Travis Old

I work Northeast NC — Currituck, Camden, Pasquotank, Chowan, Bertie, Hertford County, Gates and Perquimans — and I write these buyer's briefs in the evenings because I got tired of sending out-of-town buyers long emails about what a place is actually like to live in, and started writing it down instead.

Perquimans County gets misidentified more than anywhere else I work, and that is the reason this site exists in the shape it does. The county seat is the town of Hertford. Hertford County is a different county, 45 minutes west, with its own seat at Winton — I cover that one too, on its own site. Every page here says "the town of Hertford" or "Perquimans County" and never a bare "Hertford" that could be read either way. That is not fussiness. It routes mail wrong, it routes tax bills wrong, and I have watched it send buyers to the wrong side of the Chowan River on a Saturday morning.

What makes the county worth a brief of its own: a wind-driven river running into the Albemarle Sound with navigable depth right up to town, nineteen National Register listings including five historic districts, a commute that puts Elizabeth City twenty-three minutes away, and — genuinely strange, and verified against HUD's own lookup — the highest FHA loan limit of any county in North Carolina. The whole county is USDA-eligible too, which matters far more day to day than the FHA number does.

I'm a licensed NC Real Estate Broker (#334264) and a licensed NC General Contractor (#99504), which matters here more than in most places. A lot of this county's housing stock is old — some of it genuinely old — and it helps to have someone who can look at a structure and tell you what it will actually cost to fix, not just whether it appraises.

On how this site is written: I do not publish a number I cannot source. Where something could not be verified from a primary source — whether the town has mandatory design review, what USDA's current income limit is, what the market median is this month — the page says so plainly instead of paraphrasing a guess into a fact. There are places on this site where the honest answer is "call and ask," and I would rather write that than fill the space.

Skip the contact form if you'd rather just call — my number sits at the top of every page, and texting usually beats waiting on an email back. Every chapter here stays open to read whether or not you ever hire me.