Doorify Real Estate Podcast

UNC x Doorify Quarterly Roundtable Discussion on Current Market Trends - October 2025

• Doorify MLS • Episode 92

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Housing trends are changing fast, and this quarter paints a clearer picture of where the market stands today. With fresh insights from experts and new data from across North Carolina, this discussion brings the numbers and the meaning behind them to light.

In this quarterly roundtable, we sit down with researchers from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School — Jim Spaeth, Jacob Sagi, Eric Maribojoc, and Roberto Quercia — along with our team at Doorify MLS to unpack current market conditions across the Triangle. Together, we explore shifts in sales volume, supply and demand gaps, and the demographic forces shaping housing needs. 

From the growing population over 70 to the shortage of smaller, single-family homes, the data tells a story of both challenge and opportunity. We also talk about the growth of rural counties and what better regional planning could mean for the future of housing.

Tune in to hear the full discussion and see what’s on the horizon for 2026.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes: 

  • The evolving balance between urban and suburban housing markets
  • The growing demand for smaller, detached homes among older adults
  • The urgent need for regional planning to close the housing supply gap

Links from this episode:

1ae5b43598204883b524f061d4880e6d10fca88c (for podfollow.com)

Andrea Presnal [00:00:07]:
Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. We have another quarterly roundtable discussion on current market trends for October 2025. We have partnered with UNC Keenan Flagler Business School to really dive into Insights trends that they're seeing in the market. And we are so excited to have a discussion today. I am going to pass it to Jim to kick us off.

Jim Spaeth [00:00:38]:
Good morning and thank you, Andrea. And we appreciate the continued partnership and the continued conversation. We're looking forward to going through some information with everybody today and getting a lot of different perspectives on it. I'm going to start and then my colleagues will follow up and the bulk of our analysis will come from my colleague Roberto. So myself and Eric and Jacob will go through some slides at a pretty rapid clip, but we're happy to stop and, you know, talk about them as desired. So I'll start us off. I took some of the DWARFI MLS data and just looked at some sales trends in the I'll call it Covid era or post Covid era, however we want to describe it. So basically I segmented this information into those from the more urban counties, Wake, Durham and Orange and the other 16 counties which Doorfy MLS covers.

Jim Spaeth [00:01:30]:
And just to give you a sense of the split between the two, in any given year, Wake, Durham and Orange account for about 60% of all closings and other 16 counties account for about 40%. That bumps a little bit year to year, but generally it's about a 60, 40 split, 60 between. For Wake, Durham and Orange, 40% of the sales go to the other counties. So what I'm showing here is the median days on the market starting in August 2020, kind of the beginning of the COVID era, if you will. And then taking us through the most recent data of August 2025, and you'll see, interestingly, in both 2020, 2021 and 2022, the median days on market between those two segments. Again, the more urban counties, Wake, Durham, Orange and the rest of the area is essentially the same. There were a few days less in the market in the more urban counties in 2020, but 2021, 2022, I think it was 6 and 8 in both of those years. We start to see a bit of a divergence in the 2023, 24 and 25 data in that the more urban counties where Durham and Orange have significantly lower median days on the market, you'll see in 2023 that difference is about 33% less, say 11 versus about 18.

Jim Spaeth [00:02:53]:
And then in 2024 it was less than half of the time in the market. That has tightened up a bit in 2025, but it's still a significant difference between the urban markets and the more suburban or rural markets. And so I was looking to try to figure out, well, why is this happening? What's. What can explain the data we're seeing in front of us. So, Andrew, if you wouldn't mind going to the next slide. The first thing I looked at is what's happening in sales volume across these two segments. So I've indexed sales volume to the 2020 year. Now, remember, the urban counties gap were 60% the overall sales volume.

Jim Spaeth [00:03:28]:
The other 16 counties, 40% of the overall sales volume. So the urban counties have a little bit more influence on the overall market, if you looked at it like that. But what I'm saying is, if you went back to 2020 and said, all right, let's start as that. That is the baseline, and let's see what happened to sales over the last five years. We can see. Let's take the green line first. That's the suburban, more rural counties. You see an increase in of about 12% in 2021.

Jim Spaeth [00:03:55]:
That comes back down a little bit in 2022, but it's still above where we were in 2020. And then you see a falling off in 23, 24, 25 the last three years. So that by today, sales in August 2025 were approximately just less than 80% of what the sales volume was for those more exorbitant rural counties in 2020. The urban counties, Wake, Durham, Orange, interestingly, didn't see an increase in their sales from 20 to 21, and then have seen a fairly dramatic decrease in those sales. So that by today, in August 2025, they're sitting at less than 70% of the sales volume. So in other words, it's 70% of the sales that they realized in 2020 are happening in the urban county. So we're seeing a more dramatic decrease in. In sales in the urban counties versus suburban counties.

Jim Spaeth [00:04:52]:
Okay, so let's look at what that does to price, right? We see decreased volumes. What's happening on the price side. So again, let's look at the green line first. That's the other 16 counties, the more exurban rural counties, those saw a pretty dramatic increase in price between 20 and 22. So it went again, I've indexed to 100. So a 40% increase over two years in those counties from 20 to 22.

Jim Spaeth [00:05:17]:
But since 22, those prices have been essentially flat, so increased by 2040. Percent over two years stay flat for the last three years. Since then, if we look at the more urban counties, we saw again a significant increase, though not to the extent we saw. In the more exurban rural counties we saw about a 34% increase. But those counties have continued to see a gradual, much less market but gradual increase. So that by today they're at about 40% the same amount of increase. But that has an upward sloping line all the way through the period, meaning that those counties have continued to see increasing prices throughout the entirety of this kind of post. Covid.

Jim Spaeth [00:06:02]:
Covid era, however you want to describe it. So what can we take from this data? Well, probably what's going on here at least one of the ideas that we've been talking about as the, as a team is that there' as a relative amount of the overall demand in that market, there's much less supply. In Wake, Durham, Orange, these more urban counties, we've been. In other words, it's been harder to create new homes there and to get homes on the market there. So while we're seeing lower closings, whatever is on the market is trading more quickly because of the demand function in those counties and therefore the prices have been able to continue to increase in those counties. Whereas in those more exurban rural counties, the other 16 that I was showing you, there is an easier way to create supply, although Roberto will show us in a little while that we're still not nearly what we need to be creating, but there is the ability to bring new supply online. And so you have seen that dramatic increase from 20 to 22, but then a leveling off of prices and you haven't seen quite as much of a reduction in closings and as compared to 2020, because we've been able to bring some new supply online and satisfy at least some of the demand that's in those markets. So it'll be interesting for us to Track what happens 26, 27, whether we can bring more supply online in some of these markets.

Jim Spaeth [00:07:29]:
But for now they're each about 40% off in sales. But the urban markets tend to be trending a little bit more up on the sales than ex urban markets which are flatter. So that's kind of what we see. And Andrew, before we jump to Jacob, happy to have discussion or questions about that or we can reserve that to later and get through all of everybody here at UNC and then we can have a bigger conversation. However folks want to run. All right, let's move on.

John Wood [00:07:55]:
I've got a comment, but I'm going to wait to the end.

Jim Spaeth [00:07:58]:
Sounds good, John. All right, Jacob, you're up.

Jacob Sagi [00:08:01]:
All right. I'm going to be fairly efficient about this and I just want to comment that we kind of structured our presentation today like a bit like a funnel. So Jim G. You the sort of the overall view, the current view of some of the market environment here in central North Carolina. I'm going to tell you a little bit about how we got to to where we are, just a little bit about that. Summarizing some recent research that I've seen being presented by academic colleagues. And then Eric is going to drill down a little bit more about housing and aging population. And the main stage is going to be taken up by Roberto, who will give us a deeper dive into the supply and demand gap.

Jacob Sagi [00:08:42]:
So jumping in. So how do we get to where we are today in terms of building or creating new supply in the Sun Belt? And we don't have a lot of rich academic research that looks at the triangle area per se. But I'm going to focus on a recent paper I've seen that looks at the Atlanta MSA Municipal statistical area. Of course, it's not a complete apples to apples comparison, but I think there's a lot of similar, especially in the way that new supply has entered that particular market. Anyways, what we're seeing here in this slide tells a big story, which is effectively homes that have been built prior to the Great Recession. So in other words, essentially prior to 2010 have tended to be a lot smaller than the kind of inventory that we've seen coming into the market after the Great Recession, I. E. Built in the 20 teens.

Jacob Sagi [00:09:37]:
So 2010 to 2019, you can see in this history over here that the mean the, the average size of a home has shifted by probably around 40%. So from about 2,000 square feet to roughly 2, 800 square feet. And we're also seeing a much bigger tail that's the red shaded area for new homes. In other words, there are a lot of very large homes that are being built now. This is not happening in a vacuum. Where can you put large homes? And the answer is you tend to put them in larger lots. And this is no coincidence. A lot of the building is happening on the periphery of urban areas.

Jacob Sagi [00:10:16]:
And that's something again that to which Jim alluded and we're going to take a deeper dive, especially by Roberto, into that. So here's a funny thing though. If we go to the next slide, the returns, in other words, the price appreciation imputed by and together with let's call a rental equivalent. So it's essentially the owner's return on a home happens to decline with size. And so we can see here again that it's the smaller homes that seem to have registered a higher annualized price increase. And so again, so Jim earlier talked about things like price increases. This bakes in both price increases, I believe, as well as essentially imputed rent. So think about it as the income you would have gotten from renting the house for fair value.

Jacob Sagi [00:11:06]:
And the reason largely that we're seeing, what we're seeing here is again, most of those larger homes tend to be on the periphery. And so it's the urban core that tends to experience more drastic price appreciation, more sudden price appreciation. I want to emphasize, again, this is data from 2010 to 2019, so it doesn't necessarily fit the narrative that Jim showed us for the following years, 2020 to 2025. In any case, by and large, a lot of this is driven by the increase in land value, proximity to amenities, etc. Which of course is more tends to be more attractive in the urban or vibrant urban core areas. And so again, we're seeing that it's a price appreciation that's mostly going to the smaller homes. And lastly, if we go to the next slide, I want to take a step back and flesh out a little bit more about again, these new homes that are being built on the periphery. What kinds of homes are these? Who are the buyers? What kind of neighborhoods are we talking about? Well, you may not be surprised to learn that a lot of the building that we have done in the 2000 teens happen to be for higher income, college educated and tend to be a more expensive type of home, essentially responding to demand from higher income segments.

Jacob Sagi [00:12:27]:
Moreover, and here's an important thing and a conversation all in itself, a lot of these neighborhoods where new buildings have been going up, up are associated with greater minimum square footage restrictions. So there basically the neighborhood itself is, you know, through zoning, is forcing the size to go up and also minimum lot size restrictions, which of course means that homes are taking up more, more acreage per home. So a lot of the building, to summarize that we've seen in the 2000 teens goes against the grain of increasing density. And what we are being told a lot by all the pundits, and again Roberto, is going to get into this, is that if you want to be efficient in creating affordable and new housing and meet the growing demand, there's. It's hard to avoid the notion that density needs to increase, but Again, to the point, in the 2000s, we did the opposite. So I'm going to let my colleague Eric take over from here.

Eric Maribojoc [00:13:30]:
Well, thanks, Jacob. I'm actually going to pick up on that theme of the demand for smaller houses or more density in using our land, given through the lens basically of a demographic analysis of our population. If you go to the next slide, my presentation is really based on this particular chart from the real estate consulting servant of John Burns. So this measures the change in our population in the next 10 years by age. So if you just look at this chart, by 2034, the largest segment of our population will be people over the age of 70. There's about 15 million more of them by 2034. And then of course, their kids, the echo baby boom will be the next largest cohort. They're now in their 40s.

Eric Maribojoc [00:14:34]:
The other cohorts are going to actually lose population. But this also from a residential lens, we can interpret this as a lot of the future real estate demand is also going to be driven by these age groups that are going to be much more numerous going forward. So the question is, what kind of housing do they want? You know, does that relate to, say, what Jacob was describing? Will those trends be even more pronounced going forward? We know that we are in a housing shortage situation and we're encouraging the development of more housing. I guess this is a question of what kind of housing should we be building more of going forward to do more efficiently meet the needs of our population in the next 10 years? So next slide, please. So I couldn't find a similar graph just for North Carolina, but this kind of this graph or this information on this slide will kind of show that it's probably consistent with our state as well. So this is data from the state government. These are the counties which have more residents over the age of 60 than residents below the age of 18. In 2021, 86 of our counties had that situation.

Eric Maribojoc [00:16:04]:
However, our largest urban counties, Charlotte, Durham and Raleigh, were still not in that situation. Fast forward to 2041, the bottom map. The state projects that that will no longer be the case. Even our largest urban areas will have more people over the age of 60 than our people below the age of 18. And only some rural counties, there's only going to be 10 of them. Will that not be true? Now, the silver lining for us is our population under the age of 18 is still growing and still protected to grow in absolute numbers. It's just that our older population is growing faster. That is not true of all states.

Eric Maribojoc [00:17:01]:
I Think North Carolina right now is one of 10 states that are growing the population of less than 18 year olds. Most other states that number is falling. Which is, which is sort of a silver lining. Good news for us since we need 18 year olds to be feeding into UNC. So. Next slide please. So the AARP has a periodic survey of how would seniors like to live and their latest survey, which was in late 2024. The vast majority of 50 plus Americans would like to live either in their current home or their current community for as long as possible.

Eric Maribojoc [00:17:51]:
So the age in place phenomenon or trend is still very strong. However, people have been moving despite that preference because of unaffordability. They cannot afford when they retire to remain in their location because of either the cost of rent or mortgage or the cost of property taxes. So if we can find a way to make it affordable for that population, they would not move. They would like to downsize. So two thirds would like to downsize from the size of their current home to, to Jacob's information. But the kind of housing they want is still single family detached. So they want a smaller single family detached home.

Eric Maribojoc [00:18:45]:
About 75% of all people, 50 plus. However, in many of our jurisdictions, these are hard to find. That's what they're probably bidding up, the price of smaller homes, not just for starter homes for young people, but also increasingly downsizing homes for a much larger portion of the population that's aging over 70. I think that's part of their renewed interest in accessory dwelling units. By definition, that is a single family detached home that has small square footage. I guess the other related information that I found really interesting, maybe that has nothing to do with, with home size or anything like that, but maybe with the types of configurations inside the home that, you know, we should be thinking about and realtors should be thinking about, is that half of adults are either caregivers currently to an elderly person or expect to be a caregiver to an elderly person in their own home at some point. So I think that has other implications for, you know, the type of the way houses are laid out in the future. Next slide please.

Eric Maribojoc [00:20:03]:
So there are implications to people of course, staying in their homes as they are because they don't have the ability to downsize to smaller homes that they would prefer. One implication is there's a lot of, there's a lot of houses with unused bedrooms. There's a lot of older households living in houses that are too large for them. And since they prefer to stay where they are, they are unable to sell because they can't find this small detached home that they prefer to live in. And therefore the younger households cannot move up to the houses that they need because the older households for the most part are staying put. There's a lot of other reasons like the mortgage lock in and so forth, but the availability of smaller detached housing stock close to amenities established neighborhoods is a big part of it. So the number of excess bedrooms per the census has been really growing from about 3.5% in 1980 of all bedrooms that are considered now guest bedrooms. Now it's about more than two and a half times that.

Eric Maribojoc [00:21:20]:
It's about almost 9% of all bedrooms are now considered guest bedrooms. So this phenomenon of a more senior population has some implications as well for the younger households looking to move up. Next slide please. So one option would be, you know, how do we build more of these small detached houses that would be attractive to seniors to move into and since there's not enough of them that are existing, we have to build them new. Right. So of course the ad, the ADU Missing Middle Income movement is a source of that. This is a project which I found interesting that was approved a few weeks ago in Knightdale, which is northern Wake county by a large developer, Dr. Horton, one of the largest home builders in in the US and they have gotten approval to build a cottage court development surrounded by some smaller single family homes.

Eric Maribojoc [00:22:26]:
And these cottage courts are a thousand to twelve hundred square feet, two to three bedrooms. So as you know, it's impossible to find a two bedroom, brand new detached single family home. Right. So this, this configuration allows that. And so it's, it is, my guess is it is going to be marketed a lot to not only entry level but also downsizing seniors. These are 68 of them arranged in the interior of the development. It's a zoning exemption for Knightdale. So it's not something that can easily be done by right anywhere in the triangle.

Eric Maribojoc [00:23:08]:
So hopefully we'll see more of these.

Eric Maribojoc [00:23:11]:
New.

Eric Maribojoc [00:23:13]:
Types of housing being offered in the market. And next slide please. This is an idea of what they look like. They're single story, as I said. There's a two bedroom configuration and a three bedroom configuration. And hopefully this will be part of the solution to our aging population. So with that I'll turn it over to Roberto.

Roberto Quercia [00:23:37]:
Thank you, Eric. So the topic of my part of the presentation is about housing supply shortages and why we, I and we as a group chose to talk about this is our belief that key to addressing the housing shortages that my colleagues have mentioned is understanding the Dynamics within individual counties and how development patterns have evolved and where they are headed. That said, we also believe that focusing on counties in isolation will not give us a full picture. The housing market in the Triangle is becoming a truly regional system system spanning all counties and the interrelationship. So whenever we look at supply and demand issues, we need to think and reflect that broader reality. I think kind of a good statement that would exemplify this is in the housing market, if somebody has a calling rally, somebody in Warren county will sneeze. These markets are all interrelated and what happens in one will likely impact what was happening in the other markets. So we all know the Triangle main cities are driving a lot of the growth in our area.

Roberto Quercia [00:25:00]:
The cities around Raleigh have created a rapidly urban suburban belt around Raleigh and they are absorbing a lot of the growth that is happening in Wake County. Chapel Hill, Carboro and Hillsboro are not adding much to the stock. They are kind of more traditional. A lot of restrictions in terms of zoning and challenges to developers. Durhams is doing a little bit better. Chatham and Franklin County, Johnston county are actually doing better in terms of promoting growth. So basically Clayton have provided an interesting link between Wake county and Johnston county with all the new development going into that area. Next.

Roberto Quercia [00:25:47]:
So we go quickly over many of these slides given the time. And we're looking forward to hearing from all of you that are in the field doing this kind of work. The area is highly populated. These are 2024 figures estimated to about 2.3 million. About 870,000 households. About 2/3 are families and 1/3 living alone. The medium income is about 77,000 that grew up about 4% year over year. We have about 950,000 units.

Roberto Quercia [00:26:23]:
Again an increase in 2.7% year over year. Next, piggybacking on what Eric mentioned. As we can see here, these are Triangle figures. The market probably likely driven by those in the 2544 demographics. The prime combined years, those have seen the greatest increase and those over 65. As Eric mentioned, there is a tension between both groups I think competing in the market. Entry level homes and homes for older people often look similarly. And older people typically come from maybe wealth and assets that may be retiring or moving from other parts of the country to here.

Roberto Quercia [00:27:12]:
So this dynamic tension, I think we put pressure on the housing supply as retirees compete with younger families for smaller, well located home. So I'm glad Eric mentioned one of these, at least some options that we can be looking forward to. Next, these are population by county. And just to describe the great variation in population places like wake county that is in the next slide is the most populous. And 80% of its residents live in incorporated municipalities. From there down, many of the other counties have a much lower percentage of residents in incorporated places. So with all the Triangles population distribution reveal a very dynamic interplay between urban expansion from the most populous counties to the less populous counties and rural resilience. Many of our counties are still extremely rural.

Roberto Quercia [00:28:12]:
And they are absorbing a lot of the growth that is happening in these larger counties. Smaller towns in these more rural counties serve as transitional zones. Interesting enough that blend amenities with more slow paced lifestyle in a rural setting. But it creates a lot of challenges at this small town level of providing the needed infrastructure to support the growth that is expected in those areas. Again, this is a set of two slides. We have about four or five counties that are basically about the medium income for the Triangle. As you can expect, Chatham, Johnstone, Orange and Wake. All the other states are below medium.

Roberto Quercia [00:29:00]:
And so they kind of reflect probably more rural economy. And even projections. You can see where the population is likely to settle. And we see rapid growth in places like Harnett and Granville. Johnston county will continue to grow. So the population projections suggest that these counties are likely to absorb, proportionally speaking, a greater proportion of higher income households than they did in the past. These are orange and white. And as you can see, the growth in some of the other counties will not be as significant as in the main major counties.

Roberto Quercia [00:29:39]:
Next. So the housing units in the Triangle are quite diverse. I was surprised. About 1 of 60% are single family detached homes. And the rest are what I would call more higher density attached single family 2, 4, 9 and higher. I think this is important. Eric mentioned the decide of these over 65 to continue to live in single family detached places. And so are the prime combined group of the 24 to 50, 45.

Roberto Quercia [00:30:16]:
So this variation and this breakdown I believe is likely to continue to increase to be the same over the next few years. I know that there is a push to zoning reform in many of the larger counties to promote higher density. That may happen on the margins. But we do believe that the future and development will occur at the single family detached. With the bulk of the demands in to be coming from in the future. The other thing that is interesting piggybacking on what Eric mentioned is that most of the stock in our area is three bedroom single family detached homes. And the second most popular configuration is two bedroom homes. So unfortunately these are already occupied and they are in high demand.

Roberto Quercia [00:31:02]:
And as Jim showed In his slide, they typically on a per square footage they tend to be more expensive than the larger homes. Most of the units in our area were built between 1980 and the financial crisis. With peak production in the run up to the financial crisis. Only about 10% were built after 2009. So about 60% of the housing stock will reach at least a 30 year life cycle this decade. We suggest a need for renovations, maintenance and the kind of housing we will see in the market for sale as people turn around and people age out of their homes. We look at population and population growth and now we look at unit permitted and whether the supply is kind of meeting demand. And what we see is that there seems to be a critical mismatch between population growth and housing development across the Triangle region.

Roberto Quercia [00:32:06]:
We believe that the population growth figures understate the full demand for new units. There are also current unmet needs as both Jim and Eric mentioned, as well as replacement of obsolete and depreciated assets as the stock I just mentioned that will reach the 30 year level and will require some TLC to be able to remain viable. Wake county, the fastest growing in the area, added about 100,000 in the last five years and permitted about 74,000 new units. The projected growth is about 97,000 over the next five years and only 76,000 if the 2024 permitting rate holds steady for the next five years. I look at some of the most recent building permits in the area for the next few last few months. Again, it's partial and they seem to have actually declined. So maybe this unit permitted over the next five years is more optimistic than probably we would like it to be. The shortfall is echo in Dunham county where population growth is strong but housing permits are lagging.

Roberto Quercia [00:33:25]:
Same with Orange and Chatham. But the so we have seen recently, as you all probably know, declines in rents for people that are renting and the growth in prices for sale houses is flattening. But the imbalance continues and it has significant implications for affordability and access. Housing becoming less expensive does not mean it becomes affordable. So we really something to look at for people to serve the needs of the whole of our residents. As the money is projected to continue to outstretch supply in the coming years. Housing prices and rents are likely to continue rising, putting pressure on lower and middle income households. The data shows that counties like Johnston and Harnett are permitting more aggressively, potentially absorbing some of the overflow from core urban areas.

Roberto Quercia [00:34:25]:
So we see this trend continuing and accelerating. However, without coordinated regional planning and investing in infrastructure These outer counties are going to struggle to support sustainable growth. So I think there is a need to look at this regional component when we look at the infrastructure required for this outer county to continue to serve the growth in our urban greater urban counties. But all picture to me when I look at this slide and the next one is one of the region in transition where demographic momentum is outpacing housing supply and where strategic intervention will be needed to put in place a required infrastructure and services to meet the housing needs of all our prospective residents. Next, we also look at our Dorify data and this we suspected this, but it was a notable trend. The new housing unit listed and more prevalent in these outer counties experiencing faster growth. For instance, Johnston and Harnett county show a higher number of new unit listings than compared with their existing listing, suggesting a surge in development activity likely driven by population growth and increased housing demand from the core urban areas. Franklin county stands out with slightly more new listings than existing ones, reinforcing the patterns of expansion of development into emerging areas.

Roberto Quercia [00:36:10]:
These figures suggest that developers are responding to growth pressures by increasing housing supply in these outer regions. Conversely, more established and slower growing counties, Orange Persian bands exceed significantly fewer new listings compared with existing ones. Orange, where I live, caught my attention. We have 206 existing listings and only 35 new ones. So we are not building new units. So our growth is basically overflowing into our surrounding counties. This disparity may reflect market saturation, Sony limitations, especially here in Chapel Hill and less demand for new construction in areas where people move here for maybe close proximity to the hospital or other amenities. Overall, I think the Dorify data underscores a geographic shift in housing development with new construction increasingly concentrated in counties.

Roberto Quercia [00:37:14]:
These outer counties poised for or already experiencing rapid growth. These are the other counties. Next. Then we look at the for sale housing gap by AMI area medium income. And we look at housing shortages in 2029. So this brings all the other analysis we just presented into a table broken down by income group. As you can see, the Wake county stands out with the most significant overall shortage totaling about 50,000 units. With the largest gap between 80 and 120 and 120 and 150 already medium income.

Roberto Quercia [00:37:58]:
Dura and Mr. Exact have followed the same pattern with a greater gap of about 15,000 units shortage in the 120, 150. This figure suggests that middle income households will face the greatest challenge in accessing for sale housing in the coming years, highlighting a pressing need for strategies to address this affordability for these demographic groups. Chatham, Franklin Lee, Orange county also show notable shortages. On a smaller scale. Chatham is interesting. Chatham county because it shows shortages almost evenly distributed across all income levels. To suggest the transitional stage in which Chatham county is where they have still a lot of very rural residents to a lot of newcomers with a lot of significant money.

Roberto Quercia [00:38:56]:
I have a footnote in there below the chart that shows there is also a shortage at the below 50% of area medium income. Because these are for sale homes. Below a certain point, people can buy. But in Chatham, because still we have a lot of rural, affordable, low price home. There is still a shortage to meet that kind of demographics. I would like to conclude with some takeaways. And again we the team go together and talk about these issues. But again, I take ownership of them.

Roberto Quercia [00:39:31]:
The Triangle region is a diverse mix of urban centers, small towns and rural communities. Very diverse across the region. The urban areas face density and affordability challenges. While rural areas may struggle with infrastructure and access, access to services. Addressing the housing and looking at the future of housing. The Triangle must account for these differences to create effective strategies. We also see that supply is lagging demand both now and regarding future projections. This mismatch is driven by population growth, obviously household formation and successful economic development in our area.

Roberto Quercia [00:40:18]:
Without significant addition to supply, we think that the shortages will widen, Exacerbating affordability issues and potentially stalling regional growth. We also see that each country within the Triangle has its own housing dynamics. Wake county may face intense demand due to job growth and urban amenities. While more rural counties may have underutilized land. But lack the infrastructure to support rapid development. We believe also that higher income counties have often restrictive zoning, higher land cost and community resistance to denser development. So we think that these factors will limit their ability to meet housing demand in their area. This create pressures, will create pressures, continue pressures in the neighboring counties.

Roberto Quercia [00:41:14]:
And contribute to regional imbalances. Countries with lower housing costs and more flexible development policies. Are poised to absorb even more of the region's growth. This can help alleviate the overall shortage. But it also raises concern again about the infrastructure capacity. Such as water, sewer, school systems and others. We need to really rethink these outer counties, those things to be able to absorb the growth. We believe that a regional strategy is needed to support growth sustainably in these outer counties.

Roberto Quercia [00:41:52]:
Just a caveat. As researchers, we also have limitations about our work. Projecting the future is not as easy projecting the past. So there are a lot of moving parts about the future, both at local, state and federal level. There are demographics. There is a issue of immigration, education, employment Income, housing production, policy changes, all this stuff, when we make assumptions about the future are hold steady and obviously given the uncertainty in which we live, they may not hold. We do feel that there is a need for new units, but also a need to preserve the existing stock. The age of our stock in our area and the type of housing we have, two to three bedroom, predominantly fits very nicely in what Eric was mentioning about the need of the over 65 crowd that is going growing in numbers.

Roberto Quercia [00:42:53]:
So infrastructure and public services are likely to be strained and grow spills over into more rude counties, outer counties. Again, without proactive strategies, these trends can reduce the quality of life and actually hinder further development in these areas, putting more pressures in the urban core areas in terms of price and demand. So we believe that a regional approach is needed in which both counties and cities have to collaborate. The city has the power of zoning, typical infrastructure, annexation and others. But again there are a lot of diversity and without the county and a regional approach we are probably unlikely to be able to meet to meet demand. And my last slide is a quick slide I came across next Roseville in Wake County. We seem to have used some of the same strategies I just mentioned. It has grown rapidly over the last few years, growing from about 3,700 to over 10,000 since and is looking at regional planning intense with housing partners including the home builders trying to implement mixed use housing and missing middle housing.

Roberto Quercia [00:44:10]:
And they are building thousands of units. So maybe something for us to look more into. And with that I open it up to any questions you may all have.

Andrea Presnal [00:44:20]:
This was truly an incredible presentation. There's so much data and things to chat about. Do any of our team at DORI want to revisit any of the slides or questions for discussion for the UNC team? I know, John, you had a question earlier.

John Wood [00:44:44]:
Great information. Wow, love what y' all have provided. I thought I'd give a little insight from what we see on the brokerage in a couple areas. Certainly when you're looking at the 55 + community and you know we're watching a couple things drive that market into where there's new developments. I mean they're selling out a year, year and a half to two years in advance of delivering the product throughout the triangle where they have those targeted neighborhoods. And part of it is they're providing the housing needs that want. They're surprisingly larger than what you would expect. But for many of the people moving in, they actually are moving in a slightly smaller home, but they are planning on that.

John Wood [00:45:26]:
Aging in place mentality and what is driving that? I mean we're not talking about four and $500,000 homes there. We're talking about seven, $8 million homes. And we're seeing it because the stock market has done so well. So their investments have done well. Their appreciation in their homes, whether they're moving local, where they've moved from somewhere else in the country, especially in the last three or four years, you know, that 30 and 40% appreciation has created that, that near retirement or newly retired person to have the ability to buy homes that they traditionally weren't going to be buying. So there's been a big shift in when you look at from appreciation and also what's happened in the stock market, you know, in that availability and that has obviously skewed affordability just out the door. Because what those 55 plus communities also been able to do is venture just into perimeter counties and offer option because they don't, they don't put pressure on the school system. They do put pressure on water and infrastructure otherwise, but not on the school system.

John Wood [00:46:30]:
So that's interesting. You know, you talked about the sale of homes, the size of them gotten larger since the recession. That was an interesting stat because back at that point the words we were hearing is wow, there's going to be more smaller homes. There'll be more smaller homes. Every single time in my 30 plus years in this business we go through a downturn. Everyone says we're going to shrink our housing. That happens for about two years and then we go right back to building bigger and bigger homes. So it's a cycle that we go through every time there's a downturn.

John Wood [00:46:59]:
At least what I've witnessed. The 60% of our housing stock is going to be 30 years old. Boy, that's one of the scariest stats I saw. And I live in one of those homes. And you're right, we've all got to remodel at a higher level. Boy, we appreciate the insight that y' all provided today. It's great to see it from Yalls perspective.

Andrea Presnal [00:47:16]:
Anyone else have any other thoughts? I know we're coming up on time but I want to make sure we answer any questions or last minute thoughts.

Matt Fowler [00:47:28]:
I really want to thank everybody for coming out today. We'll follow up with some of the questions we had on the side down in the call notes and introduce John and Eddie and Steve and Kate and everybody we had on the call today and follow up for our Q4. Our next call I guess is going to be our 2025 wrap up in early Q.

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Matt Fagioli

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