Interesting Sales Trends in Mecklenburg County, NC

[Greg C.]

The City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County have some excellent open data available online (here if anyone is interested: http://maps.co.mecklenburg.nc....).

I was messing around with some of the parcel sale records, and I was able to plot the average year that every piece of real estate (or parcel) has most recently sold in each neighborhood area of Mecklenburg County based on deed conveyance figures. As a caveat, this includes all property including government land which is unlikely to change hands often.

A temporary version of my map can be found on this link, you may need to click the image to see its full resolution. Some of the labels are pretty grainy at low resolutions.

https://ibb.co/0nc2M4S

I noticed some interesting trends. 

1.) Areas along the fringe of the county, especially towards Huntersville in the N and the SC state line in the S, have seen some significant real estate transactions take place in recent years. On average, most parcels in these communities were most recently sold between 2014 and 2019. My guess is that much of this is due to subdivisions of large vacant land and new developments.

2.) Within the city limits of Charlotte, the area around Noda and Villa Park have also seen most of their real estate parcels change hands in the past half decade, which is likely not all that unsurprising to people familiar with that area but it is fascinating to see on a map.

3.) Generally, the fringe surrounding downtown Charlotte has also been a big growth area with the exception of the Genesis Park neighborhood to the NW of downtown where real estate on average hasn't changed hands since the early 2000s. I am wondering how long this will last.

4.) The neighborhoods between the inner beltway and the outer beltway are more stable, but I am guessing that this is likely due to different reasons. In some, the housing stock is generally mature sfhs, which are less likely to change hands frequently or end up in foreclosure. In other neighborhoods, the residents themselves are mature and simply have no desire to sell at this time. Other neighborhoods may be less desirable from an investor standpoint. 

All in all, the CLT area has seen some interesting sales trends over the past few decades. I will be curious to see how the real estate market unfolds as the area continues to grow.