What this report is
The NC Distressed Property Index is a county-level aggregate dataset of North Carolina properties carrying one or more public-record indicators of property distress: estate transitions, tax delinquency, tax foreclosure, open code-enforcement cases, pending foreclosure actions, $0-consideration transfers, out-of-state ownership, and state right-of-way actions.
It is built entirely from public records — county parcel and Register of Deeds feeds, published tax dockets, municipal code-enforcement feeds, and substitute-trustee sale notices. No listing sites, no MLS data, no private databases, and no individual look-ups. The index ingests whole public feeds and publishes only aggregates.
This is the first quarterly edition. It is intended to be quoted, republished, and argued with. The methodology, the per-county numbers, and the things this data cannot tell you are all published alongside it.
It is not a measure of hardship, and it is not a forecast. A signal is a public-record condition, not a confirmed foreclosure, sale, abandonment, or family in crisis. And it is not a census of North Carolina: the index covers the counties whose feeds it carries, in the depth those feeds allow.
The headline
20,134 properties across 13 North Carolina counties are in estate transition — homes sitting in ownership limbo while an estate settles.
That is 46.1% of the 43,700 distress-flagged properties in the index. The share is high because estate feeds are among the index's deepest sources; read it as a share of the properties the index tracks, never as a share of North Carolina housing.
The number matters because of what sits underneath it. An estate is not a crisis. It is a clock. The house still needs insurance, the yard can still be cited, and the county still expects its taxes — and for some share of these homes, nobody with authority to act has yet stepped forward.
Where the clock has already run out
368 estate-linked properties in New Hanover County are also delinquent on property taxes. The heirs are inheriting a debt along with the deed.
72 estate-linked properties carry an open municipal code-enforcement case with no living owner on the deed to answer it — 35 in Cumberland County, 25 in Durham, 12 in Guilford.
Zero properties carry all three signals. The two groups above are separate subsets of the 20,134; they do not nest, and they must never be chained.
These overlap counts are floors, not rates. A property can only show two signals in a county where the index carries both feeds and the two feeds share a matchable property key. Today that condition is met in exactly one county for tax delinquency (New Hanover) and three for code enforcement. Guilford County has both a large delinquency docket and estate records in the index, but the two are keyed differently — tax account number against parcel identification number — so no match is currently possible there. The true statewide overlap is certainly larger than 368. We publish the county breakdown rather than a blended figure that would imply a measurement we have not made.
Estate transitions by county
Counts among the 13 counties where the index tracks estate records. These are counts, not a ranking — each county's number reflects the depth of its public-records feeds. New Hanover's estate feed is the most comprehensive in the index, which is why its number is the largest. Counties should not be compared as "worst" or "best."
| County | Properties in estate transition |
|---|---|
| New Hanover | 6,227 |
| Gaston | 2,495 |
| Alamance | 1,965 |
| Cumberland | 1,462 |
| Iredell | 1,451 |
| Onslow | 1,438 |
| Wake | 1,310 |
| Pitt | 877 |
| Guilford | 720 |
| Durham | 709 |
| Mecklenburg | 532 |
| Brunswick | 489 |
| Orange | 459 |
| Total (13 counties) | 20,134 |
The remaining 87 North Carolina counties have no estate feed in the index. That is an absence of coverage, not a finding of zero estate activity, and it should never be reported as one.
The index at a glance
| Measure | Q3 2026 |
|---|---|
| Distress-flagged properties | 43,700 |
| Counties with at least one feed | 73 of 100 |
| Counties with estate-record coverage | 13 |
| Municipalities contributing code-enforcement feeds | 4 |
| Properties in estate transition | 20,134 (46.1% of the index) |
| Estate-linked properties carrying only the estate signal | 11,289 (56.1%) |
| Properties with two or more independent distress signals | 5,861 (13.4%) |
| Properties with three or more | 495 |
Signal counts across the index
Each row counts distinct properties carrying that signal. A property may carry more than one signal, so these do not sum to the index total.
| Signal | Properties |
|---|---|
| Probate / estate linkage | 20,134 |
| Tax delinquency | 11,732 |
| Open code violation | 6,155 |
| Pending or stalled foreclosure action | 3,783 |
| Tax foreclosure | 3,401 |
| Out-of-state ownership (flag only) | 2,754 |
| Non-market ($0) transfer | 678 |
| NCDOT right-of-way | 238 |
| Demolition permit | 3 |
The out-of-state figure covers the 72 counties where it is published. Guilford County's out-of-state count is suppressed in the published aggregates — its cross-source join quality is insufficient, and any Guilford absentee figure would mislead. The index-wide flag count including Guilford is not published for the same reason.
What we see in the data
The estate signal is mostly a lone signal. 56.1% of estate-linked properties carry no other distress marker. For most families, an estate is paperwork and a waiting period — exactly as it should be. The story is in the minority where a second signal has already appeared.
Distress does not stack as often as the raw signal counts suggest. Only 13.4% of the index carries two or more independent distress signals. The typical flagged property has one public-record condition, not a cascade.
Coastal and near-coastal counties carry the deepest estate coverage. New Hanover alone accounts for 31% of all estate-linked properties in the index. That is a statement about New Hanover's records, not about New Hanover's families — its estate feed captures more, so it shows more.
The out-of-state ownership flag is common but shallow. Across the 72 counties where we publish it, 2,754 flagged properties have an owner mailing address outside North Carolina. We publish that as a count and nothing more. Absentee rates would require a join quality this index does not yet have, and one county's figure (Guilford) is suppressed entirely for that reason.
Methodology, in brief
- Sources. Public parcel feeds, Register of Deeds feeds, county tax dockets, four municipal code-enforcement feeds, substitute-trustee sale notices, NCDOT right-of-way records.
- Exclusions. Recorded sales and investor-portfolio records are stripped from every record, and any property left with no distress signal is excluded from all published aggregates. Owner attributes such as long tenure or landlord status are not distress signals and are excluded from all signal and severity counts.
- No property-level publication, ever. No addresses, owner names, parcel identifiers, or record excerpts appear in any published file.
- Lag. Public feeds record events after they occur; there is a gap between a court filing and its appearance in a recorded feed.
Feed freshness in this edition
Not every feed refreshed on the snapshot date. The ones that did not are named here rather than left to be inferred.
| Feed group | Last refreshed |
|---|---|
| Estate records, all 13 counties | 2026-08-27 |
| County parcel / recorded-deed feeds (9 counties) | 2026-08-27 |
| Tax-delinquency dockets (Guilford, New Hanover) | 2026-08-27 (re-polled; substantially unchanged) |
| Tax foreclosure (Mecklenburg) | 2026-08-27 (re-polled; unchanged) |
| Foreclosure actions (Guilford) | 2026-08-27 |
| Non-market transfers (Guilford, Durham, Pitt) | 2026-08-27 |
| Statewide trustee sale notices | 2026-08-27, partial — the source rate-limited the pull |
| Municipal code enforcement (4 feeds) | 2026-06-21 — did not refresh this quarter |
| NCDOT right-of-way | 2026-06-21 — did not refresh this quarter |
| Forsyth and Cumberland Register of Deeds | 2026-06-21 — access-gated, not pulled |
Every code-violation figure in this edition, including the 72-property estate overlap, rests on the June 2026 code-enforcement snapshot.
A correction carried into this edition
Before 2026-08-27, the index's stacked-severity figures counted two owner attributes — long tenure and landlord status — as distress signals. On that basis this release would have reported 12,844 properties (29.4%) carrying two or more signals. Counting only genuine distress signals, the figure is 5,861 (13.4%).
Index totals are unaffected: no property was ever in the index on an owner attribute alone. Only the severity figures changed. Any earlier Cinch figure for multi-signal properties should be cited on the old basis and is not comparable to this one.
No period-over-period comparisons
This is the first quarterly edition, and future editions will not publish quarter-over-quarter deltas as findings. Most movement between releases comes from feeds being added, deepened, or repaired — not from changes in the housing market. Treating that as a trend would be a mistake, so we do not invite it.
Get the data
- county-aggregates.csv — one row per county per period, with per-signal counts. Aggregates only.
- data-dictionary.csv — column, type, definition, and caveats for every field.
All free to republish under CC-BY 4.0 with citation: NC Distressed Property Index, Cinch Home Buyers, cinchhomebuyers.com/nc-distressed-property-index/
Custom county cuts, calculation notes, and methodology questions: press@cinchhomebuyers.com — replies same business day.
