Childress Klein Center for Real Estate developing regional housing study

The Childress Klein Center for Real Estate at UNC Charlotte is launching a five-year research project, the State of Housing in Charlotte, to provide policymakers, real estate professionals and the general public a comprehensive, data-driven analysis of the housing markets in the Charlotte metropolitan area. The intent is for the report to become the cornerstone data source for housing policy analysis in the Charlotte region; it is expected to be unveiled at a State of Housing Summit during the first quarter of 2019.

To date, more than 10 organizations and firms have pledged a total of more than $200,000 over five years to support this comprehensive report, including the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association, the Piedmont Public Policy Institute, the National Association of Realtors, Center City Partners, True Homes Inc., Evergreen Strategies, Crosland Southeast, the Foundation for the Carolinas, the Charlotte Housing Authority and Moore & Van Allen.

Richard Buttimer, director of the Childress Klein Center for Real Estate at UNC Charlotte, said, “The idea came to our center directly from the Charlotte real estate community, and we are now in a great position in the center with new faculty researchers to deliver this project.”

The annual State of Housing in Charlotte report will provide a comprehensive overview of housing in Charlotte, including both owner-occupied housing and rental housing. Primary goals of this report will be to demonstrate what is currently happening in the Charlotte region and what has happened in the recent past and to become a common, impartial data source for all housing stakeholders. The report will provide data and analysis for the entire Charlotte metropolitan area, and it will include the adjoining counties because of their increasing integration with the housing market in Charlotte proper.

“Policymakers and others who wish to affect change in the Charlotte market will increasingly have to take into account how changes in the suburban markets effect Charlotte and vice versa. Currently, information on the Charlotte market is easier to find than on the surrounding counties. A major goal of this report will be to provide a consistent and uniform degree of detail, as well as a uniform data format, across the entire region,” Buttimer said.

The report is expected to include three core components: a comprehensive inventory of the current housing stock, an analysis of housing affordability across all income levels and a higher-level comparison of the Charlotte regional housing market with those of other regional metropolitan areas and with selected size-paired national metropolitan areas. The report also will highlight a series of best practices and unique programs that have been instituted in the comparison cities. This will include an analysis of how well those best practices and programs could be adapted to the Charlotte region.

One of the key components of the report will be to illustrate the affordability of housing in the Charlotte metropolitan area through data. In addition to housing data provided by the Carolina Multiple Listing Services, Inc., researchers will collect and use demographic, employment and transit data to develop an integrated view of the state of housing.

The report will be released during a half-day “State of Housing in Charlotte Summit” to be hosted by the Childress Klein Center for Real Estate at UNC Charlotte Center City and sponsored by major organizations.

“Because the report will necessarily be detailed and technical, the summit will provide an important public dialogue and a deeper dive into some of the key findings, with national and major keynote speakers on this important topic,” Buttimer said.

Organizations and firms can learn more by emailing realestate@uncc.edu or visiting realestate.charlotte.edu.