Mecklenburg County home ownership dip among largest in US. Here’s what we know.
The percentage of people owning their homes in Mecklenburg County fell more between 2010 and 2020 than anywhere else in the state, according to newly released census data.
What’s more, Mecklenburg’s 6.2 percentage point decrease in home ownership was the 17th biggest decline of any county nationwide, data show.
Just over 54% of residents owned their home here in 2020, down from 60.6% a decade ago. With ownership down, the portion of people renting rose during the past decade, from 39.4% in 2010 to 45.6% in 2020.
It’s not hard to see signs of the change. Look pretty much anywhere around Charlotte or the surrounding towns, and you’ll see familiar sights of an apartment building construction boom.
Given current trends, Mecklenburg could end up on a path where half or more of its residents live in rental properties in the coming years.
What’s driving rental growth in Mecklenburg?
Several factors are propelling the changes in where people live in Mecklenburg County, experts said.
Coming out of the Great Recession, Charlotte was one of a number of cities attractive to millennials, said Chuck McShane, director of market analytics for the Carolinas for CoStar Group, a real estate research firm.
There were fewer opportunities to purchase homes at that time, he said, and many millennials looked to rent. Charlotte’s hot housing market that drove up home prices also led more people to look for rental options.
Security for Sale, a 2022 Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer investigation, documented that the Charlotte area has become a national hot spot for investors buying homes and converting them to rentals.
What’s more, the expansion of the light rail line from uptown to the university area has brought high-density, multifamily housing, said Katie Zager, a research analyst with the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute. Now, apartments line the roads where trees, businesses and single-family homes once stood.
But the change in home ownership doesn’t mean there are fewer single-family homes in the county. Rather, it reflects that apartment complexes are going up faster than new houses, according to Zager.
That trend does not appear to be slowing down either.
For instance, at one point last year, nearly 20,000 apartment units were under construction, according to CoStar. That set a record dating back to 2000. Around the same time in 2006, that number was less than 5,000, the Observer previously reported.
Pinpointing the decline
Nearly four out of five Mecklenburg County census tracts — areas the size of neighborhoods — had a decline in their home ownership, according to an analysis by the Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News & Observer.
These neighborhoods spanned the county, including large swaths north of uptown.
But some areas saw significant declines, including losses of more than 20 percentage points in tracts in Ballantyne, South End and in pockets of north Charlotte along Interstate 485.
Home ownership shifts outside Mecklenburg
While Mecklenburg saw its home ownership fall, two nearby counties saw a slight rise in ownership.
Those increases happened in Lincoln and Union counties, where nearly 77% and 81% of residents own homes. Several other counties saw slight decreases in home ownership levels, but nowhere near Mecklenburg’s. They were Gaston, Iredell and Catawba counties.
McShane anticipates that trend will continue, too. As opportunities for land becomes scarcer in urban counties, developers will look further out from that core to build subdivisions.
Fast-growing Cabarrus County fell somewhere between the likes of Mecklenburg and Union counties. Its home ownership rate fell by 4.1 percentage points to 69.6%.
This story was originally published May 25, 2023 at 10:58 AM.
