Your inside source for real estate, development and construction information serving the counties of Mecklenburg, Union & Iredell VOLUME 108 NUMBER 13 ■ MECKTIMES.COM
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TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 2024
The dos and don’ts of transferring generational wealth Page 2
Real estate lawsuit settlement upends decades-long policies that helped set agent commissions Page 3
Pearlmark Closes on a Mezzanine Loan for the Development of Link Apartments NoDa Phase II in Charlotte Page 4
GOLDMAN: Don’t Want to Work? Work in HR. Page 5
MARGENAU: You Are Being Paid Properly Page 6
Millennial Money: Navigating the SSI ‘marriage penalty’ Page 7
Opportunity Zone housing markets still tracking along with broader U.S. housing market Median Home Values Decrease During Fourth Quarter of 2023 in Just Over Half of Opportunity Zones Targeted for Economic Redevelopment Around U.S.; Price-Decline Trends Inside Zones Again Follow Closely With National Market Patterns; ATTOM has released its fourthquarter 2023 report analyzing qualified low-income Opportunity Zones targeted by Congress for economic redevelopment in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (see full methodology below). In this report, ATTOM looked at 3,667 zones around the United States with sufficient data to analyze, meaning they had at least five home sales in the fourth quarter of 2023. The report found that median singlefamily home and condo prices dropped from the third quarter of 2023 to the fourth quarter of 2023 in 52 percent of Opportunity Zones around the country with sufficient data to analyze, declining by more than 3 percent in close to half. Those downturns, in and around lowincome neighborhoods where the federal government offers tax breaks to spur economic revival, tracked closely with nationwide price trends as a decade-long boom in the U.S. housing market showed signs of slowing down. The latest trends also continued a long-term pattern of home values inside Opportunity Zones moving
alongside broader nationwide gains and losses for at least the last three years. That marked an ongoing sign of economic tides rising or falling inside some of the country’s most distressed communities along with other markets around the country. Opportunity Zones even showed signs again of doing slightly better than other neighborhoods around the country during the fourth quarter of last year. For example, while prices generally decreased, a slightly larger portion of Opportunity Zones saw significant price increases in the fourth quarter compared to other locations around the U.S. “The fourth quarter of last year certainly wasn’t a great one for Opportunity Zone home values, with more losses than gains. But within the bigger picture, those areas keep riding national coattails, whether home values are going up or whether they are going down. Nothing jumped out as much worse than what happened throughout the nation,” said Rob Barber, CEO for ATTOM. “This has clearly become an extended story as
the zones continue to attract home-buyer interest in a very tight housing market. More broadly, it also shows the kind of economic strength inside Opportunity Zones that the legislation is designed to use as a springboard to attract investors.” Opportunity Zones are defined in the Tax Act legislation as census tracts in or alongside low-income neighborhoods that meet various criteria for redevelopment in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. Census tracts, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, cover areas that have 1,200 to 8,000 residents, with an average of about 4,000 people. Amid the economic limitations of Opportunity Zones, typical home values in most of those neighborhoods continued to fall well below those in other markets around the nation during the fourth quarter of 2023. Median fourth-quarter sales prices were less than the U.S. median sales price of $333,000 in 79 percent of Opportunity Zones. That was about the same portion as in earlier periods over the past year. In
PLEASE SEE HOUSING MARKET ON PAGE 6
“We are excited about this opportunity to provide construction financing to Grubb Properties, a well-respected Charlotte-based developer who we have successfully partnered with in the past. The development is well-located in the NoDa submarket with excellent proximity to Charlotte’s light rail.” Mark Witt, Pearlmark.
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