North Carolina Is an Attorney State: Why an Attorney Is Involved in Your Real Estate Closing

Featured Advice

Buying a Fixer-Upper: How to Tell a Good Deal From a Money Pit

Buying a Fixer-Upper: How to Tell a Good Deal From a Money Pit

Buying an Investment Property on Oak Island, NC: What to Check Before You Buy

Buying an Investment Property on Oak Island, NC: What to Check Before You Buy

Selling a Vacation Home: What's Different From Selling Your Primary Residence

The primary-residence tax exclusion usually doesn't apply, existing bookings don't vanish, and buyers split into lifestyle and investor camps with different math.

You’ll learnWhy a second home usually falls outside the primary-residence capital gains exclusion, and how past depreciation can be recaptured at sale

Home Maintenance

Septic System Maintenance for Coastal Homeowners: What Most People Get Wrong

How often a tank really needs pumping, the warning signs worth a call, and why a high coastal water table can back up a drain field that worked fine last year.

You’ll learnHow a septic tank separates sludge, scum and effluent, and why solids left to accumulate eventually clog the drain field soil

Buying a Home

Buying a Fixer-Upper: How to Tell a Good Deal From a Money Pit

Buying Sight Unseen: A Long-Distance Buyer's Guide to Purchasing a Home From Out of State

Which conditions lower the risk of a sight-unseen purchase, and which ones — older homes, waived contingencies — raise it

New Construction vs. Resale: How the Buying Process Really Differs

Why the sales rep in a builder's model home works for the builder, and why a builder's agent-registration policy is worth asking about before you tour

Home Ownership

See also: Insurance · Home Maintenance

Septic System Maintenance for Coastal Homeowners: What Most People Get Wrong

How a septic tank separates sludge, scum and effluent, and why solids left to accumulate eventually clog the drain field soil

Landlord Insurance for Rental Properties: How It's Different From a Homeowners Policy

Why a homeowners policy is written around owner-occupancy, and how leaving a carrier uninformed of the change can be treated as misrepresentation

Exterior Paint and Caulking: When It's Maintenance vs. When It's Cosmetic

Why chalking and fading alone are largely cosmetic, while cracking, peeling or bubbling paint means the surface is no longer sealed

Selling a Home

Selling a Vacation Home: What's Different From Selling Your Primary Residence

Why a second home usually falls outside the primary-residence capital gains exclusion, and how past depreciation can be recaptured at sale

Selling As-Is: What It Really Means and When It Makes Sense

Why an as-is sale is a position on repairs rather than a waiver of the seller's duty to disclose known material defects

Days on Market: What It Really Signals to Buyers and Sellers

What days on market measures: the market's reaction to a specific price at a specific moment, not a grade on the home

Southern Coastal NC

Buying an Investment Property on Oak Island, NC: What to Check Before You Buy

Calabash, NC: What Buyers Should Know

Why Calabash is a creek and waterway town built around a working seafood waterfront rather than an oceanfront beach town

The Benefits of Living in Southport, NC Year-Round: Why Full-Time Residents Get the Best of the Town

What the roughly October-to-April off-season gives Southport residents: a calm waterfront, open restaurant tables, and downtown returned to locals

Brunswick County Property Taxes and Insurance: What to Expect

How a Brunswick County tax bill combines assessed value, the county rate, and a municipal rate when the home sits inside a town