Almost everything in the local residential real estate market is taking a little longer to sell these days, said Drew Pittman, a broker and Realtor with The Beatty Pittman Team at Intracoastal Realty.

That’s likely a sign of a market in transition, Pittman said Wednesday during the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association’s Broker Panel Breakfast. Currently, Brunswick County, for example, has about four and a half months of inventory – that indicates a fairly average market, Pittman said.

He's also seeing some signs that could be indicators of a slowdown. The first is that buyers tend to steer away from projects outside of established hubs.

“Those outreaching projects tend to suffer a little bit more because if I can buy something just a little bit closer to town or a little bit closer to the beach, I might sacrifice a couple square feet or I might sacrifice brand new for a resale,” Pittman said. “I see that happening a little bit already.”

The second sign is townhomes and condos sitting on the market for a longer period, especially when there isn’t a significant gap between the cost of a townhome unit and a single-family home. 

Pittman said the luxury market remains strong and noted that some pockets of the local market are moving faster than others, including homes priced from $300,000 to $350,000, $550,000 to $600,000 and $800,000 to $900,000, he said.

Another panelist, Brad Hunter, vice president-director of new homes with Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Advantage, agreed that selling townhomes in the current market has proved difficult.

“The biggest product type we’re having a challenge with is townhomes,” he said, “and I think it's regardless of where the location is, townhomes are very challenging.”

Hunter said he’s seeing more resale housing coming onto the market this year, while the residential market continues to boom in Brunswick County. He said that out of every new home sold, about half are located in Brunswick County.

“We’re still very unlevered on inventory across the market,” Hunter added. “Rates obviously have been the biggest challenge driving a lot of things in the markets.”

Panelist Michael Lopez, owner of Alpha Mortgage Corporation, said interest rates are currently caught between the Trump Administration’s desire to lower them and the Federal Reserve’s desire to keep rates steady. While it’s unclear which approach will come out on top, Lopez said incentives like rate buy-downs can play a big role in selling a home in today’s market.

“When you go below I would say $700,000 … and on down, Realtor incentives, or just incentives in general, really carry a lot of weight,” Lopez said. “(Buyers) are more interested in the payment and the interest rate that they're going to carry than they are in getting a reduction in the price on that home.”

Hunter said while he’s seen success with incentives, some in the market are reaching “incentive fatigue” as they try to make sales under ever-tightening margins. In addition to incentives, buyers today are also looking for amenities like pools, pickleball courts and more.

“Now, we're competing with more new communities that have certain amenity packages, and we're seeing those come online,” he said, “so the communities that don't have it are struggling in some of the absorptions in those areas.”

Panelist Luke Waddell, a Wilmington City Council member and owner of Cadence Realty, said as more people move into the Wilmington area, it’s important to balance growth with preserving the existing character and quality of life.

Waddell said he would like to see the city lean into quality of life issues and focus on affordability. He sees infrastructure as the city’s biggest hurdle to continued growth.

“We have very old infrastructure; we're a very old city,” he said. “We have not invested in that infrastructure properly, in my opinion, over the last couple of decades, and we're starting to see that where we get to points where we have to replace this infrastructure, and it's wildly expensive.”

Waddell also pointed to the investment in the downtown area, including the ongoing leasing of space in the city-owned Skyline Center, plans for a new hotel in the northern downtown and the potential sale of an undeveloped tract at 1021 N. Front St.

“We've got some significant investment happening downtown that I think certainly bodes well for the overall markets,” he said, “both in the city of Wilmington, county of New Hanover and beyond.”