoom online face to face meeting.
<br /><br /><br /><br />
I was watching an online sermon yesterday and something the Pastor said stuck with me. I've been hearing and saying myself that "we are all in the same boat" for the last few weeks, but what he said was "we might all be in the same storm, but we are certainly not all in the same boat".
"We might all be in the same storm, but we are certainly not all in the same boat"
I have heard and read about people that are enjoying the relaxation and slow-down as they are financially and personally strong enough to move through this without being deeply affected. I've seen local coffee shops and other business shut down and have to lay off employees who now are without income to pay their rent, gas or other bills. I've talked to and heard about employers, big and small, who have had to make the difficult decision to layoff hard to replace long-term employees, knowing full well what difficulties that creates. I've read about businesses that are borrowing money they do not have to keep employees, hoping this passes sooner than later. I've talked with retired people who have seen their entire retirement funds hammered. I've talked with builders that days and weeks ago were signing multi-million dollar loans to purchase land to keep up with the demand of families wanting a new home this year. I've spoken with bankers who went through the 2008 crisis and worry this could snowball into a similar situation. I've spoken to Pastors who are preaching to empty Churches not knowing if their message was being received as intended and realizing their Church's ability to pay expenses and overhead may be in jeopardy. I've spoken and read about those in healthcare having to work unbelievable hours and in less than desirable circumstances and be worried they may get sick and infect their own loved ones. I've witnessed first hand our three kids transform into home school kids while their teachers, schools and mother all move into the unknown and unplanned world of online home-schooling, for who knows how long.<br /><br />
You see, we are all in the same storm, but certainly in different boats. Some people are battleships slicing through the rough seas and some people are clutching onto a piece of driftwood just trying to stay above the water. <br /><br />
For me and my family, we will not get lost in the bad news or wait for a government bail out. We will pray for the world, encourage each other and try to be the best encouragement we can to others. This too shall pass, and hopefully we will all be better people and encouragers of life than ever before.<br /><br />
<br /><br />VIRTUAL SHOWINGS
As I mentioned in the video above, we are happy to do a one on one private virtual tour for anyone that is wanting to purchase a home in our area, but simply cannot travel for logistical or safety reasons. We understand that with the limited amount of homes available and low interest rates there are buyers that need to act swiftly and cannot "wait for this to be over" to make such a long-term decision.
Below is a video I shot this morning of our new Waypost Realty, located at 8209 Market Street in Wilmington NC. <br /><br />
<br /><br />INFORMATIVE
As mentioned above, we are tracking the real-time housing and real estate activity in Wilmington to keep home buyers, sellers, investors, bankers, builders and everyone informed. The most real-time tip of the spear indicators are Showing Activity, Contract Activity and New Listing Activity.<br /><br />Last week was our area's first real impact point so I will be starting there and working backward and then forward as we go along. Some of the data will not be helpful until we get further into the timeline, but the showing and contract activity are the real indicator of where we are right now and what may happen in the next few weeks. Sold and closing data is good for price trends and appraisals but those are not what I will concentrate on in this report. You can see the latest sold data for our area that appraisers use<a href="https://www.buddyblake.com/about/market-reports/" target="_blank"> at this link</a>, which I will update every Monday.
2020-03-23T07:53:00-07:002020-03-29T18:21:40-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:7347Monday Morning Coffee January 6 2020MONDAY MORNING COFFEE
<br />"When someone does something good, applaud! You will mak​e two people happy." -Samual Goldwyn
MARKET REPORTS
updated Monday, January 6, 2020
New Han​over County - <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_New_Hanover_County.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
Brunswick County - <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Brunswick_County.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
Pender County - <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Pender_County.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
Wilmington - <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Wilmington.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
28403 <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28403.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
28405 <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28405.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
28409 <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28409.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
28411 <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28411.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
Porters Neck Plantation <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Porters_Neck_Plantation_SF.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
Plantation Landing <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Plantation_Landing.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
28412 <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28412.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
Wrightsville Beach - <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Wrightsville_Beach.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
Carolina/Kure Beach - <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Pleasure_Island.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
Leland - <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Leland.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
Hampstead - <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Hampstead.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">click here</a>
Visit Us In Our New Porters Neck Office<br />8209 Market St, Wilmington NC
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/waypost-map.jpg" width="427" height="230" alt="MAP" style="float: left;" />
​2020-01-07T21:02:00-07:002020-01-07T21:12:31-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:3873Monday Morning Coffee 10-1-18Happy Monday October 1st to you and your family! I trust you are well on this new Fall day. The sun has come up and that is very good as we are now only EIGHTY-FOUR DAYS from Christmas - that is hard to believe.<br /><br />IN THIS WEEK'S CHAT
This week I discuss some Wilmington NC area information about real estate, flood insurance, heavy rental demand, a big thank you to area Churches response and other information that may be helpful.
FLOOD INSURANCE
Unfortunately, in the aftermath of storm events that produce flooding rain or surge events we hear mass stories of families that were either partially or completely flooded that do not carry flood insurance (for "rising water") because they were not "required" by their mortgage lender and/or insurance company to do so. For my family, we normally purchase flood insurance no matter what - If your property is NOT in an area that "requires" flood insurance it can be minimal (ex $300-500 per year) as compared to the value of your home and what flooding can do. Now that the storm has passed, and your home was not flooded, you may want to consider getting quotes to acquire flood insurance, I know it was a lot of peace-of-mind for my family. I would recommend calling your insurance provider and possibly a few other companies to get quotes on the annual premium and any "waiting period" that may be in place post storm.
SHORT-TERM RENTALS NEEDED
In the last week we fielded a tremendous amount of calls and online requests for short-term rentals, furnished and unfurnished - and we do not even handle short or long-term rentals. With numerous outlying and low lying areas flooded; individuals, insurance companies, employers and FEMA are looking for immediate housing for hundreds of families. Our area's rental market was already limited so this has made a challenging situation almost impossible. I've heard a number of situations where rental rates have already increased exponentially with insurance companies etc competing to find homes. We are also receiving calls on any for-sale listings that are perceived from ads to be vacant with folks asking if the sellers will consider renting. A few other savvy options might be using VRBO or AIRBNB as the Summer rental season is winding down and vacation rental owners may not understand the high demand YET.
Also, if I were looking for a rental I WOULD NOT send any money to an individual online or by wire without verifying they are the actual property owner of record. We are seeing a spike in Craigslist or other unverified online sites where someone will post a convincing ad for a rental property that leads to a real-looking application page where a user might be ask to enter their banking, credit card or other personal information to receive the key by overnight mail. Be aware scams are ramped online and try to use a reputable system such a property management company that is licensed in NC, VRBO or AIRBNB.
FEMA MEETING
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/FEMA.png" alt="FEMA Info Session" style="float: right;" />For those that would like to learn more about what FEMA is doing, and plans to do, in our area there is a large live meeting this Monday evening October 1st, 2018 at Port City Community Church in Wilmington at 7:00PM. This meeting can also be viewed live online at <a href="https://youtu.be/tSi45pGJjNk" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/tSi45pGJjNk</a><br /><br />Current Market Reports Update
Just Updated Sunday
1) Brunswick County <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Brunswick_County.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Brunswick_County.pdf</a>
2) Hampstead <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Hampstead.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Hampstead.pdf</a>
3) New Hanover County <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_New_Hanover_County.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_New_Hanover_County.pdf</a>
4) Pender County <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Pender_County.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Pender_County.pdf </a>
5) Pleasure Island <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Pleasure_Island.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Pleasure_Island.pdf </a>
6) Wilmington <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Wilmington.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Wilmington.pdf </a>
7) Zip Code 28403 <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28403.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28403.pdf</a>
8) Zip Code 28405 <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28405.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28405.pdf </a>
9) Zip Code 28409 <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28409.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28409.pdf </a>
10) Zip Code 28411 <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28411.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28411.pdf </a>
11) Zip Code 28412 <a href="http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28412.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.realmarketreports.com/reports/NC07001_Zip_Code_28412.pdf</a>2018-09-30T16:54:00-07:002020-08-20T06:51:53-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:3844Wilmington - After The StormThe National Weather Service has referred to Florence as the “storm of a lifetime” for the region. Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, on Friday, Sept. 14, packing sustained 90 mph winds and heavy rain. The storm crawled through the Carolinas dumping record-breaking rainfall and causing severe flooding.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.facebook.com/amanda.lisk.5/videos/10218197968766586/" target="_blank">THE STORM</a>
As hurricane Florence approached our area it was forecast to be a category 4 or 5 hurricane which is as bad as any we've ever had in recorded history. Many life and long-time residence, who had never evacuated, took this warning seriously and left town, fleeing far West into neighboring states. Over the decades hurricanes have repeatedly caused much damage in areas as far West as Raleigh, Charlotte and even the NC mountains. The Southeastern NC coastal areas are as prepared and hurricane weathered as any area in the country and most were taking this storm seriously.
<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/foxnews.png" width="317" height="179" style="margin: 5px 10px; float: left;" /><a href="https://www.facebook.com/amanda.lisk.5/videos/10218197968766586/" target="_blank">As the storm approached</a> it was downgraded to a category 1 / 2 hurricane from a wind factor, BUT - as the storm began to rapidly expand it's size and slow down it then became a tremendous rain / water event as well as spawning numerous tornados across the areas. At times the rain in some areas was falling at a rate of three inches PER HOUR for numerous hours at the time. Combine the historical rain fall with a storm that nearly stopped over the area for days at the time and it made for a near Biblical storm event as the inland and mountain rivers combined to drain into the low-lying interior portions of our area and the water had no place to go so the water spread into areas that have never flooded before. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/amanda.lisk.5/videos/10218197968766586/" target="_blank">WATCH THIS VIDEO</a>
Wilmington proper sustained quite a lot of wind, tree and roof damage, along with some areas of flooding. Unfortunately, some of the more rural areas miles inland from the coast took much of the brunt of this storm system. Numerous families in these areas were flooded in measurements of double-digit feet which led to a sea of rooftops and hundreds of swift-water and air-lift rescues. Keep in mind that many of these home-owners built in areas that were NOT in areas that required flood insurance so they have no insurance to replace their homes in the event of "rising water". With this thought in mind it's a good idea to ALWAYS purchase flood insurance no matter where you live as neighborhood storm water systems, drives etc could back up in any storm and the result of no insurance could be the same. If you do not live in an area that requires flood insurance it can be purchased for as little as $300-500 per YEAR. You should contact your insurance company for more information on this. Again, ALWAYS CARRY FLOOD INSURANCE - No matter what is "required" or not.
Aftermath & lack of Homes to buy or<img src="https://assets.site-static.com/userfiles/582/image/IMG_3327_copy_2.jpg" width="250" height="188" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; float: left; margin: 5px 10px;" /> rent
Now the storm has passed many rivers are cresting and water levels are subsiding. Unfortunately, this is of little comfort to the many families who's homes were flooded out. Today, I worked with Samaritans Purse, a Faith-based voluntary relief organization, in an area a few miles inland and it is horrific what these families are going through. Not only are they dealing with complete losses in many cases but they are having difficulty finding places to relocate to.
What Happens with Housing Now?
IN MY OPINION, the Coastal NC areas are in high-demand and while we have seen a boom of new single-family and multi-family housing starts over the last two years, the supply was already stretched thin as compared to the huge demand for our areas. Now, in many price ranges and areas there will be an even smaller pool of properties for anyone to buy or rent which may lead to a significant increase in the cost of housing. And keep in mind that in many popular areas, such as New Hanover County, there is little to no land to build on, so homes in New Hanover (Wilmington, Castle Hayne, Carolina & Kure Beach), Northern Brunswick (Leland) and Southern Pender (Hampstead) counties will likely become very hard to come by for the foreseeable future.
we are not alone
Fortunately, many areas along coastal North Carolina have been blessed with the availability of our active military. Coast Guard and FEMA - along with other local, state and federal agencies. One of the most incredible thing that has come about is the private organizations that were here the moment the storm passed, and in some cases even before or during the storm. In my scope of knowledge and observations, some of the organizations that come top of mind to me that I had not heard of before the storm are: <a href="https://www.convoyofhope.org/" target="_blank">Convoy of Hope</a> and <a href="https://www.samaritanspurse.org/" target="_blank">Samaritans Purse</a>. These two organizations rolled into town with dozens and dozens of tractor trailers, trucks and heavy equipment. They partnered with area Churches and deployed a small army of out of area volunteers along with local volunteers. They brought massive amounts of supplies, food, equipment and training so everyone could be leveraged to help others. There were also tens of thousands of utility line-workers from all over the country that were deployed before the storm even made landfall. But above all for me was the neighbors helping neighbors, communities helping communities, private and public sectors working together and people of different backgrounds putting their own personal ideologies aside for the better of the whole. In addition to this area Churches, companies, neighbors, hospitals, school teachers, news broadcasters and even social media groups have provided tremendous information, time and resources to help each other -- It's a beautiful reminder of what a beautiful area and country we still have.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
Now that many news broadcasters and weather channels have left we are left to pick up the physical and emotional pieces. It will take months and years for many areas to put the infrastructure back to together. Some families have tragically already lost loved ones and when things are said and done there will be an untold amount of families that lose their homes, income and other worldly possessions. First and foremost, anyone can PRAY for those who are and will be battling deep loss. PRAY for our leaders to lead with love and wisdom. PRAY for neighbors to keep the helping spirit alive. PRAY for the thousands of volunteers and workers to get back to their families and as they move to other damaged areas of the world.
Here are a few links to just some of the until recently unknown (to me) organizations that are providing help to those in needs. You are welcome to donate or participate - it's your choice.
<a href="https://www.convoyofhope.org/" target="_blank">Convoy of Hope</a>
<a href="https://www.samaritanspurse.org/" target="_blank">Samaritan's Purse</a>
<a href="https://operationbbqrelief.org/" target="_blank">Operation BBQ Relief </a>
<a href="http://harrelsoncenter.org/" target="_blank">The Harrelson Center</a>
<a href="https://www.scottshill.org/florence" target="_blank">Scotts Hill Baptist Church</a>
<a href="https://www.cajunnavyrelief.com/" target="_blank">The Cajun Navy Relief & Rescue</a>
QUICK NOTE
I'm certain there are many many more organizations that have and continue to help. Please feel free to comment below with those you have found super helpful.
I acknowledge I've only seen or heard about a portion of the lives and property effected. By no means is this article intended to leave anyone out -- this is just my personal experiences and knowledge and you can certainly find more in-depth and professional writings online or in professional publications.
THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HAS AND CONTINUES TO HELP
Buddy Blake2018-09-24T06:07:00-07:002020-08-20T06:53:10-07:00Buddy Blaketag:buddyblake.com,2012-09-20:3739Making A Local ImpactI had a wonderful visit this morning with my good friend and fellow agent Chris Spivey. Chris is an incredible professional and an even better person. Chris and I have know each other for around fifteen years (when we were both getting started in real estate) and we are both born, raised, educated and started our own families right here in wonderful Wilmington.
I asked Chris to talk about the incredibile IMPACT CLUB he has started here in Wilmington which allows EVERYONE TO BE A PART of something much bigger and impactful than themselves. Chris and fellow club-members gather together four times a year and raise money that GOES DIRECTLY to a LOCAL CHARITY that is voted on by the members. Year to date over $60,000 of much needed funds have been INVESTED LOCALLY with NO STRINGS ATTACHED.
If you would like to learn more about IMPACT CLUB start with Chris's personal website at www.theimpactagent.com and then JOIN OUR FAMILY in MAKING A DIFFERENCE on September 10th for the next member gathering. To sign up to MAKE A DIFFERENCE visit www.IMPACTLUB.com and select the Wilmington NC chapter.
If you would like to reach Chris to learn more call him on his cell phone at 910-239-11382018-08-27T09:10:00-07:002020-08-20T06:54:18-07:00Buddy Blake