Before you look at a single property, it is worth getting clear on two things: what you are buying it for, and what owning it will actually ask of you. Almost every decision after this one follows from those two answers.
What are you actually buying?
Three people can walk through the same house on the same afternoon and be looking at three different purchases. It helps to know which one you are.
- A primary residence. You are buying somewhere to live, so the questions are about daily life: the commute, the schools, the drive to a grocery store in February rather than in July, and what the place is like when the visitors have gone home.
- A second home. You are buying time here, and the property sits empty for part of the year. That changes what matters — how it is secured, how it is maintained when you are four hours away, and how it is insured when nobody is in it.
- An investment property. You are buying an income stream attached to a building, and both halves have to work. What it earns, what it costs to run, who manages it and what the rules allow are all part of the price you are willing to pay.
Plenty of people here are buying two of these at once — a second home they intend to rent when they are not in it. That is a normal thing to want and a common way to own on Topsail. It is also the version with the most moving parts, because it has to satisfy a lender, an insurer, a town and possibly an owners association, all of whom have opinions about how a property is used.
When do you want to be in it?
Set your time frame early, because it changes the advice. If you have a date you have to be here by, we plan backwards from it and build in room for the parts of a purchase that are not under your control — a lender’s underwriting, an insurance quote, a survey, an appraisal.
If you are not in a hurry, that is a genuine advantage and worth using rather than wasting. A buyer who can wait for the right property is in a different position from one who cannot, and the two should not shop the same way.
Be honest with yourself about how long you intend to own it. A property bought for three years and a property bought for thirty are not the same purchase, even if they are the same house. The shorter the horizon, the more the costs of buying and selling matter relative to everything else.
The purchase price is the beginning of the number
This is the part of coastal ownership that surprises people, and it is the reason the price on the listing is not the number to plan around. What a property costs to own here depends on things that are specific to that building, on that lot, at that elevation — and two houses a few hundred feet apart can be genuinely different on every one of them.
- Insurance, in more than one policy. Flood, wind and hail, and everything else are commonly covered separately on the coast. Each is priced on the individual property.
- Maintenance. Salt air, wind-driven rain and sun are hard on exteriors, fixings, mechanical equipment and anything metal. A coastal building asks for more attention than the same building inland, and it asks for it on a schedule rather than when something breaks.
- Elevation and construction. How high the lowest floor sits, and how the building is built, affect insurance, what you may do to it, and what happens to it in a storm.
- Association dues and assessments. Where there is an owners association there are dues, and there may be transfer charges when you buy and special assessments later.
- Property taxes. Set by the county and the town, on their own schedules, and they change.
- Utilities and services. Whether the property is on municipal water and sewer or on a well and a septic system changes both the running cost and the maintenance.
- What it earns, if you rent it. Income is not free of cost. Management, cleaning, linens, supplies, repairs, permits, taxes on rentals and vacancy all come out of it.
None of these can be quoted from a distance, and this guide will not pretend otherwise. What we can do is get real numbers for the specific property early enough that they inform your decision instead of arriving after it.
Flood, wind and hail are three separate questions
Buyers new to the coast often assume one policy covers it all. It usually does not. A standard homeowner’s policy generally excludes flood damage, so flood coverage is written separately — through the National Flood Insurance Program or through a private insurer. On the coast, wind and hail is also frequently written separately from the rest of the property coverage.
North Carolina has a mechanism for coastal property that cannot get wind and hail coverage in the ordinary market, and the Department of Insurance explains how that works and who is eligible. Whether a particular property needs it, and what any of it costs, is a question for a licensed insurance agent looking at that property — not something anyone can tell you from a listing.
You can look up a property’s flood zone yourself, before you ever ask anybody, at FEMA’s Flood Map Service Center. It is worth doing early. A zone beginning with A or V is in a Special Flood Hazard Area, and a federally backed mortgage on a property there will require flood insurance. That is a fact about the property, and it is knowable on day one.
If you intend to rent it
Say so early, to me and to your lender, because it changes the purchase rather than decorating it. Whether short-term rental is permitted at all depends on the town and on any owners association, and those are two separate permissions that both have to be there. How the property is financed depends on how you tell the lender you will use it. How it is insured depends on whether it is occupied by you, by tenants, or by nobody for months at a time.
There is also a North Carolina specific point that catches people out, and it is covered properly in the later steps: a vacation rental property can arrive with bookings already on it, and some of those bookings come with the building. That is a statutory obligation, not a courtesy, and it is worth knowing before you decide rather than after.
My family has owned property on Topsail Island for more than 30 years. So when the conversation turns to what a property actually costs to own and to run out here, rather than to what it looks like in the photographs, it is not a conversation I am having for the first time.
Where this comes from
- FEMA Flood Map Service Center — look up a property’s flood zone (opens in a new tab)
- National Flood Insurance Program — what flood zones mean (opens in a new tab)
- N.C. Department of Insurance — windstorm and hail coverage (opens in a new tab)
General information about how a North Carolina residential purchase usually works. It is not legal, tax, insurance, lending or engineering advice, and it is not a substitute for advice about a particular property. Every property and every contract is different. Your closing attorney, your lender, your insurance agent and the inspectors you hire are the right people to ask about yours.