It’s a different market — there’s no doubt.

Take the local real estate market in 2004 or 2005: the average price for a waterfront home was $469,000. In those years, the demand for waterfront property was so great, at one time only 30 waterfront houses were for sale in the area: as soon as one would come on the market, it would be snatched up.

“We were in such an area of time where people were wanting waterfront — the appetite for waterfront was amazing. We couldn’t get enough waterfront,” said Tom Atkins, general manager and broker in charge for The Rich Company. “People were coming here. It was a destination.”

But fast forward a decade and the recession that started in 2006 (though not nationally acknowledged until 2008) sent would-be buyers away: the ones looking for second homes, the ones with expendable income, the ones who wouldn’t hesitate to drop $500,000 on a waterfront lot, disappeared for the most part, scared off by falling property values. As the decade dragged on, property values continued to drop.

“Around 2006 is when we saw everything — the values start to drop and the volumes start to drop. They kind of went together,” said Jerry Evans owner/broker with Century 21 The Realty Group in downtown Washington.

Today, there are 641 houses on the Three Rivers Multiple Listing Service (MLS). They’re mostly in Beaufort County, though some are in Pitt, Hyde and Pamlico counties. Of the 641, 153 are waterfront homes. The average price of waterfront homes has fallen by nearly $200,000. Waterfront lots are languishing on the market: of the 565 lots available in the local MLS, 220 of them are on the water.

“And they’ve been hanging around for a long time — 450 days plus,” Atkins said. “There’s no appetite for new homes when you can get great deals on existing homes. Therefore, builders are finding it really tough right now.”

But the real estate market is not all doom and gloom. There are certain categories that have continued to sell well and/or rebounded from the recession better than most. Big tracts of farmland have bounced back, according to Atkins. Reasonably priced homes escaped mostly unscathed as well.

“The (homes) that have been priced right have been least affected, like $80,000 to $150,000 homes,” Evans said. “If they’re good quality homes, they’ve been the least affected by (the recession).”

The good news, Evans said, is that this year, housing values have finally stabilized: a house worth $100,000 last year is still worth $100,000 this year. The eight-year plummet has been arrested, leaving the local real estate market in a unique place: a buyers market.

“You can’t hide from the numbers,” Atkins said. “What we have is an unbelievable value for the customer’s dollar. We know it’s a great place to live. If someone’s borrowing money, it’s cheap — we’re hovering around four percent. You combine that low cost of money to buy and the enormous inventory we’ve got, it just represents a terrific opportunity for people who are in the market to buy.”

The local market is on the opposite end of the real estate spectrum than an hour and half’s drive away, in Raleigh. There a home someone would reasonably pay $100,000 to $110,000 for locally, would sell for $300,000 there, Atkins said.

But according to the real estate professionals, it’s only a matter of time before things start taking off again: the trickle of second home purchasers, the Greenville commuter looking for the quiet and comparatively crime-free of Beaufort County, those willing to invest, the recession forgotten, will become a deluge again.

“Investors come to Washington and just love it,” Evans said.

The situation reminds of Evans of the calm before the storm before ground was broken on the Cypress Landing community on the south side of the river, nearly two decades ago: the interest is there, it’s just a matter of who pulls the trigger first.

“We’re sitting on a gold mine here,” Atkins said.