I'm blown away regularly by the great value of Kure Beach homes for sale. In my previous market where my team still operates and I generate business there to hand off such as Virginia foreclosures, one could buy a $380,000 1 bedroom Clarendon condo facing the wall of another condo. The selling point was location of course and being in an urban village where you can walk to everything. But for the same price you can get oceanfront condos with a 2nd bedroom in Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach or Kure Beach. It comes down to your priorities.

Latest and Greatest on Kure Beach Real Estate

Inventory Drops

And sold prices are 96% of list prices for a few months now. The next thing to write about will be days on market trends and number of transactions.... Stay tuned

It's been a couple of years in the making really with a ton of variables and life to contend with. 6 little kiddos makes it that much more distracting to pull off. But I'm happy to announce that a new IDX market has been added to my main website JustNewListings.com after which JustNewListings.com Realty, Inc. is named. With another IDX custom work needs to be done and is underway. But some landing pages are up and running and need to be indexed and socially loved :)

Focus Neighborhoods in the New Market include Landfall, Porters Neck & Wrightsville Beach NC

The more I study Wilmington real estate the more I'm loving it seriously. I thought I'd focus on a few neighborhoods for blogging...but I find myself wanting to add more and more tags for niche markets to write about. I've learned in Northern Virginia not to spread myself too thin for niches to write about...but I did anyway. And I see it happening again.

If the average Figure Eight Island home for sale costs $2,000,000 then why not add that as a tag to blog about eh?

With 21 sold homes in the Landfall neighborhood 28405 of Wilmington North Carolina one wonders what is happening to the local real estate market. That is 370% more sales than 15 months ago and going back further the difference is even more extreme. Those who have read this Landfall homes category of my REW blog know that the market is strong and on its way up. The best time to buy there was a good year ago. Wait another year and you'll be sorry.

Everybody is waiting to see what the new market data tells us when the numbers are available. Was it a fluke or will the Landfall sales stay higher than before?

Another Trend--Higher List Prices in Landfall

Inventory is lower and with so many home just removed from the market it figures that demand and competition will be that much more in play. There are currently 14 Landfall homes under contract right now. If that many close this month it will be another huge month of sold homes.

We are in the spring market of Wrightsville Beach NC. This is when new homes for sale are listing most frequently. So let's take a look at the past 2 weeks and see what we can learn from the listings. For this exercise I'll examine single family homes. A sidenote that is interesting is that on the WRAR -- local Wilmington NC area MLS--single family homes are referred to as stick built modular. I have no idea how they made something so simple that complicated :)

Observations from Recent Houses in Wrightsville Beach North Carolina

1. the average living area or square feet is 2207
2. The average list price is $913,000
3. Almost half of the new listings from past 2 weeks are already under contract -- in Wilmington NC it is described often as Active Contingent or Active Due Diligence instead of Contingent with No Kickout (CONT NKO) as it is in Northern Virginia. So the market is strong again I bet is has been years since it homes went out under contract that fast.
4. all of the homes had water views either of the Intracoastal Waterway or the ocean. Some of them also have what is referred to as a Sound View--meaning you can hear the ocean.

My closest colleagues across the country know I'm headed into new territory to open up an office in Wilmington NC adding a 2nd REW IDX to my main website JustNewListings.com. But with that I've started a couple of new wordpress sites from scratch--one of the reasons to force myself to learn to work the WP potential that can be applied to a multitude of goals either commercial, personal or for activism, etc.

I did a little test and adding a couple sentences about Wilmington real estate on JustNewListings.com and sure enough they ranked page 2 in google immediately which tells me I can expect good things when i start adding content regularly and intensely to that domain combined with the high powered REW IDX. I do think I'll be able to be a player online in the new market fast with the website. It might even bother some local old time realtors who have done nothing with their sites for years yet still rest high up in google's rankings.

One of my strategies with a new website is to set up landing pages that spider out to other pages on the topic such as foreclosures or condos. Here's a pic of what ended up being #1 in google for Northern Virginia Foreclosures for at least a year; I didn't realize it at the time so have no idea how long it was going on.

So each of those links is goes to an internal page that also has "city" and "foreclosure" in the URL structure, etc. I really think google likes such powerhouse pages that coherently direct people exactly where they want to go. Another example would be having a page for city state condos for sale....And on that page you would have a table of of keyword links to the individual condos in that city. Each condo gets is own landing page that is optimized all the way. I've had good success with that too with an Ultimate Guide to Buying a Clarendon Condo blog post that had a table linking out to 20 different condos.

Adding a Table to Porters Neck Homes for Sale Page

After creating the landing page for Porters Neck neighborhood on the new site (see related link below) I was ranking around 30. Now it's at 12 with a couple of inbound links. But google hasn't indexed the page for a couple of weeks. So now this table is being added and I expect google when it's indexed again to throw up into the top 5 asap. Am I kidding myself? I hope not and will update you in the comments section soon. The challeng is getting crawled again when you're a new site. I viewed the cache on my wilmington real estate blog and it's 3 weeks old missing 5 blog posts. Son of a gun! Where's the respect, G?

I know so many of you can relate to this journey for influence and rankings.

so each of those

links to a niche community landing page. I doubt anyone will search those hyper hyper community pages within Porters Neck in Wilmington but it helps the main landing page a lot--at least that's my anticipation.

Stay tuned and maybe we total amatuers can learn from each other! :)

In any Wilmington real estate market you are going to have sought after school districts when viewing homes for sale. Sometimes it's out in the open and even in the MLS remarks, "sought after." Other times it's locally known and somewhat unspoken but it's there regardless. Everybody knows what the more prized school districts are.

Wilmington NC High Schools--Hoggard High School vs Ashley High

In the high school arena the most sought after Wilmington NC high school is John T. Hoggard High School. The Hoggard High homes cost $680,000. A competing Ashley High the average price was just $417,000.

So that's a 38% premium to live in the school district. And turning towards the elementary school arena....

Comparing Wilmington NC Elementary Schools -- Parsley vs. Carolina Beach vs. Holly Tree

There are several prized elementary schools in the Wilmington NC region. The most often referenced by locals and home buyers alike is Parsley Elementary school.

As you can see the homes for sale in Parsley Elementary cost 25% more than Holly Tree Elementary.

You can see from this photo that test scores are top notch at Parsley in the 90%+ for most subjects and even 95% for some.

For several years North Carolina has been the top retirement destination for baby boomers along with South Carolina. It's like Florida is no longer cool anymore and much of it is overrun with big box retail centers or overcrowded.

"In fact, South and North Carolina now top the preferences of baby boomers who will be retiring in the next decade, according to a recent survey from homebuilder Del Webb." (source: TopRetirements.com and on other websites as well)

What to Expect When Searching for Wrightsville Beach Condo

Whether you're actively engaged in your search for beach condo or planning in advance a year or two it's worth having a realistic view of your condo purchasing journey. For some that journey can be a 2 year process waiting for exactly the right Wrightsville beach condo with the right view to come on the market or a quickie 2x times out looking at condos for sale and going under contract on a dream home. The more nichey the search the longer it potentially takes. For example if you not only need a particular location and view and at least 1500 sq ft for example it's likely to take much longer and require you to pounce on the opportunity when it comes as opposed to negotiating hard and risk losing it to a competing offer. You're not the only one looking for that dream retirement condo in Wrightsville Beach, NC.

Expectations-- Square feet, # of listings, median sales price, days on market, water views for Beach condos

Median Square Feet: for 1 level condos (1 floor living) the average is about 800 sq ft. But if you include multi-level condos you get much more sq ft in Wrightsville Beach

# of new listings each month: in both February and March of 2012 there were 12 new listings each month coming on the market. However if you only count 1 level homes the number drops to about 7 new listings each month. So the # of homes available in your price range and desired square feet is likely to be about 1 new listing each month. this could take awhile.... :(

Average Sales price: Prices have stabilized in recent months with a median about $600,000 but a year ago at same time prices were dropping sharply.

Days on market: The average time to sell a condo is about 6 months....However in March 2012 the days on market was only 104. So is this a new trend for much quicker condo sales in Wrightsville beach? Time will tell.

Ocean Views: Almost all condos have ocean views that list in the area.

Most "popular" condominium in Wrightsville Beach: Shell Island Resort

I put popular in quotation marks because it has the most sales--but this is likely due to it being a larger condominium with more units than the others not necessarily due to being especially sought after.

So a couple of years ago I bailed on the REW blog as it seemed there would be no dofollow links allowed. Maybe I misunderstood or maybe the policy evolved a bit since the initial announcement. I've learned a lot about SEO for Great Falls Virginia and Wilmington NC real estate since then. There's nothing like moving into a new market to force you to start over eh? You look at your options and do consumer research and decide what is most cost effective and efficient for getting leads to work with. And sometimes what is most cost effective is also most expensive. As they say in real estate one sale pays for it all :) That's the favorite line of any vendor in the industry.

My Current Experience Tapping into REW google juice for the Wilmington real estate market

In entering the new market in Wilmington NC I bought 2 cheapo template wordpress sites to begin adding content to. One was the classic AgentPress site that left me mad as heck....I thought I was getting a shiny website and all I got was a frame that I could not make look like the product that was marketed to us all. That one is for the Kure Beach real estate market. So now I know way too much about real estate websites in general....

I've written on Active Rain a lot the past couple of years since leaving my REW blog. Their localism product which is like a tag to place your hyperlocal articles in is useful--particularly to build links to your "real" website or blog. But other than that I've seen how the google juice at Active Rain is seriously small--negligible. Which brings me to this recent reminder ...in the moment NOW as we speak.

Google loves REW and gives it much authority when it links to websites. I know of nothing that compares and this week was a mindblowing example.

One of my new sites is http://wilmington-real-estate.com. I started blogging on it 2 weeks ago and before that had some painful learning about subdomains, etc. I was getting hardly any rankings for some prett nichey writing even after some Active Rain pieces that linked back. Then I whipped out my REW six shooter blog that I remembered was effective but I was just rusty on what it could do.

2 blog posts later on REW and look what rankings I've got for "landfall short sales wilmington".

It was only after 2 articles on my REW blog--very original with photos, etc.--that my website got bumped up big time for the search. And even the blog post on rew placed #10 immediately while Active Rain pieces chill at #28-30.

One tip is have pass through links to your REW site that is in turn linking to your main blog or website. For example I wrote a piece on Active Rain and it's main link was to the REW blog post to give it more credence as that was in my interest. So yeah...send links to REW...not just from REW to your site. It's a big deal from what I can tell. Of course the other tip is not to start of shooting for city state real estate but go sideways a bit using condo buildings, urban villages, popular neighborhoods or foreclosures or short sales within any of the above.

I have no problem sharing the knowledge as I haven't found 1 blogger in Wilmington that knows anything about it unlike N VA and DC where it's fierce competition by soooo many agents.

So goodbye Active Rain. Hello REW it's good to see you again.

Next Steps for Entering the Wilmington North carolina real estate market

1. get the REW IDX on my primary site--it will be the 2nd MLS on my site so that will be interesting to see where that leads-- 2 separate IDXs on JustNewListings.com. It's just the beginning. More are coming soon.
2. write original blog posts that link to specific blog tags or landing pages on my wilmington-real-estate.com site and on the new Wilmington section of JustNewListings.com where there will also be landing pages --custom work begins next week for it. Based on the past week it's going to be exciting.

I"ll be in touch. :)

Which zip codes are performing best in areas such as Landfall, Porters Neck, Masonboro?

Real quick let's look at the Wilmington real estate market trends for different zip codes in the area. Like any market there are profound differences in price, ambience, hipness, history, etc. among the different zip codes. Some of these zip codes are generically referred to as a particular neighborhood even though there are many other neighborhoods in the zip code. For example in referring to 28411 one often mentions "the porters neck" homes for sale market. 28405 is generically referred to as the Landfall homes for sale area.

Which Wilmington real estate zip codes sells fastest--28412

The 28412 zip code in Wilmington NC has the lowest days on market at 183--about 6 months. Contrast that with 28405 -- landfall homes for sale -- with 235 days on market. The Landfall real estate listings take 28% longer to sell. Why? I won't speak on that too much except to say that it is normal for less expensive markets to sell more quickly. And the median sales price for Landfall is 375,000 and the median price for 28412 is $213,000. That is a profound difference. The latter zip code has been crushed with foreclosures for years more so than 28405.

Which Wilmington Zip Codes Performed (Appreciated) Best Past Year?

So which zip codes performed best in terms of market value the past year in the Wilmington area? What neighborhood did prices rise the most or fall the most? The graphic makes the answer to both questions clear.

Landfall homes (28405) is the winner for increasing home values, and Masonboro (28409) is the loser in 2011-early 2012.

All the zip codes went up a bit which is a great sign for the local market. And as I blogged about recently for Masonboro...can the prices get any lower? I don't think so which means it's an amazing time to buy investment properties and rent them out!

I'll go into detail soon on the real estate market in Landfall--an amazing neighborhood of homes for sale $350,000-4,000,000. It's huge with tons of amenities and it's best feature...7 minutes to Wrightsville beach :)

Hi, I'm Jay Seville, the owner of justnewlistings.com realty in Northern Virginia, in Washington DC, and shortly opening in Wilmington, North Carolina. Right now, in Wilmington.

I'm temporarily hanging my license at coastal properties and I wanted to give you an update on my Landfall tag, of my real estate blog. I'm purely a buyer agent, I love negotiating, I love saving people money, and one of the areas that I'm working, and becoming a niche expert on, is Landfall. And I wanted to give you a little window into my mentality as a buyer agent. You know, I'm used to doing with my team 36 transactions a year in Northern Virginia, which probably puts me in the top one half of one percent of agents, and especially of buyer agents, its rare for a buyer agent to do more than, perhaps, ten transactions.

So, with Landfall, I will be writing articles about it regularly, I will be ranked, when you Google Landfall homes for sale, Wilmington. Ill be ranked, eventually I believe, at number one for the Real Estate blog or when I put the listings on justnewlistings.com. Right now, if you Google Landfall homes for sale, short sales, Wilmington, my Wilmington-realestate.com site is probably number 17, number 19, and I just started. So, I'm going to be a powerhouse presence within there shortly, and my mentality for this is, I dont go into Landfall with some sort of worshipful mentality of the neighborhood, because its sought after, where I'm immediately respecting the listing prices of these so called listing agents. Thats sort of how it was in Great Falls, Virginia. The average listing price there at 1.4 million, okay?

Read the rest of this at my Landfall real estate blog.