Rents are skyrocketing, and while the labor market is strong, salaries are not keeping pace with inflationary pressures combined with ever increasing rents. Whether you're looking to buy for the first time and saving for a downpayment or those looking to sell and then rent, the challenge of renting is unstable housing  costs. Ideally you could budget a specific amount of money per month for housing however volatile rental costs are making this extremely challenging. Below we review the state of the market and offer some common sense ways to stabilize housing costs through homeownership.

State of the Market


According to the ATTOM Data 2022 Rental Affordability Report, owning a home is more affordable than renting in the majority of the…

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Are you part of the 19% of home buyers that are waiving inspections? We would like to speak directly to this audience in The Triangle. As a buyer of an existing home or a new construction property, a home inspection is critical to protecting your interests. We know buyers are burnt out and sellers are not going to likely consider any inspection related requests for consideration and that buyers are currently forced to accept this or lose many tens of thousands of dollars should they decide to terminate their offer due to what they've learned from a quality home inspection, we still believe there's never a good reason time to forgo home inspections, even if it's just for your informational purposes.

What is the risk of forgoing inspections on…

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We have been experiencing constricted inventory for nearly three years here in the Research Triangle area and buyers are becoming increasingly anxious as mortgage rate increases are on their minds. Doing everything they can to win multiple offer situations from making sight unseen offers, waiving appraisal contingencies, making their offer "As-Is", and granting seller possessions after closing for free. Simply being truly "Pre-Approved" or offering cash is standard practice and expected. However none of these accomplish much if you are outbid. The best strategic advice for buyers in looking in the Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh NC area, is to shop below budget. Here are the reasons why.

Bidding Up

It can be very deflating news to read that you…

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You can't watch TV or read the news without wondering with rising global temperatures what the impact of weather, storms and droughts can be expected and what the implications are for our homes.

Should I move?

According to a report by Realtor.com, 78% of buyers took incidences of natural disaster into account when choosing where to buy their home. Further, it reported that 34% of existing homeowners have considered selling their houses and moving to a new location because of the changing climate. While we do not need to go into the devastation of the fires in 2021, we know that many of our new transplants from Silicon Valley came here for a combination or reasons including the threat of fires and drought. You cannot completely remove your risk…

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