Dear Mayor Harrington,
On behalf of the Real Estate & Building Industry Coalition (REBIC), I want to extend our warmest congratulations on your selection by the Charlotte City Council to serve as the 60th Mayor of Charlotte. As a deeply respected civic leader and an accomplished attorney, your reputation for listening, building consensus, and fostering collaboration is precisely what our city requires during this critical 18-month transition. As the legal and civic “bridge” guiding Charlotte through December 2027, you take the helm during a period of immense growth and equally substantial economic challenges.
The real estate, development, and construction industries serve as the foundational backbone of Charlotte’s economy. To ensure our city remains a vibrant, competitive, and livable place to build a life and a business, we believe it is vital to immediately bring several high-stakes issues to your attention.
Our coalition stands ready to collaborate with you on the following pressing challenges:
Housing Affordability: You have rightly identified affordability as Charlotte’s most pressing structural hurdle. To combat the severe deficit of both workforce and affordable housing, we must aggressively re-examine local land-use policies, maximize public-private partnerships, and incentivize diverse housing types. True affordability cannot be solved by the public sector; it requires a regulatory environment that allows the private market to build efficiently and affordably.
Permitting and Inspections Process: Long-standing inefficiencies, backlogs, and unpredictable timelines within the city and county’s permitting and building inspection systems act as a hidden tax on all forms of construction. These systemic delays artificially inflate development costs and directly stall the delivery of critical commercial projects and affordable residential units. Streamlining these administrative bottlenecks must be an immediate operational priority.
The I-77 Controversy: The ongoing, complex friction surrounding the now scrubbed I-77 expansion project requires a steady, analytical hand. We need proactive leadership that aligns regional transportation planning with real-world infrastructure demands and reasonably disperses the financial burden without stifling regional commerce. Your assistance in bringing parties back to the table for additional conversation followed by specific action is desperately needed now.
Data Centers: The growth of data centers across the Charlotte region brings significant economic investment but also presents intense challenges regarding land use and zoning. We must establish a balanced, forward-looking strategy that accommodates advanced technological infrastructure with appropriate planning for future energy and water needs brought on by a growing population. We have the opportunity over the next five months to establish a regulatory framework that protects the interests of the community but also allows the continued use of technology on which many of us depend on a daily basis.
The Charlotte Douglas International Airport Lease: The economic vitality of our region is inextricably linked to the operational autonomy and growth of Charlotte Douglas International Airport. We must ensure the airport remains a premier global hub capable of supporting a booming regional logistics, commercial, and tourism ecosystem.
Your background and experience equips you with the exact toolset needed to navigate these multi-faceted, high-stakes challenges. REBIC is fully committed to acting as a resource, providing data, and working alongside you and the City Council to craft balanced, pragmatic solutions to these complex challenges.
We look forward to scheduling a time to meet with you in the coming weeks to discuss how we can collectively move Charlotte forward. Thank you for your willingness to step into this vital role and for paying your success forward through your commitment to the community.
Sincerely,
Rob Nanfelt
Executive Director
REBIC
My Take: Let me start by expressing my appreciation to Vi Lyles for everything she has given to this city and region. Her investment of personal capital over time has been significant. Prior to serving in elected office and for nearly 30 years, she served the city in a different role, initially as a Budget Analyst and then ultimately as Budget Director. I’m happy she can move on to the next phase of her life on her terms, and I’m certain her grandchildren are thrilled they will be seeing more of her in the very near future. Moving forward, we are looking forward to forging a new relationship with Mayor Harrington and collaborating on solutions to aggressively and urgently solve some of the city’s biggest pain points.
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NAHB News just published this article. We share it today because nothing will fix the problem of not enough homes like building more homes. And if builders can’t build, we will lose the freedoms afforded by a future that considers opportunity vital, and not our enemy. The entire narrative is below:
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Builder sentiment remains subdued as rising material costs, elevated mortgage rates and ongoing affordability challenges continue to strain the housing market.
Builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes fell two points to 35 in June, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released today. This is the 14th straight month that sentiment has remained below 40, a streak not seen since 2011-2012 during the foreclosure crisis.
“With the nation short about 1.2 million homes, builder sentiment will remain soft until barriers are eased and conditions improve for home building,” said NAHB Chairman Bill Owens, a home builder and remodeler from Worthington, Ohio. “Congress can help by passing the major housing package now before the Senate, along with the CONSTRUCTS Act to address the construction labor shortage and the Energy Choice Act to prevent state and local bans on natural gas in new homes.”
“Costly and inefficient regulatory policy is clearly impeding the ability of builders to increase the housing supply,” said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz. “According to a new NAHB study, government regulation, taxes, fees and other costs add more than 26% to the price of an average single-family home. Easing permitting bottlenecks, density limits and inefficient zoning rules would help reduce costs and support the housing growth the nation needs.”
The latest HMI survey also revealed that 35% of builders cut prices in June, up from 32% in May. The average price reduction was 6% in June, the same rate as the previous month. The use of sales incentives was 62% in June, up slightly from 61% in May, and marking the 15th consecutive month this share has reached 60% or higher.
Derived from a monthly survey that NAHB has been conducting for more than 40 years, the NAHB/Wells Fargo HMI gauges builder perceptions of current single-family home sales and sales expectations for the next six months as “good,” “fair” or “poor.” The survey also asks builders to rate traffic of prospective buyers as “high to very high,” “average” or “low to very low.” Scores for each component are then used to calculate a seasonally adjusted index where any number over 50 indicates that more builders view conditions as good than poor.
The HMI index gauging current sales conditions fell two points to 38 in June, the index measuring future sales held steady at 45 and the index charting traffic of prospective buyers remained unchanged at 25.
Looking at the three-month moving averages for regional HMI scores, the Northeast rose two points to 44, the Midwest held constant at 43, the South fell two points to 33 and the West dropped one point to 27.
HMI tables can be found at nahb.org/hmi. More information on housing statistics is also available at Housing Economics PLUS.
My Take: We recently ran a Did You Know to clarify to our readers the profit margins of various industries in our country. Near the bottom of the chart is the profit margin for residential home builders. And yet, hostilities toward them remain high indicating members of the public think a home builder somehow shouldn’t be a profit center.
We need to stop letting our industry be painted as the villain in every story. Our members build communities and develop cities. They are the solution to the housing affordability crisis but seem to be met with resistance on all fronts. Yes. Regulations and zoning inflexibility are choking our home prices. Yes, builders and civic leaders speak different languages. But there have been many times when our industry tried to push through with imaginative solutions that would allow projects to proceed, only to see those solutions ignored.
We need to give our leaders the data that matters and educate our residents about why they need to vote for leaders with vision. Because if you stop growth, you eventually run out of money for roads, police, parks, infrastructure, and government services and you make it impossible to attract new talent, businesses, or capital investments. We need leaders with big vision, not small minds that fan the flames of dissent no matter the topic at hand.
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