Pittsboro Real Estate Broker Eric Andrews has had a surge in calls from people in NYC & Jersey who have had it with the harsh winters and crowded city life and are ready to move to the countryside in North Carolina. Even people in Holly Springs, Raleigh & Cary have been looking at more rural areas such as Silk Hope, Siler City, Bear Creek and Bonlee as they’re all still under an hour from Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. It will be interesting to see how areas change once COVID-19 starts to settle down.
Speaker 1: I haven’t actually witnessed anybody driving down from New York or New Jersey. They probably shouldn’t right now, but I will tell you, I’m getting a lot of calls. Because of Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, all our stuff is available. Those people are looking heavily at North Carolina right now. I’m not sure if they know of Pittsburgh or they think they know Pittsburgh or Chatham County or whatever, but they know North Carolina and so much so that even Trump mentioned to the people of New York and New Jersey, stay out of North Carolina and Florida.
Speaker 2: Well, me and you are both from New York too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We’re from New York. We’re from here, but we did it a long time ago and we’re from upstate. There’s all these unexpected paradigm shifts that what we’re going to be after COVID 19 as to compared to what we were before. There’s been a lot of urbanization of America here lately, and a lot of young people wanting to move to the cities, and a lot of people thinking that rental is better than owning, and I’m getting a bunch of calls. I’m getting calls even from people in Cary and Holly Springs and Raleigh that says, that’s it, I want to farm. I want to be out in the middle of nowhere. They’re calling about Bear Creek, Bonlee, Bennett, Silk Hope, Siler City, Goldstone, that’s a little bit further out and everything.
Pittsburgh’s going to be fine, but Pittsburgh might be another Cary. So that’s that whole question of whether or not we’re going to have sprawl. Sprawl’s not a good thing, but I do think there’s going to be a lot of people. They’re going to have to sell their stuff in New York and New Jersey, and from what I’ve heard, they have really good pensions in New York and in New Jersey, but they are looking at North Carolina and they’re looking at acreage properties and they’re looking at rural properties. I think one of the shifts that we’ll have when this all blows over is I think we’re going to see more people moving out to the country.
