It’s the housing market 2021 – 2020, here we go. Arriving 15 minutes early to the open house, Duke Wallin elected to circle the block and check out the neighborhood rather than wait. As he made his way back to the home, he was greeted by a parade of cars flooding the street.

Worse, the tenants still occupying the house actually refused to leave, so everyone was told to come back tomorrow for the second of the scheduled open houses. Except…

“That night, the house was pending, so they didn’t even have the open house the next day,” Wallin adds. “Someone must have offered them something they couldn’t pass up.”

Welcome to the Outer Banks real estate market of 2020-2021. The water’s great – dive right in! – if you’re a seller. But for buyers like Wallen,  the new Career and Technical Education Coordinator at First Flight High School, it’s been nothing but stormy seas.

Barry Breit of Carolina Designs Realty, a top-selling broker with decades of experience on the OBX, says it’s been more than 15 years since he’s experienced a market that even compares to this one.

“2003 to 2005 was close to this, but it pales in comparison,” Breit says. “It’s like this everywhere. The real estate market is hotter than I’ve ever seen it, or ever heard of it being.”

The Outer Banks Association of Realtors’ year-end report showed 2020 sales up 44 percent, with 3,742 properties sold for $1.47 billion, the largest amount since 2004. Agents are clamoring for more properties to list. Sellers are basking in the glow of huge offers. And buyers are either shelling out the cash or moving to a Plan B.

As with so many other aspects of our daily lives in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic takes the blame – or credit, depending on your point of view – for this red-hot housing market.

“Since COVID, we’ve got a lot of folks that are moving here from the Philadelphia area, from New Jersey, from DC, who are now working remotely, and that’s not going to change,” Breit explains. “So they can work from wherever they want to live and they’re thinking, ‘Well, why are we paying the taxes in New Jersey when we can live in North Carolina at the beach, and buy something that’s a bit larger than what we have and live at the beach, raise our kids in North Carolina?’ ”

Local realtors have seen an influx of these types of buyers since about June of 2020, Breit says, and they’ve “gobbled up” the inventory. In “normal” years over the past decade, Breit estimates there would be 60 to 70 single-family homes for sale on the west side of Highway 12 in Southern Shores. In late February, there were six.

In Duck, investment buyers looking for ocean-side homes might have had 45 houses from which to choose at any given time in a normal sales cycle. On this February date, Breit counted 15 listings. Corolla, always the largest market with 100 to 120 houses available, had 32.

112 Sea Breeze Drive Duck, NC. $565,000; 3 BR, 2 Full Baths. MLS #113007. Contact Barry Breit, Carolina Designs Realty.

The lack of supply demands drastic action for buyers. Purchasing properties sight-unseen. Making cash offers. Writing contracts that don’t call for appraisals or home inspections. Offering amounts well over the asking price. And that sets off a chain reaction when it comes to future sales.

“What is a good price? What I thought I knew was a good price doesn’t seem to be a good price because it keeps exceeding it. I feel sorry for the appraisers right now because there are no comps for them to base their appraisals on,” Breit says. “I just listed a house Thursday of last week. I had six offers by the end of the weekend. We called for ‘highest and best’ on Monday at 4 o’clock. On Tuesday, I had six offers and the property went considerably over the asking price.”

Folks looking for that dream home at the beach to keep in the family for generations might be able to afford to shell out a little more than planned. But for the year-round resident needing a regular home to raise a family, the limited supply and skyrocketing prices are dashing dreams.

Wallin started his new job at First Flight High School on Jan. 4 but began his home search a month earlier when his move from just north of Syracuse, New York, got the green light. Wallin had experience with coastal real estate after spending 13 years in two different homes in Wilmington, so he’s no green first-time homebuyer.

Still, the search for this new home on the Outer Banks has proven challenging.

“I got a message at 7:30 this morning from the realtor: ‘Hey, I booked us for 3 o’clock today, something just came out this morning at 7,’ ” Wallin says. “By 9 o’clock, it was already pending, so I didn’t even get to go see the house. If you ask any teacher here, two years ago, a year ago, you’d be paying anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 less than what you’re paying right now, and that’s discouraging.”

Wallin has contemplated checking out properties in Manteo, or further from his school in Currituck County. He began to consider some “For Sale by Owner” listings but was worried about missing important details by not working with a realtor. Despite the difficulty, Wallin has remained upbeat.

“I’ve tried to do my due diligence with telling everyone I know that I’m looking for a house, so hopefully, that makes the right connection at some point, and someone says, ‘Hey, I know somebody that’s thinking about putting their house for sale…’ ” Wallin says. “Maybe I just hold out.”

Thanks to the teacher apartments Dare County Schools is able to offer through its partnership with the Dare Education Foundation, Wallin can afford to be patient. He got one of the last available open units. He’s not sure what he would have done had the apartment not been an option, and other professionals are not as lucky.

Karen Brown, the president and CEO of the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce, says businesses are losing workers thanks to this shortage of affordable housing.

“We’ve heard that for the last few years, like COA (College of the Albemarle) had a teacher all set to come on board and they couldn’t find anything so they turned the job down,” Brown says. “The hospital has nurses that turn down the job, the county is having the same problem. I mean, it’s professional jobs, not just your hourly wage folks. It’s a bad situation.”

Brown points out some glimmers of hope on the horizon, such as the SAGA project slated for Bermuda Bay that Kill Devil Hills approved earlier this year: That will bring more than a hundred apartments renting for less than $1,200 a month to the area. “But we need 10 of those projects to really accommodate what’s going on,” Brown adds.

“It’s wonderful that real estate is selling because it means the tax base is stronger and more people are here spending their discretionary money, but on the other hand, if we don’t figure out how to prop up the workforce, it’s going to cause a problem at some point,” Brown says. “Customer service starts suffering and people start saying, ‘I’m not going to come here anymore, let’s go somewhere they’ve got it together.’ ”

Breit, who doesn’t see any end in sight to this market cycle agrees that impacts on infrastructure are likely to occur.

“These people that are moving in aren’t going anywhere. They’re here and they’re here to stay,” Breit says, contrasting the current bubble to some of the ebbs and flows of recent years that saw people come and go. “So I think what we’re going to see is in the next five to seven years, our infrastructure needing to increase, schools needing to increase the number of teachers, and I think that’s a good problem. Now, is it good for first-time homebuyers? That’s rough.”

Or, in Wallin’s case, the fourth-time homebuyer.

“There are only so many homes that come on the market within a certain price range, one a week, maybe, and so everybody’s trying for it,” he says. “That story is just all too familiar for a lot of people right now.”