Seriously and seriously unlovable. File Fees Charlotte and Raleigh Housing Market | WFAE 90.7

The housing markets of North Carolina’s largest metropolitan areas — Charlotte and Raleigh — are critically and critically unaffordable, respectively, according to the latest report from urban planning coverage company Demographia.

Demographers ranked cities based on multiple medians, calculated by dividing a site’s median location value by the median household source of revenue. Charlotte’s average of more than one, 5.0, is the same as Washington, D.C. Opportunity Raleigh’s ranking of five.1 is similar to Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee.

According to the North Carolina Housing Coalition, real market rent – ​​which represents the cost of an affordable two-bedroom unit for the local market – is up more than 17% over the past five years in both Mecklenburg and Wake counties.

“It’s a matter of supply and demand,” defined yongqiang chu, director of the Childress Klein Hart Institute for Actual Property at the Charlotte Belk School of Industry at North Carolina College. “Every day, about 120 people come into the Charlotte metro area.”

Trends that began during the recession — in particular, a shortage of housing commodities that drive up space prices — have been exacerbated during the pandemic.

“The Charlotte area started to pick up in terms of supply in 2018 and 2019. A lot of homes or apartments were being built,” Chu said. “But the pandemic completely disrupted it because of (supply chain) issues and COVID restrictions. There was a loss of approximately 10,000 housing units in those two years alone.

However, as supply slowed, demand for housing in North Carolina did nothing but increase.

“When COVID hit, people fled coastal cities like New York,” he recalls. lorena mcdowellDirector of Wake County’s Affordable Housing and People’s Revitalization Section.

“(Raleigh) was a major city that wasn’t as densely populated so people came to us. This is absolutely true throughout the state. North Carolina has seen rapid growth, but Wake’s growth is astronomical.”

McDowell believes his area is unique among American cities. “It is great that we have created this department, but we needed this department 20 years ago,” she laments.

According to McDowell, Wake County now has a shortage of about 65,000 housing units.

“A local, typical family that needs to get a mortgage can’t compete with someone coming from New York or another expensive market,” noted Roberto QuerciaDirector of UNC-Chapel Hills Heart for People Capital.

“The bottleneck (in Raleigh) is primarily single-family homes,” Querica said, where the demand for amenities far exceeds the number of amenities available in the city.

However, the problems in the housing market go back much further than the lack of affordable housing. According to McDowell, the book’s scarcity in Wake County elevates the entire approach to a $3 million property.

“The solution is really simple, and everyone knows it,” Chu said. “The solution is just to build more houses. But it is very difficult to move forward in that direction.” Prime rates of interest make banks reluctant to grant funding, and a variety of political and regulatory obstacles are preventing construction.

This viewpoint, persistently known as NIMBYism – meaning “not in my yard anymore” – is shared by many homeowners in the state: People don’t want the green space in their neighborhoods taken away by new zoning ordinances. stripped which allow higher density.

Chu referenced a recent case in Charlotte, where a development project was downgraded somewhat due to bald eagles nesting in the area.

“It’s probably legitimate to think about (the nest),” Chu said. “But because of those two bald eagles, you have to put 10 more people on the streets. We have to think about that compromise.”

For McDowell, the main obstacle to his department’s progress is more technical: “At the state level (in North Carolina), local municipalities are not requiring any affordable housing development,” McDowell said.

Because developers have no reason to build affordable units, the Wake County Department of Affordable Housing’s strategy is to incentivize developers by offering them money in exchange for including affordable units in their plans, with contracts that commit them to 30 years. Keeps contracted for. ,

Ultimately, in Quercia’s words, there is no “silver bullet” solution to the crisis-level deficit of affordable housing options (and its potential political consequences).

A combination of macro-level economic changes, such as the Federal Reserve reaching its target inflation rate and lowering interest rates, state-level political changes, such as state legislatures changing zoning restrictions to allow greater density; And cultural changes, like lower levels of stigma related to building affordable units, could eventually reverse some of the housing trends that are pushing people out of the market.

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.