The question I get asked most often: “Should I buy rural North Carolina land now or wait for prices to come down? The honest answer is that other than several, albeit severe, temporary price corrections in the last say 100 years, prices for real estate always continue to rise. As a land broker specializing in rural North Carolina land sales, and a long time land investor and land manager, I am in the same boat as everybody else now with respect to land prices. They simply are getting hard to stomach. For a variety of reasons we have seen an unprecedented appreciation in land prices since the covid era of around 2000. How in world do you convince yourself that these prices will continue? The answer to that lies the bigger problem.
In most areas of the county, certainly in the South and other rural areas, land prices have risen dramatically in the last five years. The simple reason is demand. The reasons for the increased demand however, are multiple and much more severe than anytime in history. The bottom line is that in North Carolina and really, most other rural areas of the country, land is under siege. Rural land is now the “it” thing to own. The personal desire to own a little slice of paradise is just one of the reasons the demand is through the roof. The original question of “Should I buy land now or wait for prices to come down?” is not really the right question now. Barring a major economic disaster the demand now for rural land is so wide, varied and deep that prices will never come back down in my opinion. But that is not the real issue.
The real concern with respect to buying rural land is not the pricing. It’s the fact that land tracts are quickly disappearing, at a rate we have never seen. We are not getting to the point where there just will not be any land left to buy in the next 20 years. Affordability is not the issue. Availability is the issue.
I never really thought I would see a time where rural North Carolina land would start disappearing. Sure there has always been growth but there has ALWAYS been rural areas of North Carolina that everybody thought would pretty much remain rural. Those areas are under siege now. The furthest flung areas of North Carolina are now suddenly (well since 2000) in demand in a big way. When the most rural areas of North Carolina are being developed then that is warning sign of things to come. North Carolina is a big state. And used to be very rural outside of about several larger metro areas and a handful of smaller population centers. The rest of the state was known for agriculture, timber and hunting. That was the demand. Not anymore. These rural areas are quickly disappearing.
As bad as I hate this advice, I strongly feel that if you are ever going to be interested in starting a land legacy of your own, whether buying a homestead, a timber investment or a rural retreat or hunting land, that now is the time to do it. At a very minimum now is the time start planning for it. Rural land is disappearing. Fast. We are losing our rural character. We are losing clean air, clean water and clear views across the North Carolina landscape. Unfortunately, this will only get worse with the changing world around us. Let us know if we can help you in any way with your land legacy dream.
Let’s keep North Carolina green.