About Dillsboro's Moondancer Realty Office

Readers of this blog have occasionally been given a glimpse into an elite and secret society of the Sylva and Dillsboro towns in Jackson County, North Carolina. The newest inductee to join MoonDancer Realty’s Office Manager in this exclusive club is Miss Abby. Miss Abby is the capable Office Manager at our favorite attorney’s office. Every morning Miss Abby arrives at the office in her special car seat in her limo driven by our favorite attorney. Our Office Manager prefers the daredevil ride of back legs in the back seat and surfing on the front seat console.

Our own Office Manager is very select in the canine company she keeps and found that Miss Abby shares her values of a well run office and is pleased to accept Miss Abby into her very special club, thereby swelling the ranks to a grand total of two members. Applications are always open and will receive the strictest scrutiny by Sienna and her new associate, Miss Abby.

The atmospheric weirdness we’ve witnessed lately in countrywide weather reports used to touch me with sadness when I heard about the devastation to towns and areas I had only the vaguest of notions about where they were. My heart went out to the people who’d lost family members, friends, pets, personal belongings and sense of security in the briefest of moments when horrific tornadoes, hurricanes, fires or floods ripped through their homeland. It still does touch me profoundly when I think about these strangers and how narrow the band of separation is from their disaster becoming my own.

A new dawning of consciousness has occurred since I started blogging and enjoying the blogs of other people in the ActiveRain community, there are now so many personal associations connected to these heretofore unknown locations. These disasters are no longer simply the names of towns, now they are the names of towns that contain people I know and have come to enjoy.

Last night, our spread out community in the mountains of Western North Carolina and the upstate of South Carolina spent several hours under tornado watch, warnings and reports. This is so hugely unusual for this part of the country that unless you live here you’d never understand. I went to bed and then woke up this morning hoping that Sheila in Greenville, janeAnne in Asheville, Rich in Hendersonville, Cyndi & Bill in Murphy, June in Franklin, Jeremy outside of Cary, the guy I don’t even know well enough to remember his name yet in Cashiers, and so many others including all those wonderful folks we‘ve sold houses to…hoping that all was well with them last night and that none of them are waking up to destruction this morning.

All of them are like us, pet lovers sharing their homes with fur family. Without even talking to them, I know exactly what their nights were like. We all spent the night glued to the special weather reports, hyper vigilant to the sounds and sights outside our homes, comforting our pet friends the best we could and anxiously awaiting the all-clear signifying the storms had moved on.

For me now, that signal doesn’t bring as much comfort as it used to. When these storms move onto the next area in any direction now, those areas contain the real names of real people with real lives in now real locations and I get impatient to return to ActiveRain to make sure these folks are back writing so I’ll know all is well in their world which has become my world too. The atmospheric weirdness and its aftermath has become so much more intense to me since I know it rocks the world of the extended personal community I’ve surrounded myself with.

For buyers who have been considering purchasing vacant land in the mountains of Western North Carolina, this is a great time to take advantage of historically low prices. We are starting to see investors moving into the area to purchase lots of all sizes…sometimes for pennies on the dollar!

The extreme “deals” would be good for people who are prepared to hold onto them for a few years before trying to re-sell them, but for example…in some of our gated developments lots which were formerly selling for $100,000-$150,000 are now being snapped up for $4,000 to $12,000! These are still extreme cases but they are out there. For the most part, price per acre has dropped from $20,000-$50,000 per acre down to the more affordable $8,000 - $18,000 per acre.

At MoonDancer Realty we’ve seen a marked increase in the number of calls looking for raw, vacant land. We’re currently working with several buyers. To us, this means a return of people with a dream to live in the mountains. Most of them are not ready to build immediately but they know to strike while the iron is hot…or at least while the prices are lower than they’ve been in decades.

There are loans out there for raw land and several sellers are offering to hold the financing for the right buyers. I hope some lenders will comment on this post and give us an idea of what kind of vacant land financing programs they might have.

It is so easy to see how the land lays right now.There is no more convenient time than winter to look…leaves are down, snakes are sleeping and I don’t even know where the bees are. My hiking boots are ready, if you have ever thought you wanted to own your own little piece of paradise in the mountains of Western North Carolina…give us a call and let’s find your new property now.