If you’re selling your home in the Charlotte area this spring, be prepared to wait a little longer before striking a deal. It took an average of 96 days for homes in the 16-county region to go from being listed to closing last year, according to Canopy Realtor Association. That’s a 10% increase from 2024. For more, Ashley Fahey of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: Why are buyers taking longer to pull the trigger? And for context, is this more of a return-to-normal given how crazy the market was during the pandemic?
Ashley Fahey: We're definitely seeing a rebalancing in the housing market. Buyers really didn't have a lot of leverage. They're starting to get that leverage back now. We're definitely seeing the cooling down across the broader market as interest rates have been higher than they were historically. A lot of the disconnect we're seeing in the market now is between seller expectations and what buyers are willing to pay for and the kind of houses that they are looking for. A lot of sellers are listing their homes, thinking it's still 2021. I will note, though, that it very much depends on the type of house and even the area you're looking in.
Terry: Could things pick up in the spring? That’s typically the busiest time of the year for home sales, right?
Fahey: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, agents I spoke with this week were saying that they're already seeing an uptick in buyer activity. I’ll note despite the fact that homes are sitting on the market longer, home prices are still going up in the Charlotte region, which I think underscores the fact that the homes that are sort of priced well, the new construction — those homes are getting kind of top of market pricing. But if you haven't invested in your house, or it's a house that needs a lot of renovation, those homes are going to have to see a bit of a price cut potentially.
Terry: Let’s now talk about the ongoing saga of Sycamore Brewing, which is still dealing with the fallout after one of its co-owners was arrested in December on sex crime charges involving a 13-year-old. You actually were able to speak with a Sycamore employee to get an inside view. How hard was it to get this person to talk and what did they have to say?
Fahey: I reached out to over a dozen employees. Most of them didn't get back to me. I did manage to speak to one. He was just wanting to share with me the perspective of the employees who feel like they're really caught in the middle of all this. They were absolutely shocked when the allegations came to light and the arrest happened. A lot of the things he told me were basically Sycamore has historically been a great place to work, one of the better paid gigs in craft beer in Charlotte. I think this is important to contextualize, as craft beer has seen a bit of a slowdown, not just in Charlotte, but kind of across the country. If these employees aren't sure about their future at the brewery, it's going to be really hard for them to find a job, maybe in Charlotte, in the same industry.
I have heard that many of the employees are currently furloughed at Sycamore, and a lot of them are just really not sure what's going to happen. We don't know a lot. The employees are saying they don't know a lot about where the brewery goes next.
Terry: Over to The Pearl now, where some economic development groups are planning to set up shop. Which ones? And I guess first remind us what The Pearl is.
Fahey: The Pearl's an innovation district. It's headlined by the Atrium Health Wake Forest School of Medicine. There's also a lot of biotech companies that are setting up shop there. The developer Wexford has actually built Connect Labs within the building, which is a kind of co-working space for biotech and life sciences companies. I talked to Tracy Dodson at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance last week. She told me that it's important for economic development groups, including the city, Mecklenburg County, the Alliance, even state economic development agencies to have a presence at The Pearl so they can get in front of these entrepreneurs.
Terry: The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library is pausing its search for a new permanent CEO. What’s going on there?
Fahey: The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library has had an interim CEO for over eight months now. It is interesting, given they have such a big project going on in uptown with the new main library on Tryon Street, that they are currently without a permanent leader. The library told us in a statement, “the board has decided to pause the search briefly while they assess what they have learned” through the process and “evolve the leadership profile required” for today's environment, which is a little vague. They do intend to restart the process in the coming months.
Support for BizWorthy comes from the law office of Robertson & Associates.
