Real Estate

Since the housing crash of 2008, there’s been a lot of talk about Americans downsizing. Some sang the praises of tiny houses. Millennials, some said, are rejecting lawns and large homes for apartments in the city. Some went as far as to predict McMansion-filled suburbs turning to slums. Meanwhile, recently released U.S. Census estimates show, […]

The following is an excerpt from Chuck McShane’s new book, A History of Lake Norman: Fish Camps to Ferraris, published by the History Press. “Lake Norman may seem as fixed a part of the hillsides that enfold it,” began the Charlotte Observer editorial on Oct.1, 1977. “But it is a baby, scarcely older than a […]

Local streets have jammed with back-to-school traffic this week, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools opened for a new year. In most parts of the city, the start of UNC Charlotte’s academic year has not been as noticeable. But those of us at UNC Charlotte’s 1,000-acre campus 8 miles northeast of uptown see our own back-to-school jams, as […]

With the long-delayed final leg of Interstate-485 set to open soon, residents near the new interchange at Prosperity Church Road are bracing for growth. The question is, what will that growth look like? A 15-year-old plan calls for an “urban village” of compact streets and walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. When envisioned in the late 1990s, it […]

After the approval of a controversial rezoning in one of the city’s oldest historically black neighborhoods this spring, City of Charlotte officials are looking at the changing face of many of the city’s close-in neighborhoods. At a June meeting, members of the City Council’s Housing and Neighborhood Development Committee told city staff to study ways […]

I’ve been in and around the housing field for a long time, and I’ve seen mountains of housing statistics, data and quantitative analysis, everything from vacancy rates to under-construction tallies to eviction research. Often all these numbers, while important, get lost because they are just too voluminous and multifaceted to really comprehend. The average person, […]

In Charlotte, one neighborhood more than any other came to represent the housing crisis. Built between 2002 and 2004, the Windy Ridge neighborhood of 133 small, single-family homes fell victim. By 2008, 60 percent of the neighborhood’s homes were in foreclosure. Crime rates rose, property values plummeted and the homeowners association couldn’t afford to keep […]

Charlotte never experienced the dramatic housing bubble seen in other places in the country, but the local market is still under its August 2007 peak as measured by the Case-Shiller Index. Explore our data dashboard (below) to see Charlotte’s highs and lows and how they compared to places like Atlanta, Denver and San Francisco. (Scroll […]

Envision this: A man draped in a cape, brandishing a gold-tipped cane, strolls through a 79-acre[1], 16-block chunk of South End. He’s costumed as the colorful Count Chevalier Vincent de Rivafinoli, an Italian gold-digger (literally) who swept into town during Charlotte’s early 19th-century gold rush, settled in a house at South Tryon and West Morehead […]

Several recent newspaper articles have described the city’s plans to subsidize a new edge city west of Charlotte Douglas International Airport by spending about $45 million to widen and extend streets in the Dixie Berryhill area. City leaders want to build on the airport’s expansion and the new Norfolk Southern freight center at the airport […]