Why Everyone’s Moving to Hickory: Real Estate, Growth & Opportunity

[00:00:10] Welcome back everybody. We've got a another edition of Tales From The Sale. Rodney Guerin and I are gonna bring everybody up speed on what's going on in our area as far as real estate goes. We're gonna diverge a little bit from the normal format and have a good time. See what we learn and see if those of you, the two of you all out there, know what we're going to do. If you're listening, can learn anything about what we have to talk about. So can we officially say we're not talking to our listener now? Singular?

[00:00:39] We are talking to each other. Absolutely. Hey, that's better than nothing, right? So we decided we wanted to just talk about things that are going on and one of these things that caught my eye of things that we've heard lately is this inbound migration, which is United Van Lines come out with a survey from 2024.

[00:00:59] And Hickory was number nine on the list, which was just a huge thing that kind of surprised me in a way. But when we look about, we see a lot of things happening. It is surprising, but it's not. You look around town, you almost feel like people who've been here a long time, you hear the talk on the coffee bus, hey, traffic's gotten worse. You can see different license plates from everywhere.

[00:01:25] Have you worked with people? I'm sure you've worked with people out of the area. What percent of the people you've worked with are really coming from a long distance way? More than your Charlotte areas. We're talking California, New Jersey, wherever that is.

[00:01:44] So on the buyer side, which is where we would see, you know, inbound would be definitely on buyers. Out of the ones we helped last year, we had one from California and one from Florida that moved in. So, you know, the percentage that we have is.

[00:02:06] Had you seen, had you seen those people? Let me, let me put it this way before COVID, before we had this mass kind of migration happened. Had you seen anyone from outside of your area? So sometime probably in that COVID break period, we saw a shift in the reasons that people were wanting to buy here. We sold some to people from California that were not moving from California before that time.

[00:02:33] They were buying investment properties here where they could take, say, $500,000 and invest it in California. Or they could take that same $500,000 and buy two or three houses here at the time instead of part of one in California have to finance the rest. So that was a big thing is that people were investing. But now the trend is the people that we've helped from out of state are people that are moving here. That's the difference in the out of state transactions we're seeing.

[00:03:01] The latest one was in December. Lady moved from California. Her particular reasons were to be close to family, which we see is on the list of reasons that people are moving. But then also, and it really doesn't break down on the reasons that people are moving, but she moved for, I would think, some sort of a political difference too into somewhere not as liberal as California where she was. And I don't think to swing all the way back to a conservative scale or that, but she just wanted to get out of the ultra.

[00:03:30] Part of the world, you know. I haven't been selling mostly at Lake James since 2003. We, we, I don't think I ever saw somebody from California ever come across our desk until probably 2017, 18 time period. And you'd see one or two kind of trickle in.

[00:03:56] 2019, we actually had two or three people from California by. After COVID hit the restrictions, how they saw North Carolina react versus how, you know, California or wherever they're coming from react. We, we, we've seen a lot more. It's amazing. I would say we get our, it's called list track. You can follow where everybody is from that's looking at your listings.

[00:04:24] And 20 to 30% of everyone looking at our listings is coming up from California, which is, it's, it's amazing. It doesn't mean they're coming here because they're hard right or hard left. They're just more middle. And they're just tired of how California's kind of run their program. So. Yeah. They want to get out of the extreme, I think somewhat.

[00:04:48] And then actually, when you look at some of the other data that this United Van Lines put out there, the moving out states, number four is indeed California. You know, and then the other things that we have or other states on the list, New Jersey, New York and Illinois. I haven't seen any Illinois, but New Jersey and New York, we see these people move into this area. And it's not a derogatory term, but we, we kind of refer to them as halfbacks a lot of times because this is not their first stop when they moved out of New York.

[00:05:18] They, they moved to Florida first as retirees or to, as a season of their life. And then they've realized that the weather or whatever in Florida is not what they expected it to be because it's one season a year instead of four seasons. They want to move back to four seasons. So they moved back to this area. So they're halfway back to, to home in the New York, New Jersey area.

[00:05:42] And that's been a trend, especially in the, I guess, Northern Caldwell County foothills of the mountains or even getting into the mountains area. You may have seen that around Lake James too. I don't know if you've seen that before. Yeah. Go over this list. Read, read out the top nine. It's interesting. Top nine areas. Top nine areas that people are leaving as of 2014. 2024. Okay. So top nine states people are moving out of in 2024.

[00:06:11] Number one is New Jersey, Illinois, New York, California, Massachusetts. Never could say that one. North Dakota, Wyoming, Mississippi, and then Nebraska. And there was a number 10, but I cut it off on the list. I don't know what it was. None of those states have very good football programs with exception. That's why I wrote it. It's moving. Bells are low in those states too. I think we've solved it.

[00:06:40] And they're moving to, of all places, West Virginia, which I think is very telling in the whole survey. Delaware, South Carolina, District of Columbia, North Carolina, Alabama, Rhode Island, Oregon, Arkansas, and Arizona. And one thing I want to note as we get into the smaller grains of this is that like Hickory is number nine on the MSAs. And that's the area.

[00:07:07] So when we talk about Hickory, we're not talking about right here where we are in the studio. We're talking about places like Lenore and Morganton. Granite Falls. Granite Falls. Conover. Is Marion in that? It shouldn't be. I don't think it's technically in the MSA, but, you know, it falls in that category. Lincolnton. It's people that when they're going to the next big city, they're coming up to Hickory, you know, even though we're not a big city by any means. Brookford.

[00:07:37] Brookford, that's right. Conover. Yeah. And some of the things that we have in that area, we talk about the lakes that we have in those areas because that's kind of our luxury zones in that Hickory market. And that's, of course, like Hickory. Absolutely. Like Hickory, Lake Roadhiss, Lake James, the north side of Lake Norman. Those are our, you know, we're not in the mountains. We're next to the mountains.

[00:08:05] We don't, other than shoot, other than Baker's Mountain and some areas near Lenore, our gym, if you will, our sweet spot, if you're not on a golf course, is at the lake. And we've got some great lakes, some incredible opportunities, a wide variety of pricing out there, depending on which lake you're on.

[00:08:34] And it's, if you look at it as a whole, it's, it can cater to almost any financial whim out there for someone who wants waterfront. Well, and then also, in addition to that, it makes me think back, I guess it's been two and a half years ago now. We had a client that was looking for a mountain cabin, you know, and we said, mountain cabins are not in our service area. That was my first reaction because we work in Hickory in about a 45 minute drive.

[00:09:04] But they had sent to us a cabin that was in a little place called Bostick, North Carolina. And South mountains. South mountains. South mountains. And, you know, you drive to Bostick, North Carolina, and it's flat. It's not hilly until you get to the entrance gate of this neighborhood. You go up this neighborhood. I'd never been in it before. Walk into this house, still don't realize what we're getting ready to run into. You walk through the living room where there's huge picture windows and you've got a perfect view of Grandfather Mountain. Yep.

[00:09:34] You know, if you're driving I-40 from Hickory to Morganton going east to west, you will see exactly what Rodney's talking about. There's some incredible houses on the hill. This doesn't, these are mountains that don't get you into a elevation of 3,000 to get you a dramatic temperature drop, but it still gets you the mountains and it still gets you incredible views. You want to be above the world looking down. We've got it here. It's, it's, it's that that's something very special for us.

[00:10:03] Well, you know, and one of the things that also gets you, we've helped a number of people retiring to the area or retiring to their retirement home, getting the single level or whatever it is that's going to meet their retirement needs. And one of the things that is very important to them is how quickly they can access services, specifically health services and hospitals and things of that nature. And those mountain views can have you within 10 to 15 minutes most of the time of those health services, where some of the other mountain views you could be much further away.

[00:10:36] One thing that I've, my wife is a nurse practitioner. She works in the orthopedic field. It's fascinating the amount of incredible doctors we have in our area that just did not want to do the rat race of Charlotte or Atlanta or, um, Oshner clinic in new Orleans or something like that.

[00:11:02] They are brilliant people, you know, they're, um, what's it fellowship trained and they end up in places like here. They end up in Hickory and, uh, you can find top notch medical care here as, as good as anywhere you can find out there, which is pretty amazing. Um, and I think that is an undersold part of our, our area.

[00:11:27] We got multiple hospital systems in Hickory alone, plus the surrounding areas, Morganton, Lenore. They've got their systems. Um, some of them connect with our, the Hickory area. Some of them don't. It's pretty unique out there. What you can, what you can find, which is, makes it very attractive to move to this area. And well, and you talk about the Morganton hospital, they're currently, um, building there, um, a regional trauma center.

[00:11:54] They're building a new tower at the hospital and making it a regional trauma center that will be right here. Smack dab in the middle of the Hickory MSA. I hope we never have to learn about it. Yeah, that's well, it's there if you need it. That's the good thing. This, you've, you've got these stats for me, Rodney, and you, it's, it's pretty fascinating.

[00:12:11] 25 of the ranked inbound areas, the Carolinas out of the 25, how many spots claim besides number one, Wilmington, North Carolina, great place, wonderful place to visit hot, not as good as Hickory, but it is, it is fabulous. And, um, out of the 25, tell, tell me about that.

[00:12:36] So out of the top 25 of inbound migration in the United States, this is nationwide. Six of the top 25 are somewhere in the Carolinas. And I'll go through those six. Number one on the list is Wilmington, North Carolina. And then number three on the list is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And again, these are the MSAs. So if you think about Myrtle Beach, you know, that goes all the way to Cherry Grove, that goes.

[00:13:04] Cherry Grove down to Myrtle's Inlet. Myrtle's Inlet, exactly. And then probably in line, inland to Conway and that sort of area too. Yeah. Um, and then number nine is Hickory, which is what we're talking about today. 11 is Greenville, North Carolina. Um, and then you've got Greensboro, Winston, Salem area, the triad area. Great place. It's hometown. And then number 23 on the list is Greenville, Spartanburg, South Carolina.

[00:13:32] And that is an amazing city slash town. Um, when you go to downtown Greenville, they've got just great amenities. It's a town that was on the decline. And 20 years ago, they said, let's turn this thing around. And they have, they've done a great job. Too bad it's in South Carolina, but it's still a great place. Well, and you know what? The same story happens here. You know, what was it when I think people wanted to run Rudy Wright out of town when he came up with this of trying to get people to move back to Hickory.

[00:14:01] He, he and city council had started this image of, um, we need to get the young people to move back and that's where the vision of the city walk and all the things that they're building in Hickory and what's going on here that are happening now, 10, 15 years later are finally impacting. And we're seeing it in the numbers of people moving here. Yeah. Um, one of my wife's best friends, Allison Holtzman was a key component to pushing that,

[00:14:27] you know, and everything from, um, what's, what's the Fox, Joe Fox's mom, you know, with sales on the square, uh, big controversy, but look what it's done. It was just a step in the right direction. And, um, it's never going to be one thing that brings Hickory, you know, going in the right direction. It's a bunch of small things and the sales and the, our walkway around town. It's been great.

[00:14:57] It's moving in the right direction. And, um, you know, we're highly sought after town for better, for worse. It's getting sometimes getting a little bit traffic, but that's okay. And you talk about that. So what does that bring to our town? You know, and what does that make our town look like today and then in the future? How do we see that happening? What, but right before we get into that, you give me the reasons why people are moving to Hickory. You've got a great list here. So this is actually on the state level.

[00:15:27] There's not a, there's not on an individual. So this isn't a Hickory. This is the state level. Yeah. So inbound migration in North Carolina, the reasons people that move to North Carolina are, um, 20% moving in for retirement to, or about 3% for health reasons, that medical system and health reasons, 25% are bringing brought here because of family, about 12% because of the

[00:15:53] lifestyle that they can live in North Carolina, 21% because of job and career reasons. And then, um, the cost of living is only 5%, which is surprising to me that cost of living is so low because on the percentage of reason people are moving here, because we are known to have a very low cost of living. And if we look at the 10 or so reasons that the, um, economic development people say, um,

[00:16:21] cost of living is noted in one of the articles that they mentioned of reason to move here, um, because our cost of living is still very low here. We get an outstanding, uh, what's 16. How big is our cup of coffee at the coffee bus? Oh, I buy the big one, not the small one. So I guess mine's a Vente, a 20. Yeah. 20. Probably a 20 ounce cup of coffee is three 50 and it's fabulous. Um, I think anywhere else you, you go to bigger city, that's a six.

[00:16:51] Well, you need to do it justice. It's not a cup of coffee. It's an Americano, which is way different when you have it done that way. It's freshly roasted. It's freshly ground in front of you and then poured right there. Absolutely. It's as good as it gets. And our cost of living is fabulous. I've got my kid, I've got a child in private school and we're paying around, I don't know, $5,000 a year, somewhere maybe a little bit less than that. My sister's in, she's in Charlotte, each one of her kids.

[00:17:19] Um, it is around 14 to $18,000 and they're in lower school. So quite a bit different. The next interesting stat that's in here is the ages that are moving here. Some of the more of the demographics and nearly 40% of the people moving here are 65 or older. Retirement. Retirements. Yep. Which goes right along with that 20% as far as moving here because of retirement.

[00:17:45] But then you've got your later career people at 55 to 64 making up 26%. And then people that are probably moving here more because of the job more than anything else. The 35 to 54 category, lumping those together are another like 27% of the inbound.

[00:18:03] Um, 38, 40, 42, 52, 52% are between 35 and 64. Yep. That's working age people. Exactly. That's bringing money into the area. That's impressive. Right. So our area median income is somewhere in the $40,000 range.

[00:18:32] I don't know, um, the exact, this right off the top of my head because I didn't write it down, but I know it's around $40,000 for area median income. And these people move into town, nearly 52% of them make over $150,000 a year with another 23% making over $100,000 a year. So you're looking at 74%. Round up with the point. Rounding up, you know. Seven. Yeah. I mean, that's 74% making $100,000 or more a year.

[00:19:01] It's going to be hard to get reservations at Village Inn Pizza. I mean, this is fantastic. We had that conversation. Everybody loves their Village Inn Pizza, you know. I love the VIP. That's right. Those are some incredible stats. It's fascinating. We do have a home building boom finally happening with D.R. Horton going out by the old Hampton

[00:19:30] Heights golf course. I believe they've got another project going on near you. These are great solutions to a – we really didn't see spec homes being built since 2009 until probably 21, 22. I mean, that's a giant stretch not to have had steady construction of new homes going on out there. Now, there were custom homes.

[00:20:00] And, yes, there were spec homes going out there, but not on the scale that it should have been. We're trying to play catch up now. Do you think with these massive projects coming in, what are the benefits? What are the detriments? Is Hickory ready for this? What do you see? So let's start right there. Let's start with ready for this. And we flash back to 2018, 2019.

[00:20:27] I am making quarterly presentations at this point in time to the local Home Builders Association. You know, these are the builders that care about our area and are really the movers and shakers in the business – in the building world here. And they're building custom homes. And I, this little realtor they knew nothing about, goes in there and says,

[00:20:51] something's changing and we need to embrace it and we need to figure out how we're going to get around this and how we're going to use it to our advantage. And the change was, is that at that point in time, and we still have today, even with what's happened, the oldest housing stock in North Carolina. The average house here is older in Catawba County than any other county in North Carolina. That is a fascinating stat. And so that makes a big difference.

[00:21:18] And we have, especially in the lower parts of Catawba County and around here, we've got these large tracts of land that builders can move into and start building on. And we had zero tract builders building in the local Hickory area. Talking about the Hickory city limits at that point in time. Had zero tract builders building there. Only local people were building. Well, they started moving in just after that. And D.R. Horton now has, I believe it's six, possibly seven projects actually going on here.

[00:21:48] In which they're building houses from about $300,000 to around $450,000. And there's Meritage Homes is in town building homes in the same price range. A little step up, a little bit, I'm not going to call it better quality construction, but they've got some features like better insulation and things than the D.R. Horton Homes. And then you've got companies like Century Complete Building in Town.

[00:22:14] Century Complete Build starting at $200,000 building townhomes. And Ryan Homes also building townhomes in the low 200s up to those $300,000 houses to $350,000 or so. Wow. So all of that's happened essentially in the last five years. And everybody, we've seen, and there's more coming. Just that we have ground broken. We've got roads laid on other builders that are not in that list. But projects have not come out of the ground yet.

[00:22:42] Like behind the shopping center where Tabernacle Church is built, there's a large development going on there. Out by Morris Ferry on North Center Street, there's a large development going in there. And there's others around too that just haven't. Going down Springs Road headed east, it's amazing. Yeah. So lots of this going on. So the question that you asked is how is it affecting us right now? Well, everybody was worried about traffic and utilities and all of the things, the structure of the city.

[00:23:12] And I think the city is protected as well on the capacities. The traffic, however, we see is picking up. And we see, unfortunately, in North Carolina, traffic is a reactionary thing instead of a – Proactive. Instead of being proactive. We don't – North Carolina does not get in front of the problem. They wait until there is a problem and then they react to it. Is that correct? That's right. Yeah, exactly. And so, for instance, McDonnell Parkway.

[00:23:41] You know, McDonnell Parkway has been at least on a napkin in a restaurant drawn out for the rest of it for 30-plus years. The road to nowhere. The road to nowhere. They built part of it and then the rest of it is somewhere in a plan. They've surveyed it multiple times. They did a large survey of it last year. They've notified people along the route that they will be purchasing their property and then abruptly they bump it two years down the road again. You know, so that's where we are. Punting. Yeah. So the roads will catch up.

[00:24:11] However, it's still – they fall behind. However, I still tell all of my clients because I focus mostly on the greater Hickory area. You can be anywhere in Hickory in about 15 minutes. Absolutely. And you tell me – I've been in Charlotte before and I wanted to get to that coffee shop that you could see on the other side of the road. You know, it's a block or two away and it's 15 minutes away. Yeah.

[00:24:37] And here I can leave my house and I can confidently say I can be there in 15 minutes without pulling up Google Maps or anywhere as long as it's got a Hickory address. I live in Northwest Hickory. Rodney's in Northeast. Quite the rivalry. And we know we can get to the movie theater on the far side of town any time of day within 15 minutes. It's going to happen. You learn to take the shortcuts. Our town is unique and special for that.

[00:25:04] But, yeah, it would be great to see changes made. You know, we love our town, but there are obviously things that they can do to improve. And adding all these new homes, I mean, we're basically adding ginormous new neighborhoods out there. And it's going to have an effect. And there's going to be somewhat of a negative effect to it on part of it.

[00:25:31] And we certainly can address that and talk about that and see if the city and state agree with us and see how they react to it. Well, I think the reaction may be quicker than it has been in the past, actually, because if you look at transportation projects that are on the books that at least have a date written down, there's a huge expansion and change of 321 between Hickory and almost Lenore,

[00:25:58] where they're going to make it a freeway or a super street is what the current plan is, where they have limited number of stoplights and flowing quite better than it does now. You've got 127 headed north out of Hickory going to be four-laned out through the Bethlehem area, which is kind of one of our little jewels, which right now there's a big incorporation issue, or I'm not sure to call it an issue, but, you know, a debate about incorporating the town of Bethlehem going on right now

[00:26:26] because they're seeing the effects of growth of the area too. And there's people on both sides of that argument right now. And that's still the town that you can take your Christmas cards to, and they will stamp it Bethlehem for you so that you can send your cards with the Bethlehem postmark on them. Absolutely. And then you've got the McDonald Parkway project and others that are going on. So they are doing transportation projects before we get into this gridlock of not being able to get around.

[00:26:55] Are there any plans to expand the 127 bridge over Lake Hickory? Yes. That's part of the Bethlehem project I talked about. That is true. Both of those projects, the 321 and the 127 project, both have either bridge replacements or a second bridge being built. And also, to throw in there, 127 on the other end of town out through Mountain View has been plotted and planned and right away is being acquired for widening it out to NC10 also. Oh, that would be very nice. Yeah. Connection.

[00:27:25] Good traffic flow is always a big positive. So I think our planners and our government is handling the growth well. You know, they're doing the things that is necessary to attract people here, but they've had the forethought to go ahead and look at the things like traffic and capacities and making sure that we've got the water and we've got the sewer capacity and the power capacities and the Internet. You know, we've got fiber optic Internet here we haven't had before. All these things have been planned and looked up into it. We have two companies.

[00:27:55] Do we not? Met, what's it? Metronet. Metronet. I was going to say Metrolink. Of course, we've got a spectrum charter, so competition is always good. Having those two options, I think, keeps both those companies on their toes. And more competition is lower fees and, you know, top-of-the-line service. So that's what we want.

[00:28:20] So the last track build home that I closed on was in early January, and it was in Trivium development over behind CVCC on Star Town Road. And they had pre-wired the house for cable. They had coax cable wired into the house. And the contractor looked at us during the final walkthrough and says, it's useless. When we planned this two years ago, it was state-of-the-art in what we needed to put in here. But Spectrum's now added fiber here instead.

[00:28:51] And they'll have to add fiber secondary beside the coax. Still an easy thing to do. It's not a big thing. But you can see how things are changing, even since they laid the plans out for the homes they were building there, how things are built. And I was just talking to the builder that we represent yesterday about this, actually. And he's going to stop putting in coax cable. And instead, it's going to be a conduit run to the outside and a plug put in the wall so that whatever wants to run inside can run inside and get to your router. And you get your internet the way you want it.

[00:29:21] That's fascinating. Have you – do you service any areas that do not have high-speed internet? It's interesting to talk to – when I'm talking with a client on the phone and I'm going down their list of, hey, give me your must-haves. When they finish their list and I say, well, how is high-speed internet not on your list? And there's always a pause. And they're like, what do you mean?

[00:29:47] It doesn't – they've had high-speed so long, they don't understand that we have massive areas in our massive coverage areas that do not have the high-speed internet. Alexander County, Caldwell County, McDowell County. You can't find it. And they're, what do you mean? And, well, you're back to DSL.

[00:30:14] And that is so far from their thought process that they just assume everybody has it. But what we found – I've been working with clients that have set up accounts with Starlink and have been wildly pleased, no complaints. Have you worked with anybody that has gone that route? Yeah. So when we look – one, there's not a good definition being used publicly of what high-speed internet is now. True. True.

[00:30:44] Like is it fiber? Right. Even the MLS does not give us a – A data, like a speed range. Yeah, it doesn't say. So your DSL service that can run 500 megabit per second or not even that but runs much slower, it can be in the same category as my 2 gigabit per second fiber internet. That's state-of-the-art. It could be 10. So – but Alexander County is the one that we work with the most often.

[00:31:13] And it's not all of Alexander County because most places in Alexander County are serviced by spectrum cable, which means that they have spectrum internet available. However, there are places that are more remote and rural that do not have it in Alexander County. Now, there are options, like you said, of – there's some sort of rural satellite system available

[00:31:37] or antenna available to get quote-unquote high-speed, but it's not what you would expect out of a cable television or a cable service. And then also the other thing is, like you said, Starlink is kind of the answer here. It's a little bit more pricey. And then also at last check, and I don't – this may not be current, but the last person I know that got Starlink, they kind of had to fool the system a little bit because it was not available in our area. Oh, Rodney, Rodney, turn me on to this tip.

[00:32:02] I actually used this with two clients, and they went this route pretty amazing. Rodney, tell us about it. So Starlink – and I'd have to look. I did not look before the show today if this is true now, but Starlink was not available anywhere in this area. Let's call it Western North Carolina. However, Starlink service worked here, and they just did not have the capacity to open it up to everybody.

[00:32:27] And you could purchase a Starlink RV system and hook it up to your house, and it would work just fine. And Starlink is essentially a set it out in the grassy field or anywhere, point it towards the sky, and it's going to connect and work. So there's not a lot of hard install around that, like a traditional satellite dish where you have to aim it and point it and get the degrees right and everything.

[00:32:48] So a lot of people – I wouldn't say a lot, but some people have just purchased an RV service like they were strapping it to their camper and using it at home, and it works just fine. Pretty amazing stuff. If you can see the stars at night, you can see stars. Have you ever seen the Starlink satellite, if you will, at night? Yeah, I have. Like after just when they've released them and you get the line across the sky. Yeah, pretty amazing.

[00:33:14] It looks like a snake thing going through the whole trail of lights. It's bizarre. What is the Orson Welles book when the aliens invaded and the whole world goes crazy? World – Yeah, that's it. But it reminds me of that because you see it in the sky, and it's an oddity that you don't see every day, and you're like, oh, my gosh, what is that? And then people are saying different things, and you figure out that it's actually just Starlink. What was it?

[00:33:42] Tom Cruise did the remake. World of Wars? Yeah, but – Yeah. War of the Worlds. War of the Worlds. There we go. Yeah. But, yeah, that's really cool to see that. It is, and it solves a lot of – no longer do I downplay areas that don't have high-speed internet because there's a solution out there.

[00:34:09] But the buyer does need to be aware that, hey, you don't have metro net and charter spectrum as your options. Here's your one. You do have one, and it's a good one, but it's not maybe what you're used to. And here's something, and this just came to my mind as we're talking through all of these little things. We see a lot in market right now, people trying to do real estate themselves.

[00:34:35] And there's a lot of complex issues that are not thought about sometimes unless you're involved in it on a daily basis. And that's a lot of the things we're talking about here. Do you have high-speed internet? Will your car fit in the garage? What's available for your water and sewer and all these sort of things? And what's changing here over the next five to ten years? And that's one reason to definitely have a professional on your side is you buy and sell houses. Absolutely.

[00:35:02] Tell me about what do you have going on right now, listing, selling, buying? What do you have? So we are working a lot with a local builder that is building what I call affordable homes. And these homes are fairly priced at usually about $225,000 up to about $280,000. Staying out of the world of those track builders, really, he's building, even though I did not pitch the plan to him in 2018-19,

[00:35:32] he's building the plan that I was pitching to those home builders at that meeting I was talking about. And it is like giving candy to kids almost because that is such a hot part of the market. You know, they sell quickly. People are delighted to get them because these are homes that people can make the very simple choice of, do I want to go rent that apartment or do I want to own my home? And he hasn't built just one or two. Your builder's got some serious experience behind him. Sure.

[00:36:02] Family runs in his blood. How many homes do you think does he turn out? Well, I can tell you the number I know right now is that there's 23 building permits outstanding right now for homes that he has in some phase of building from stakes in the ground to almost complete. And one of the things that I find so fascinating, a home like this, what size acreage does it usually come on?

[00:36:31] It's not usually a big place. And it depends on where it's at. And believe it or not, it depends on the sewer type system. If you're on septic, you're on half an acre minimum. If it's not sewer, then it could be down to 0.20 or a quarter acre or something of that nature. Correct. But his are set up to where an owner could add on to it down the road and increase the value of what you have there.

[00:37:00] It's, yes, you're in it for super low cost. And it might not be the size home that fits your family as it grows, but you certainly could add on to it and grow. I feel like the homes you've shown me that he's done, absolutely. So let's talk for just a minute on that. And it grows in other ways too. And this is one of the things that people really need to think about in real estate.

[00:37:22] So imagine you're a young family or just a person starting out life and you're looking at getting an apartment. And it's $1,500 a month at this point in time or whatever the number is. And we sold a house that this builder built in 2022 for $179,000. It is the exact same house that I listed last week for $235,000.

[00:37:53] So you're looking at a $55,000 increase in the price of that house in three years. So that person could go out and sell their house and theoretically walk away with $45,000 or $50,000 cash in three years that they then could turn around and buy a much larger house with or they could continue to invest it in their family or in whatever they wanted to keep it in their housing. And if they would have made the decision to rent that house instead,

[00:38:21] they would have exactly $0 to show right there. Correct. And being in a highly sought-after area, as we go back to this list, Hickory's in the top 10 for inbound places. It's kind of like you're owning Amazon or Microsoft or Alphabet, NVIDIA at an early stage. And it's certainly – we don't know what tomorrow holds.

[00:38:50] We've all seen – we've each – I've been in this thing almost 25 years. You've been in it almost as long, directly and indirectly. It's amazing the potential, what you just have described for how much – what he was building a home for two years ago, three years ago? Three years ago. Three years ago. To see that increase.

[00:39:17] We are an area that is – we have limited product. When you have a limited product, there is value to be had. We're a highly sought-after area. That's not going to change in the near future. Sure, it is a wise move, indeed, to own your own home. But the national average, I believe, for home appreciation is around just under 3%.

[00:39:43] It's like 2.8% after you've paid your taxes, your upkeep, everything that they kind of figured is what it costs to own a home. So when you're in a highly sought-after area, those numbers go out the window, and it can be a great move, especially on the low end, to purchase your home and see what happens. Well, and that also alludes to the question of – that you and I and every agent out there always get is the very simple, how's the market?

[00:40:13] Well, the market is a very complex beast, and you have to look at the very fine details of it. But – and, you know, your everyday is selling on Lake James. You sell multimillion-dollar properties that have their own market. My everyday – and it's more than what we do – but my everyday is in this affordable market, and there are two different tales on those things. You know, this affordable market will always be there. And that's one of the things that drives that market.

[00:40:41] And the reason it will always be there is because there will be some government program to help support that part of the market to put people in their first homes. And it's down payment assistance. It's good rates on loans. It's whatever it is. But there's always a government support program of some sort in that affordable market, and it will always be there. And when those are not there, guess what? Your investors will buy them and rent them back to people.

[00:41:08] So there's – I mean, it's taken care of on both sides of a good and bad market. You can always sell that home with no issue. Driving around – Hickory is a little unique, too. I think there are so many undeveloped pieces of property around town. You drive around Charlotte. You drive around Greensboro. You are not going to find a track of land that hadn't been touched.

[00:41:38] You're really getting into, hey, that house is – that house that is sitting on two and a half, three acres. Those are disappearing. Those houses are being bought, torn down, and three or four homes being stuck on these vertical lots in unusual ways. And it seems to work. It's not my cup of tea. But that's what's going on in these towns. Hickory, you drive around, and there are tracts of land undeveloped all over this place. Northwest Hickory, Southwest, Southeast, Northwest. It does not matter.

[00:42:09] It's amazing how many opportunities are out there. We're nowhere close to scratching the bottom on that. And, again, we love our little town. Towns grow. That's just part of it. And it is going to happen. Hopefully it happens in a wise and steady manner. But it is happening, and there are tons of opportunities, and we are going to have affordable housing for a very, very long time here.

[00:42:38] I don't see that changing. Not in our lifetime. So let's take all what we just said, because we talked a lot about the actual Hickory area, the city of Hickory right there. That was a lot of talk about what's happening right here. We can take that, and we can apply it to Lenore. The same things are happening in Lenore. They've done the downtown renovations. They're building the greenways. They're doing the same things, and they're having the same growth potential. They have Darius. They have Darius. Darius is fabulous.

[00:43:04] I'm kind of actually jealous of their fast food selection up there. And restaurants. They've got an amazing selection of restaurants there that we don't have here to some degree. And then they've done the same thing, and actually Morganton may be a half step ahead of us on the downtown renovation. They've got a really cool outdoor amphitheater downtown they host music events at. They've got the Fonda Flora Trail. They've got a lot of things going on in that environment, too.

[00:43:31] And a good downtown cultural thing going on, arts and all that sort of stuff, that they were probably a half step or even a step ahead of us. You know, they had directional signs around town like we do now before we do in Hickory. So all of this area is growing kind of on the same pace, but just a little step apart from each other. Yeah. Morganton has been a jewel. I'd sell it like James. It's the reason why people move there.

[00:44:01] Morganton and Marion are kind of the tale of two cities. Marion's stuck in 1955 thinking that textiles and furniture are going to come roaring back. In fact, Morganton got ahead of it and was like, hey, we need to diversify. Let's bring in a whole bunch of different companies other than just furniture. And they have thrived. They've done great. Marion is coming along.

[00:44:26] When I pulled up there in 2003 for the first time, they are quite a bit different city than they are today, which is great. But Morganton has been a big leader. The festival is every single weekend, you know, pretty much starting from the summer all the way to Thanksgiving. It's a beautiful, wonderful downtown that's not just for the people that grew up there. It's not shut off to, quote, unquote, you know, the born here. It's everybody.

[00:44:55] Hickory's done the same thing, was a little bit behind them. But I think we're going to catch them and move past them with all the things we have to offer. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. So we have talked about our great little town for, what, 45 minutes now, I guess. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think people are probably falling asleep or I don't know. We really appreciate our listener. Yep. Ashley, I think is her name, out there.

[00:45:24] She's a captive audience. Yeah. We've really covered some great stuff. We look forward to getting deeper into some other stuff out there in future podcasts, talking to some other agents who want to talk about tales from the sale. And thank you so much. And I think we still need to talk about the lakes. Yeah. That's another show, too. That's another show, too. Absolutely. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day.