PENDER COUNTY
PENDER County was in the right front
quadrant of the landfalling hurricane, typi-cally
the most devastating. Pender is such a
large and diverse county, incorporating
east of U.S. 17 the barrier islands of Topsail Beach and
Surf City. Also lying east of 1-40 is the Holly Shelter
Game Land. East of I-40, U.S. 117 runs by Burgaw
and Rocky Point. The lower section is bisected by
N.C. 210. The top by N.C. 53 running diagonally,
Maple Hill to the north, Atkinson in the west.
“Topsail overall got hit pretty hard. More than
half the homes were damaged,” says Nick Phillips,
who resides there.
Randall Williams lives along Scotts Hill Loop.
“The big story is in west Pender. A few weeks
ago, I came down Highway 53 and I was astounded
at the devastation,” Williams said in mid-January.
“There are people there who just lost everything.”
In rural areas like Burgaw, houses out of the flood
zone still had a lot of water damage from rain runoff,
called ponding. Margaret and Eddie Collins had
three feet of ponding in their houses at their Burgaw-area
farm. The water was contaminated from the
overflowing septic systems and hog farm waste.
“The market in general, despite the storm in
Pender County, under $300,000 is very much a
seller’s market, not a buyer’s market,” Kirk Pugh of
Keller Williams says.
The top sale in Pender County was 230 North
Anderson Boulevard on Topsail Beach, sitting on a
.73 acre, high-bluff lot, with 130 feet of waterfront,
bulk-headed with a dock and boatlifts. The house
has 4,886sf on three levels and sold in May for
$2.165 million.
The No. 2 sale was 1212 South Shore Drive, Surf
City, and closed in October. This 2,868sf home was
oceanfront new construction on Topsail Island.
As elsewhere, inventory is on the minds of
Realtors there, or rather the lack thereof.
“There is inventory being built, but we are not
building fast enough and there’s not enough supply
to meet the demand,” Pugh says. “A market equilib-rium
is where neither the buyer nor seller has a dis-tinct
advantage. You should have about six months’
PHOTOS COURTESY LANDMARK SOTHEBY’S INTERNATIONAL REALTY
supply of inventory at any given time.”
Looking at a December absorption table for
Pender County, Pugh says, “It’s not until you get
to a $500,000 price point where you get a buyer
advantage.” 230 North Anderson Boulevard was the top sale in Pender County, selling for $2.2 million.
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WBM february 2019