Two weeks ago I was walking a 1,400 square foot ranch on Trent Drive in Durham, talking to the seller about a roof and a slab leak. Today my acquisitions team is doing FaceTime walkthroughs from a Raleigh office that’s down to one person and a coffee maker.
Governor Cooper’s stay-at-home order hasn’t been formally signed yet as I’m writing this, but Wake County and Mecklenburg County have already issued their own restrictions, and the state-wide order looks imminent. The phone has not stopped ringing. People who were planning to list this spring are pulling back. People who were already in trouble before any of this started are calling because they can feel the ground moving under them.
I want to lay out what I’m seeing right now in NC real estate, what we’re doing differently, and what it means if you actually need to sell a house in the next 60 days.
Can I still close on a North Carolina home sale during the COVID-19 lockdown?
Yes. North Carolina cash closings are still happening through the lockdown because they don’t depend on appraisers, in-person showings, or buyer financing. Sellers can complete the entire process remotely using video walkthroughs, e-signed contracts, and electronic recording with the local Register of Deeds. We are closing properties in 10 to 14 days from a signed contract this week.
What Changed Last Week
The Federal Reserve cut rates to near zero on March 15. Mortgage rates dropped fast, then bounced because of bond market chaos, but the trajectory is clear. Money is going to be cheap. That should be good for the market. The current 30-year average is being tracked closely on FRED’s MORTGAGE30US series, which is where I check it before pricing any deal.
Except buyers stopped showing up at open houses because there are no open houses. Listing agents I talk to in Raleigh and Cary are telling me showings are down 40 to 60 percent week over week. A house in North Hills that would have had eight offers two weeks ago had two this past weekend, both well below ask.
Lenders are the bigger story. Two retail mortgage shops I work with paused new applications entirely on Friday because they couldn’t get appraisers into properties. A third stopped doing cash-out refis above 70% LTV. Jumbo lending has effectively disappeared. Anybody whose deal depends on a 30-year mortgage closing in the next 30 days should be nervous.
How a Cash Closing Looks Right Now
The good news, if you can call anything good news this week, is that a cash transaction does not require any of the systems that just broke.
We don’t need an appraisal. We don’t need a buyer’s lender. We don’t need an open house. We don’t need a home inspection by a third party because the offer is already as-is.
What we do need is a way to see the property. Until last Tuesday that meant me or Denise driving over and walking it. Now it means a video walkthrough on FaceTime or WhatsApp, with the seller pointing the phone at the things we ask about. We did three of those last week. All three closed within two weeks.
For Charlotte sellers we’re using the same workflow. Greg, one of our acquisitions guys in Mecklenburg, walked a property in NoDa last Thursday entirely over video. The seller, an older gentleman whose wife had been in the hospital before all of this and who did not want a stranger in his house, was relieved we offered the option. We closed Tuesday.
The Eviction Moratorium Question
The CARES Act has not been signed yet, but it’s coming, and the federal eviction moratorium for federally-backed mortgages is going to be part of it. North Carolina’s state courts have already paused most eviction proceedings through April 17 under Chief Justice Beasley’s order.
That matters for landlords I’m talking to. Several Triangle landlords with two or three rentals each have called this week asking what happens if their tenants stop paying. The honest answer: probably nothing for 60 to 90 days, possibly longer. You can’t file. The clerks aren’t hearing it. And tenants know.
If you’re a landlord who was already considering an exit, this is the week to make that decision firm. Tired-landlord situations are going to get harder before they get easier. If you want to see what that exit looks like in normal times, we wrote about tired-landlord situations generally. The math is the same, the timing is just more urgent.
The 14-Day NC Eviction Pause and What It Means for Triangle Landlords
Chief Justice Beasley’s emergency directive paused most NC eviction proceedings, and in the immediate Triangle conversation that 14-day pause has already pushed several tired-landlord situations off the fence. I had two Wake County landlords call this week who had been carrying problem tenants since last summer. Both were planning to file in March. Both can’t.
For a small landlord with two or three rentals, the inability to file changes the math in a hard way. Holding costs continue. Mortgage, taxes, insurance, and basic maintenance keep running. Rent stops. Even if a tenant is paying now, the legal pressure that normally keeps non-paying tenants moving has been removed for the duration of the order, and that order is going to extend.
The landlords I’m talking to in Cary, Garner, east Durham, and northeast Raleigh are realizing something else: the pool of investor buyers willing to take on a tenant-occupied property is narrower than the pool willing to buy a vacant one, but it’s not zero. We are still buying tenant-occupied homes this month. Lease succession under NCGS § 42-3 means whoever owns the property next inherits whatever lease is in place. We underwrite the deal accordingly. The tired-landlord exit is open, even when the eviction calendar isn’t.
If you’ve been thinking about exiting one or more rentals before fall, the 14-day pause is the signal. The legal calendar is going to favor tenants for the foreseeable future. The investor calendar is still open this week.
Foreclosure Pauses and What They Don’t Cover
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suspended foreclosures and evictions on Wednesday for at least 60 days. FHA followed. That sounds like blanket protection. It isn’t.
It covers federally-backed mortgages, which is most but not all NC mortgages. It does not cover non-bank servicers on portfolio loans, private mortgages, contracts for deed, or junior liens like HELOCs and HOA dues. It does not stop interest from accruing. It does not waive the missed payments. When the moratorium ends, those payments will be due in some form.
Sellers I talk to who were already three or four payments behind before March are not going to come out of this any better positioned. They’re going to come out of it more behind, with whatever forbearance terms the servicer offers, which is often a balloon payment they can’t make.
If you were already in the foreclosure pipeline before COVID, the moratorium buys you time, but it doesn’t solve the problem. Use the time. Don’t sit on it.
What Sellers Are Actually Calling About This Week
A breakdown of last week’s calls, because the mix has shifted noticeably:
About a third are inherited properties where the heir was planning to clean out and list this spring and now can’t even fly down to North Carolina to start the process. Estate sales, contractors, donation pickups: all of that is on hold or slow.
Another third are landlords who saw what was coming with the eviction freeze and want out before tenants stop paying.
The remaining third is a mix: divorce cases where one spouse already moved out and the house is sitting empty, fire-damaged property where insurance adjusters can’t get in, and one military family with PCS orders that didn’t get cancelled even with everything else.
The common thread: people who need certainty when nothing else is certain. A signed cash contract with a defined closing date is a thing you can plan around when you can’t plan around anything else.
What I’m Telling Sellers Right Now
If you call me this week with an NC property, here’s the honest pitch:
Our offers might be slightly more conservative than they would have been on March 1. We don’t know where the market settles. I’d rather underwrite a deal carefully than offer aggressively and back out at the title company three weeks from now. Other cash buyers might quote you a higher number than I will. Some of them will close. Some of them won’t.
We are still buying. We closed two deals this week and have four more under contract. Our funding is committed, our title attorney in Raleigh is operating remotely with full e-signing capability, and Wake County’s Register of Deeds is taking documents electronically.
We will close in 10 to 14 days from a signed contract. That timeline holds even with the disruptions. If anything, it’s faster than retail right now because the retail timeline currently doesn’t exist.
Virtual Closings Under NC’s Emergency Remote Online Notarization Rules
A lot of my conversations this week end with the same question from out-of-state heirs and relocated owners: how do I actually sign the deed if I can’t fly to North Carolina? The answer that just cleaned itself up is Remote Online Notarization. Senate-side conversations in Raleigh are moving toward emergency authority that would let an NC-registered notary witness a signature over real-time video, with the signer in California or Massachusetts and the notary on a laptop in Wake County. The framework is being built around the existing NCGS Chapter 10B § 10B-200 series that governs notarial acts in our state.
What that looks like in practice for a seller: you join a video call from wherever you are. The notary on the call confirms your identity using a credential analysis platform and a knowledge-based authentication question set. You sign the documents on screen. The notary applies the notarial certificate, the platform retains the audio-video recording, and the executed documents flow to the closing attorney for recording at the local Register of Deeds.
For an inherited property in Hope Valley with an executor in Boston, the difference is enormous. The pre-COVID workflow required either an in-person trip to Durham or a chain of overnight couriered packages with a same-state notary at every step. The RON workflow collapses that into a single video call. We have already used a hybrid version of this for two closings this month, with the formal NC framework expected to be signed shortly.
A few practical notes for sellers considering remote closing:
The closing attorney still controls the disbursement. Wires go from the attorney’s trust account to the bank account you designate, and the notarial certificate accompanies the recorded deed.
Wire fraud risk is up. Phishing emails impersonating closing attorneys have spiked since lockdown began. Confirm wire instructions verbally over a phone call you initiated, never through emailed instructions.
Not every NC notary is registered for emergency video notarization. The closing attorneys we work with in Wake, Durham, and Mecklenburg counties have specifically registered. If your closing attorney can’t do RON, ask for a referral to one who can.
The point: you do not have to be physically present in North Carolina to sell a North Carolina property right now. The legal infrastructure is catching up to the moment, fast.
What’s Coming Next
I don’t know how long this lasts. Nobody does. My best read on the next 90 days: rates stay low, retail closings get harder, distressed inventory increases as forbearance ends and the moratorium expires. Cash buyers who can fund and close will be busier, not slower.
For homeowners who don’t have to sell right now, sit tight. Spring 2021 will probably be a better selling environment than spring 2020.
For homeowners who do have to sell, because of probate, foreclosure, divorce, a tenant who stopped paying, or a job that just disappeared, the cash channel is open. We’re answering the phone. We’re walking houses on video. We’re closing.
If your situation is one of those, call (845) 316-1119 or use our contact form and tell me what’s going on. I’ll have a real number for you within 24 hours of seeing the property, even if “seeing” it means a video call from your kitchen.
Stay safe out there. Wash your hands. We’ll get through this.