Voters’ support in this month’s election for a $20 billion transportation plan for Charlotte, North Carolina, and Mecklenburg County could help give new housing development a jump-start.
A lack of infrastructure, such as sufficient roads, buses and trains, has led some local governments in the region temporarily to stop issuing new housing permits, Yongqiang Chu, director of the Childress Klein Center for Real Estate at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, said during a presentation about the center’s annual State of Housing report, published this month.
The region saw about 4,000 more housing units built in 2024 than the increase in the number of households, according to the report. But in most of the past 12 years, household growth has outpaced construction, and that trend is unlikely to change in the next two years, Chu said. More than 200 people moved to the Charlotte region every day over the past year, he said, contributing to nearly 25,000 new households.
“To accommodate those households, we need to build at least 25,000 houses each year,” he said.
The transportation plan will be funded via a one-cent sales tax increase on purchases in Mecklenburg County. Some 40% of the money raised will go to roads, another 40% to trains, and the remaining 20% to bus and micro transit, according to Yes for Meck, a website set up to encourage voters to back the plan. The site notes that new affordable housing development goes well with access to good transportation options.
Chu pointed to Lancaster County, South Carolina, on Charlotte’s southern edge, as the most recent example of a town or county restricting growth due to concerns about rapid development. Lancaster officials imposed a nine-month permit moratorium in the Indian Land area, citing a need to update its development rules.
Incomes haven't kept pace with rising prices
While the Charlotte region had a good year in 2024 in terms of construction, with 28,000 new homes, homebuyers’ incomes haven’t kept pace with rising prices, Chu said. The variance between the median home price and the median household income has made the Charlotte region unaffordable for the past four years, he added.
The median sales price in Charlotte proper over the last 12 months was $429,000, according to Homes.com data, up 3% from the previous one-year period. Three-quarters of the Charlotte population can’t afford the median-priced home, Chu said.
“While there have been several positive signals suggesting that housing affordability in Charlotte has slightly improved in recent years, we are not optimistic about the future direction. I think we need some kind of policy solution to this,” he said.
He highlighted the need for more spending on transportation but also improved wastewater systems and new school buildings.
“If you don’t allow a lot of development, where is your teacher going to live?” he asked.