These are typically $800K to $2M homes depending upon how many families we go with. None of them have any downspouts or gutters. In fact I went out one day for a drive last week and looked at probably 200 homes - none had rainspouts or gutters.
Now, in OBX, when it rains, it really rains. Huge coastal thunderstorms late in the afternoon. So…why no gutters or rainspouts? The water runs off the roof and gets blown against the windows and siding. It seems to me considering the cost of these beautiful homes that the owners would prefer downspouts.
Maybe because there are no basements to flood and no basement walls to cave in. That is an important function of gutters that is irrelevant here. Though, the house we rent in Ocracoke every summer has gutters.
And I wonder if it has anything to do with the sandy soil that probably absorbs and holds a great deal of water. I think gutters and downspouts are there to divert water away from the building. Maybe the nature of the ground, itself, obviates the need for them.
I just sold our second home in this community in Corolla a couple years ago (see the third photo down):
We didn’t have gutters. I am not sure they would have helped. When the storms move in most of the rain against the windows is windblown. Our main issue with the windows was that they’d get wet and then dirty from sand and dirt being blown about, but I don’t think gutters would have changed that.
Great place to visit and live. I miss that house. We didn’t rent ours out so I don’t have any feedback on the gutters or lack thereof from renters.
Another thing I noticed during my 8 years of vacationing down there…
No ridge vents. Instead the roof is peppered with 12"x12" vents (I presume they are vents). Looks silly but it may have something to do with the fact that none of the houses have a real attic since the top level is usually a vaulted room or arangement of rooms.
No metal (Teco) joist hangers despite the preponderance of large complex decks. Instead, the joists sit on a single 2x2 piece of lumber nailed to a larger ledger board.
Some of my in-laws live in newer suburbs around Cleveland. A lot of the new houses don’t include gutters and downspouts. They also don’t include any type of overhangs for the exterior doors, no sidewalks, and no walkways around the house. Some of them don’t even have the 3’ x 3’ concrete pad you usally see (at a minimum) for side and back doors.
In the links provided it looks like none of the homes in the foreground or background even have storm shutters, which seems to be standard on a lot of oceanfront property.
I think builders are being cheap and making up reasons to justify it.
Personally, I’d say that gutters are unnecessary on both houses because the rooflines were properly laid out in the first place. Gutters are only necessary when runoff is going to cause a problem.
The front door is under a gable, so rainwater spills off to the side. If it were under a gable, then you would need a gutter to redirect the water running off the entire roof. Sure, the roof of the rental dumps onto the balcony, but no one is going to go out there when it rains.
I’m speculating here, but I suspect this is the key point. The OBX construction philosophy is focused on storms – between Northeasters in the winter and tropical storms the second half of the calendar year, high winds and wind-driven rain are a characteristic of the local climate. The outside surfaces of buildings are customarily built with a minimum of things that can be wrenched free and become flying debris to damage something else. (Houses on ‘stilts’ to prevent water damage during storm surges are also pretty common.)