Nearly $2 billion in Wake real estate sold in November, making it the top month of 2020
November was the month of highest value in 2020 in real estate transactions in Wake County, with over $1.8 billion transacted, the county’s Register of Deeds said.
The successful month is owed to four major transactions totaling to $543 million that were registered in the “very high-value” segment, defined as $30 million and up. A majority of the month’s transactions were $1 million or less, with a total of $936 million.
November broke the year’s record month of September, which recorded $1.62 billion in real estate transactions. This November also surpassed November 2019’s total of $1.29 billion.
The four high-value transactions include the sale of The Dillon tower and retail buildings in downtown Raleigh for $236 million and the $208 million sale of the 17 buildings of the Southport Business Park in Morrisville near Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
The others were a $57.6 million sale of the Braxton Cary Weston apartments in Cary and a $40.9 million sale of a commercial food distribution center in Garner, Wake County records show.
November only had 17 business days for real estate activity due to the Thanksgiving holiday, allowing less time for single-family home sales to be closed on and registered, but the large commercial sales bumped sales to the top.
The housing boom continues
The rest of the nearly $2 billion of real estate that exchanged hands in November is owed to the Triangle’s housing boom, which began performing better this past summer than it did even before the pandemic, The News & Observer previously reported.
Home sales make up the majority of property sold in the core market, defined as valued at $1 million or less. They were about 97% of November’s transactions and totaled to $936 million, according to the county.
“Overall, it’s an increasingly higher valued housing market in terms of single-family housing,” said Luther Snyder, deputy director of the Wake County Register of Deeds, in an interview. “Because of the lower interest rates, people are able to afford more of a house, and we don’t have the inventory in Wake County to satisfy the demand.”
A bustling housing market led to an $148 million increase in core market sales from the $788 million recorded in November 2019.
Home construction has been strained nationwide due to COVID-19 and fewer homes on the market have created scarcity. In turn, it has created higher demand and higher prices. In addition to that, the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to all time lows.
“You have transactions that are refinancing — somebody owns the house at a higher mortgage rate and now the mortgage rate has dropped and their valuation of their house has risen because of scarcity,” Snyder said.
And these favorable conditions have mixed with Wake County’s popularity, since “the county’s still growing, people are still moving here and they want housing,” he added.
No. 1 in the nation
The Urban Land Institute, a national real estate data firm, placed Raleigh-Durham as No. 1 in the country in its Top 10 Overall Real Estate Markets list for 2021. Charlotte came in as fifth as the only other N.C. city on the list.
The list is based on research of metro areas with strong growth, homebuilding environments, affordability and job prospects.
In a different list, Raleigh was ranked eighth out of 13 top prospective real estate markets in 2021, according to a panel of 30 economists surveyed by the National Association of Realtors. This survey was based on promising economic growth aspects, including the flexibility of employers regarding work from home.
