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​​Leigh Raskin didn't get into the restaurant business to be a landlord. But these days, it doesn't seem like she has a choice.

The creeping notion that she'd have to put "property manager" on her resume someday has been around since she acquired her first businesses in Duck, North Carolina, in 2009. But this year was the clincher. Starting in the winter, she and her brothers, co-owners of the Blue Point, a restaurant located on the waterfront, found themselves sitting on a stack of qualified applicants but unable to stay open past five days a week. They could afford to hire additional workers to cover more shifts, but the employees they had hired couldn't afford to live nearby. Something had to give.

Raskin says she and her brothers struck up a deal in May with a local homeowner, who agreed to turn her four-bedroom vacation rental into a longer-term rental to house four of Raskin's employees. But in mid-July, the plan fell through: Raskin and her brothers backed out, afraid they wouldn't be able to take on the risk of signing a long-term lease without guaranteed tenants in the off-season.

Now, they're back to square one.

Raskin's story of trying to find employee housing is common enough in Duck, a tony enclave on the northern end of the Outer Banks, the string of barrier islands running most of the expanse of the Tar Heel State. In the summer, the beach town's population of approximately 700 swells 10 times over. A 2021 five-year estimate from the U.S. Census showed only 275 occupied units out of a total 2,941 in Duck; Airbnbs, VRBOs, and other short-term rentals have become ubiquitous, and lucrative.

The average rent is $3,000 a month, while the average home sells for a shade under $1........

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