Outer Banks Realtor Stars In 'Buying The Beach' [Interview]

Posted By Matt Artz on June 23, 2014

The Destination America network will premiere a new episode of their series Buying the Beach filmed on the Outer Banks tonight (Monday), and we recently caught up with local realtor Barry Breit, of Carolina Designs Realty, to get the scoop on how he got involved with the show.

“They sent me an email asking me to recommend three or four different properties that I had listed that would suit their needs for the show”, Barry told us. “They gave me a price range and some particulars of what they were looking for. So I sent them four different listings that I had.

“They called me with some questions, and I answered the questions, like how close they were to the beach and things such as that. Then I sent them more of a detailed report with additional pictures. That’s how they were trying to chose these properties.

“Then at some point in our phoning and emailing back and forth, they asked if I wanted to be featured as the realtor on one of the shows, and I said, ‘Sure, that would be fine’.

“You have to get a release from all the owners that they can film and do their production at the houses themselves, so I was in the process of doing that, and they sent me a release for me to fill out and sign. Really that’s how it came to be.”

While Breit is the only realtor featured on his episode, the three houses shown were actually listed by himself and two other Outer Banks realty companies.

“Actually they only used one of my listings,” explained Barry, “but they actually used on that episode I was on, so one of the houses that we’re going into was actually my listing. The other two were listed by other realtors on the Outer Banks.

“They contacted me and gave me the dates they were coming, and they really only gave me about a week’s notice. The one thing I didn’t realize was that it was going to take three full days to shoot. That kind of was dropped in my lap the week before. I figured it was going to take a day or whatever, but it was really a lot of fun.

“Ken and Stacy, who are the buyers featured on the show, were just hilarious. They were a great couple to be around. There’s a little bit of tension going back and forth because the premiss of the episode is Stacy wants to live close to the beach and Ken wants to be close to the sound. I can’t really tell you how it ends, but I can tell you they were hysterical throughout the whole show.

“I haven’t seen the episode, but just Ken’s facial expressions and Stacy shutting him down, it’s going to be fun to watch, I can tell you that.”

We asked Barry how the series producers found the local couple of buyers, and he says they again turned to him.

“They actually asked me to find them,” Barry said. “I started thinking that they’re probably going to want a couple in their 30s, so I approached Stacy and asked her if she and Ken would be interested in doing this. They talked to Destination America. They interviewed them, a rather lengthy interview, to sort of get a feel for them and how they interacted.

“It was a great experience, a lot of fun.”

In April, a crew from Destination America came to the Outer Banks to film the episode in hopes of capturing some of the Outer Banks beautiful weather on film, but this year’s never ending winter struck again.

“I was the realtor that showed them all three houses,” explained Breit. “Basically we scheduled a house per day, so we did three homes over three days.

“One of the days it was raining sideways, and frankly it was cold. I wear glasses, so my glasses were completely fogged up. We had to spend about 45 minutes outside on a dune in the rain blowing sideways. It was pretty brutal actually. Ken and Stacy bless their hearts were in short sleeves.”

“Their goal was to have it look like summer. They didn’t want us bundled up in heavy coats and things like that. It was rough, and that was the first day. After the first day of shooting, I thought we were going to lose Ken and Stacy.

“The production crew was great. They knew exactly what they wanted to do when we got to the house, and we just worked our way through it.”

The local homes featured on the episode include two located on the beach and one on the sound.

“There was one that was in Corolla, one in Duck, and one that was in Kitty Hawk,” said Barry. “The Corolla and Duck houses are beach homes, and they were more to Stacy’s liking. The one that’s in Kitty Hawk was soundfront, so more to what Ken was looking for.”

After working in the local real estate industry for almost two decades, Breit has seen plenty of extreme highs and lows in the local market, but he tells us that right now is actually the perfect time to invest in the Outer Banks.

“I moved to the Outer Banks in ’92, so I’ve been here over 20 years,” said Barry. “I’ve been selling real estate for over 15 years. My dad moved here in the ‘80s and he started in real estate out here. He was in commercial real estate when we lived in Dallas, Texas, so when I moved out here we owned a real estate business for couple years and I decided to jump into the real estate business.

“This is probably the best time we’ve seen in the last 10 years to buy. Property values being what they are, anyone that’s buying into the market right now is getting a great value for what they’re going to get, and it has to appreciate from the value it is today; it’s inevitable because of where prices are.

“We’ve actually seen the volume of business has picked up over the last three years and prices have not responded. It’s interesting to see the number of sales go up, and the number of inventory has decreased, but prices have still just been hanging where they are, but sooner or later that supply and demand is going to cause some appreciation out here.”

In addition to Breit’s episode, entitled “Sound vs. Ocean”, the series filmed a number of additional episodes in the area that will air later this season.

“I believe there’s about a half dozen other Buying the Beach episodes that are here on the Outer Banks,” said Barry, “so there will be more to come. You’ll see more of the Outer Banks on the Destination America channel.”

You can check out a preview clip from Breit’s episode of Buying the Beach featuring the Outer Banks in the player below, and then be sure to tune in to the Destination America network tonight (Monday, June 23) at 9pm to watch the full episode!

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