Twelve months ago, the prevailing expectation in NC real estate was that falling mortgage rates would unlock a new wave of buyer demand and free up sellers who had been locked in by low-rate mortgages they did not want to give up. The rate story in 2025 was more complicated than that. Here is an honest accounting of what happened in North Carolina real estate this year, what it meant for sellers, and what 2026 looks like from where we stand.

Was 2025 a good year to sell a house in North Carolina?

For updated homes in strong submarkets (North Raleigh, Cary, South Charlotte), 2025 was a reasonable year to sell, with adequate demand and modest price appreciation. For homes needing significant work, rural properties, landlord portfolios with problem tenants, or properties in flood-affected Western NC, the conventional listing path remained difficult. Sellers who went direct to cash buyers in those categories consistently closed faster, with less friction, than those who held out for a retail listing.

The Rate Story: Relief That Did Not Quite Arrive

The Federal Reserve completed four rate cuts in the 2024–2025 cycle, bringing the federal funds rate down to approximately 4.25–4.50% by early 2025. The expectation heading into the year was that 30-year mortgage rates would follow toward the 5.5–6.0% range, which would meaningfully loosen buyer demand and bring sellers off the sidelines.

It did not work out that cleanly. The spread between the federal funds rate and the 30-year mortgage rate, which had been historically wide since 2022, compressed somewhat but stayed elevated. By year-end 2025, most 30-year conventional mortgages were pricing in the 6.3–6.5% range. Better than the 7.5% peak of late 2023, but not the stimulus many sellers and buyers had anticipated.

The practical effect: buyer pools are larger than they were at the peak rate environment, but buyers are still dealing with payments that represent significant monthly burdens on NC’s median income. Affordability-constrained buyers remain on the sidelines. Move-up buyers who bought at 2.75–3.5% in 2020 and 2021 are still reluctant to trade into a 6.4% rate on a larger loan.

The NAR Settlement: A Structural Shift Now Fully Integrated

The NAR commission settlement, which took effect in mid-2024, finished integrating into the NC market over the course of 2025. The practical changes: buyer’s agent compensation is no longer automatically offered in MLS listings. Buyers must negotiate compensation agreements with their agents separately, before touring homes. Some buyers, particularly those who are financially sophisticated or purchasing investment properties, are opting to navigate transactions without buyer’s agents.

For sellers in competitive markets, this means somewhat less friction on the buyer representation side. Cash transactions, which were already operating without buyer financing contingencies, benefit even further from the reduced complexity. A cash sale with no agent representing the buyer, which describes many of our transactions, is now a fairly standard transaction structure rather than an exception.

The longer-term effect of the settlement on buyer agent behavior and compensation norms is still playing out. In 2025, most consumer-facing buyers still engaged agents; the settlement’s impact was more visible in investor and direct-purchase transactions.

Triangle Market: Inventory Normalizing, Demand Still Present

The Raleigh and Triangle market in 2025 saw the most significant inventory normalization since 2019. Wake County moved from approximately 0.9 months of supply in late 2023 to roughly 2.5 months by Q4 2025. That is still below the 4-month threshold that real estate economists traditionally define as a “balanced” market, meaning sellers still hold more pricing power than buyers in aggregate, but the shift is real and sellers felt it.

Multiple-offer situations became less common on mid-range homes. Days on market stretched. Price reductions, rare in 2021 and 2022, reappeared in the data for homes that were overpriced at listing or that needed work. The seller who could have gotten away with an above-market ask in 2022 now needs to price accurately from day one.

For cash sellers, the normalization cuts both ways. More motivated sellers are willing to consider direct-sale offers as listing timelines have lengthened. On the other side, our own underwriting incorporates the fact that resale into a 2.5-month-supply market requires a small buffer that would not have been needed in a sub-1-month supply environment.

Charlotte: Population Growth Kept the Engine Running

The Charlotte metro continued its structural outperformance relative to North Carolina averages. Job relocations from Northeast and Midwest markets, particularly financial services, technology, and healthcare, sustained demand at the top of the market. South Charlotte, Ballantyne, and Steele Creek remained highly competitive for updated, move-in-ready homes.

Charlotte also saw its own inventory normalization, though from a tighter base than the Triangle. Sellers in desirable South Charlotte zip codes who priced correctly still had strong spring and fall market experiences. Sellers in older South End, inner ring neighborhoods with renovation needs saw more price sensitivity.

Charlotte’s cash transaction volume, in our experience, was driven primarily by two categories: landlord portfolios in the Cabarrus and Gaston fringe exiting due to appreciation and rent regulation uncertainty, and distressed single-family properties in the urban core that conventional financing could not readily absorb.

Western NC: The Helene Recovery at the 14-Month Mark

By December 2025, Hurricane Helene’s landfall in late September 2024 was approximately 14 months past. The recovery across Western NC communities has been uneven. Asheville proper saw significant rebuilding activity; tourism and food-and-beverage sector recovery accelerated the broader economy. Some riverside communities and low-lying flood plains in Buncombe, McDowell, and Haywood counties remained economically impaired; flood zone redesignations increased insurance costs, and some homeowners faced mortgage lender requirements they could not meet.

For Asheville area homeowners in flood-affected zones, 2025 was a difficult year to navigate the conventional listing process. Buyers requiring financing encountered appraisal and insurance complications that delayed or killed transactions. Cash purchases remained the most reliable exit for these properties, and the seller community in Western NC was meaningfully more open to direct sales than it had been pre-Helene.

The Western NC situation also illustrates the geographic limitation of iBuyers: Opendoor and comparable platforms had minimal presence in the Asheville market before the storm and essentially none in the affected rural communities after it. Local buyers willing to underwrite the specific risks of a flood-affected property are, in many cases, the only realistic conventional exit for those sellers.

Cash Buyer Volume in 2025: Still Elevated, Still Relevant

According to data tracked by ATTOM Data Solutions and NAR, all-cash purchases held at approximately 32% of all residential transactions nationally in 2025, roughly consistent with the elevated post-pandemic range. Before 2020, all-cash purchases typically represented 20–24% of transactions. The share remained elevated for several structural reasons: institutional investors remain active, more buyers are trading out of high-equity properties from the appreciation cycle, and interest rate uncertainty makes cash offers more attractive to sellers regardless of the final price.

In the distressed property category, cash remains the dominant transaction structure at more than 80% of volume. Distressed properties (pre-foreclosure, probate, deferred maintenance, vacant) rarely qualify for standard financing, which means cash buyers are not competing with a conventional buyer pool for these properties. That dynamic defines our market.

Three Seller Profiles Who Did Well Going Direct in 2025

The landlord with a problem tenant in Durham. A landlord we worked with had a duplex in Durham with a tenant who had been in unit A for six years on a below-market lease and had accumulated three minor court filings. The landlord was 71 and had no interest in managing an eviction proceeding. He received two traditional agent evaluations, both conditioned on the property being vacant at listing. We bought the duplex with the tenant in place at a price that reflected the occupancy situation and closed in 11 days. He had his equity in his bank account before the holidays.

An out-of-state heir for a Winston-Salem inherited property. A beneficiary who had inherited her aunt’s home in Winston-Salem, about 200 miles from where she lives in Ohio, tried the traditional listing route for 90 days. Three showings. One lowball offer she rejected. The property needed a new HVAC unit and had dated kitchen and bath. She called us in October. We offered the price we would have offered in August; she accepted; we closed before Thanksgiving. No renovation, no second showing, no more flights back to North Carolina.

A pre-foreclosure seller with a 45-day window. A Fayetteville homeowner who had fallen behind on mortgage payments after a job loss received a sale notice from his servicer in late September. He had roughly 45 days before an auction was scheduled. He contacted three traditional agents; none was able to commit to closing inside the window. We made an offer, he accepted, and we closed with 11 days to spare before the scheduled auction. He came out of the transaction with equity in hand rather than a foreclosure on his credit.

These are not exceptional stories. They are representative of the kind of transaction where the conventional listing process is not the right tool for the seller’s actual situation.

What 2026 Looks Like From Here

We are not in the prediction business, but the structural conditions entering 2026 are fairly clear. Inventory in the Triangle and Charlotte markets will likely continue normalizing; new construction deliveries in Johnston, Harnett, and Union counties will add supply, and seller lock-in from low-rate mortgages will slowly ease as life events force moves. Mortgage rates are likely to remain in the 6–6.5% range absent a significant macroeconomic shift. The spring 2026 market in strong NC metros should be competitive for well-positioned homes.

The distressed and complex transaction segment, where we operate, will not be affected meaningfully by any of that. Foreclosures, inherited properties, landlord exits, and condition-impaired homes are not interest-rate-sensitive in the same way that the move-up market is. That segment is driven by life events and property conditions, and those exist regardless of the macro environment.

Talk to Us Before You Decide

If 2025 was the year you kept telling yourself you would finally deal with a property you have been putting off, the new year is a reasonable time to act. We are available now and throughout January.

Call (984) 983-5018 or reach us through our contact page. We will give you a real number for your property: no obligation, no fee, no formula offer that changes in the inspection period. The conversation takes 15 minutes and it will tell you exactly where you stand.