The U.S. economy is still hurting from the pandemic, but one sector experiencing its best year in recent memory is the real estate business, which is benefiting from an influx of “COVID-19 refugees” seeking to buy homes in the rural safety of the Upper Valley.
So two veteran Upper Valley real estate mortgage agents, Rob Messenger and Jessica Irwin, are taking advantage of the strong demand for home loans and have formed their own mortgage brokerage firm, Legacy Mortgage, in Hanover, focusing on the residential market. Messenger said,
Even though we are in the midst of a pandemic, from a housing and financing standpoint, these areas are oddly booming right now. As the pandemic continues and doesn’t come to some type of conclusion, I think we are going to continue to see waves of people coming out of the city and move to the Upper Valley as more of a safe haven.
Messenger said that the number of mortgages underwritten in 2020 is running at double the level of normal.
“In my 22 years in the Upper Valley, I’ve never seen anything like this, even in the 2005-to-2007 boom right before the crash,” he said, adding that he expects it to be “another year or two before we see some type of correction” in real estate.
Messenger, of Sunapee, and Irwin, of Enfield, both were previously affiliated with Title Mortgage Solution in Hanover.
Original Article written by John Lippman for Valley News