Concord Realtor Jody Rich recently found a house for a client in Charlotte’s University area — a 2,200-square-foot ranch house in a nice neighborhood that was priced in the $425,000 to $450,000 range.
And it struck him that at that price, the house was essentially the same price as one he would find in Cabarrus County, where he’s based as the broker-owner of RE/MAX Leading Edge.
“We’re certainly catching up to some areas of Charlotte,” said Rich, who has been in real estate for nearly 30 years.
As Charlotte has grown over the past few decades, the counties surrounding Mecklenburg have long been viewed as homebuyer havens, where buyers could find better deals than in the big city. That is still true to some extent.
But people in the real estate industry in the Charlotte region say that in many cases, houses in those counties are no longer the bargains they once were. That’s because, as in Charlotte, the housing supply is getting tighter as companies and people move there.
And, as in Charlotte, the supply often doesn’t keep up with the demand.
For a typical Mecklenburg household that earns $87,000 a year, an affordable mortgage payment at current interest rates would likely buy a house in the low $300,000s. The trouble is that there aren’t many desirable houses in that range: The median sales price in Mecklenburg last year was $450,000.
With median sales prices lower in nearly all of Mecklenburg’s surrounding counties, home buyers often look there. But they’re finding fewer deals than in the past.
The phenomenon is a natural result of the Charlotte region’s growth, which is among the fastest in the country. The region’s population has doubled in the past 20 years, to about 2.9 million. The amount of undeveloped land in Mecklenburg is growing scarce, so a lot of new houses and people looking for a place to live are moving outward.
But now, even areas in some surrounding counties are reaching their limits on new housing. Some municipalities are restricting new development, as infrastructure such as roads and water and sewer lines hasn’t always kept pace. That translates to higher prices in spots once known for their affordability. And mortgage rates, which are around 6.5% for a 30-year fixed mortgage, are higher than the rock-bottom rates of 2021, which, by comparison, makes even cheaper houses harder to afford.
In Cabarrus County, there’s now a market for houses that cost more than $1M — a switch from just 10 years ago, Rich says. That has evolved in part because the economy is shifting: Manufacturers like Pillowtex (textiles) and Philip Morris (cigarettes) have closed, while pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and the hospital system have grown — and executives now buy in Cabarrus instead of Charlotte.
“This is way too much of a generalization, but a lot more blue-collar housing was available here,” he said.
The median sales price of a house in Cabarrus County in 2025 was $384,000, according to figures from Canopy MLS. That’s still less than Mecklenburg’s median, though it is 150% higher than the Cabarrus median price in 2005.
A Ledger analysis of county-by-county median sales prices over the past 20 years shows that some of the wide price differences of the past between Mecklenburg and surrounding counties are starting to flatten out: Gaston County, which had the lowest median sales price in 2005, had the fastest price growth of any local county since then. Over the same period, Iredell County, which had higher median prices than Mecklenburg 20 years ago, had the slowest price growth and is now less than Mecklenburg.
County-wide median sales prices sometimes mask differences in the housing market. For instance, communities closest to Charlotte — such as Belmont, Mount Holly, Mooresville, Weddington and Waxhaw — tend to command more of a premium than houses in the same counties that are farther away.
In Iredell County, for instance, Todd Long, a Realtor with Keller Williams Unified in Mooresville and the incoming chair of Canopy MLS, says people are moving in from both out of state and from the Charlotte region.
“A lot of times, what we are seeing is people trying to move out of apartment-style living, and they are trying to build a family,” he said. “They say, ‘We want a piece of earth of our own and can paint the walls the colors our kids want and do what we want to that property.’”
He said first-time homebuyers can find a house in Iredell County, but that “it’s definitely difficult to find housing that’s affordable anywhere south of Troutman.” Troutman, along I-77, is about 35 miles north of uptown Charlotte.
Iredell does have starter homes in the $250,000 range, he says, but those are likely to be two-bedroom, one-bathroom remodeled condos in Troutman. If you want a three-bedroom, two-bath house built in the 2000s, “then you’re in the $350,000 range. … It’s also going to be more outside Mooresville, to the east or north, into Troutman or the Statesville area.
A study by the NC Chamber Foundation, the N.C. Home Builders Association and N.C. Realtors showed that in Mecklenburg and each surrounding county in the region, median-income earners would have to pay at least 37% of their income to buy a median-priced house in those counties — a level of debt that is considered unaffordable.
Jen Schuster, executive officer of the Home Builders Association of Greater Charlotte, says builders want to construct more houses.
But surging land prices, an uncertain economy and high labor and materials costs are making home construction tough right now. And some communities are making it harder to build new houses, as residents grow wary of more traffic and higher densities.
She says it is still possible to buy homes that are not expensive — especially townhomes, of which there is an abundant supply.
For single-family homes, she recommends looking around Statesville, parts of Gaston County and even into Chester County, S.C., which is south of Rock Hill and about one hour from uptown Charlotte.
“Really, we have to go out into the tertiary markets for affordability,” she said.