Charlotte’s population isn’t the only thing growing. Houses are getting bigger, too.
About eight years ago, Steven Bimbo and his wife bought a house along the 2500 block of Bay Street in Charlotte’s Chantilly neighborhood.
The price point was good and the couple was immediately drawn in by the community feel of seeing young families out walking with their kids and neighbors chatting with one another. “Most of our best friends live on our street,” Bimbo said.
But a few years later, he and his wife were thinking of having a third child. All of a sudden, their roughly 1,200 square foot home was starting to feel a little small.
Instead of leaving, the family bought a modest, one-story home across the street, tore it down and built a three-story, 3,300 square foot home in its place.
The couple isn’t alone. Drive around Chantilly and you might find yourself looking up at newly-built homes that in some cases dwarf the original, post-war homes that date to the late 1940s next door.
It mirrors a trend happening across Charlotte and the country, where houses have been increasing in size over several decades, as living standards and norms have changed and incomes have risen.
In the past decade, the average house size in Chantilly increased roughly 42%, going from 1,350 square feet in 2011 to 1,911 square feet last year, according to newly-updated data on the Charlotte/Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer.
Chantilly’s housing size increases are among the highest in Mecklenburg County. The popular neighborhood of about 650 homes is a 10-minute drive to uptown and a short walk to the bars, restaurants and shops in Plaza Midwood.
Countywide, the average house size has gone up almost 8% in the past decade — from 2,071 square feet in 2011 to 2,230 last year, the data show.
The average size of single-family homes across the United States has gone up close to 600 square feet over the past three decades, according to the Quality of Life Explorer. In a fast-growing region like Charlotte, it means that not only are people flocking here every day, but our houses are getting bigger too.
Genevieve Williams, a Realtor who has sold extensively in Chantilly, has had about 20 clients in the past decade who enjoy living there so much they add on to their homes, mainly because their households are growing. Or, like the Bimbos, they purchase an older one and replace it with a bigger build.
The move has become so prevalent that it’s earned its own nickname — the Chantilly Shuffle.
A familiar pattern for home sizes
The increased housing size is driven in part by improved living conditions, Yongqiang Chu, director of the Childress Klein Center for Real Estate at UNC Charlotte, told The Charlotte Observer in an email. Larger house sizes mean that people are living in better houses, he said.
It’s also driven by bigger homes being built in suburban areas. House sizes tend to be smaller in urban areas compared to suburban parts of town.
The trend can affect not only a neighborhood’s character but home affordability, real estate experts say.
There are other impacts to consider, too, like the loss of tree canopy on residential lots and environmental concerns as more materials are used, more land is taken up and energy consumption increases.
The trend also reflects redevelopment and tear downs of older homes in and around uptown, said Ely Portillo, assistant director of outreach and strategic partnerships at the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute. The institute works with the city and county to track data points, from violent crime rates to percentages of households close to grocery stores, on the Quality of Life Explorer.
Like many socioeconomic trends in the region, this one is indicative of a crescent and wedge pattern.
The biggest increases in housing size can be seen in the more affluent, whiter wedge of south Charlotte. The increases are not as significant in a crescent of racially-diverse and lower-income neighborhoods to the west, north and east in Charlotte.
Some of Charlotte’s biggest homes can be found in the Myers Park and Dilworth areas, but also stretch down to the county line near Weddington and to the west near Lake Norman.
Neighborhoods like Myers Park and Dilworth also saw large, double digit increases in the past decade, at 23% and 29%, respectively, an Observer analysis found.
Many of the largest increases in house size from 2011 to last year happened just south of uptown, from Dilworth to SouthPark, the analysis found.
The largest increase was in a neighborhood just south of Fairview Road by Colony Road, near SouthPark. House sizes there increased 127%, to more than 3,200 square feet.
The Double Oaks area, just north of uptown, saw the second largest increase at 83%, data show.
Million-dollar homes in Charlotte
While home sizes in Chantilly have been on the increase over the past decade, so have home prices.
The median sales price in 2012 was around $200,000, according to data provided by Williams. By 2016, it had risen to around the mid-$400,000s.
Today, it’s not uncommon for homes to sell for around $600,000 or higher. Last month, Williams sold a roughly 4,500 square foot home for $1.85 million — the highest price ever in Chantilly, according to Williams.
Williams can recall the smaller, original homes of the neighborhoods that were only 800 square feet sitting on the market for a year, and listed at around $180,000. Now, homes priced significantly higher sell much faster.
“That’s quite the change in a decade,” she said. “Being an agent over there as long as I’ve been, it’s been quite the ride to not be able to sell a $180,000 house to selling a $1.85 million house.”
More space as work trends shift
Ben Long has lived in Chantilly for about four years. He lives in one of the older, smaller homes — a two bed, one bath that dates back to 1946. It’s about 1,100 square feet.
As president of the Chantilly Neighborhood Association, Long has seen why people have been so attracted to live there. It’s close to uptown and Plaza Midwood but with only four entrances in and out, it remains free of busy cut-through vehicle traffic.
The average lot size is around 0.17 acres, meaning big houses on the narrower, smaller lots have to go up, Long said. That could make them look bigger to the average passerby from the curb.
The neighborhood also doesn’t have any historic district protection. Emotions don’t run as high tearing down the 1940s homes as compared to tearing down an older, 1920s home in neighborhoods like nearby Elizabeth, Long said.
Chu, of UNC Charlotte, sees the house size increase trend continuing for the short term. But as more people move to Charlotte and home prices go up, size will not increase forever, he said.
Portillo can see the trend continuing, too. Coming out of the pandemic, a married couple who work from home a few days a week might want more space for an office.
“Working at your kitchen table was kind of cute for a few months. People have been doing it for almost three years,” Portillo said. “They’re going to want more space.”
Data editor Gavin Off contributed to this report.
This story was originally published May 31, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
