Monday Coffee for February 8 2021

WILMINGTON 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.

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.