EXISTING CONDITIONS: HOUSING
HOUSING AFFORDABILITY PLAN | Town of Wake Forest
Housing Conditions
FIGURE 16: AGE OF HOUSING UNITS IN WAKE FOREST 2020
Wake County’s real estate market is delivering thousands of new housing units each year. Housing Market Overview The majority of new development in Wake County is characterized as “greenfield development”, or the creation of urban and suburban communities in new, largely underdeveloped environments that require the expansion of utility systems, roadways, and related services. Though the majority of these new housing units are owner-occupied, Wake County is seeing an uptick in demand for rental apartments. This uptick is in line with national trends, as home sale prices become increasingly unattainable for middle-income households. This trend can also be observed in Wake Forest. In recent years, home sale prices in Wake Forest have begun to regularly exceed $350,000, or the home price that is roughly affordable for households making 80% of AMI (Figure 17). Thus, a shift is underway in the rental market: higher- earning households that may have opted for homeownership in the past are moving into the rental market and driving prices up for renters as well. The existing housing inventory in Wake Forest is much newer than housing in Wake County and the state (Figure 16). Between 2000-2020, Wake Forest added substantial inventory to keep pace with housing demand. As a result, more than half of homes (65%) have been built since the year 2000. Even in the rapidly developing context of Wake County, only 41% of homes have been built in the same time period. In North Carolina overall, a state that maintains a faster pace of growth than many others, the rate of new housing pales in comparison to Wake Forest, with 28% of housing built since 2000. Consequently, Wake Forest lacks a substantial inventory of older housing, which in many markets serve as a source of naturally occurring affordable housing.
54%
Built Before 1990 Built 1990 - 1999 Built 2000 - 2009 Built 2010 or Later
41%
38%
26%
24%
23%
20% 19%
19%
16%
13%
7%
Wake County
North Carolina
Wake Forest
Source: American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year, 2020
FIGURE 17: HOME SALE PRICES IN WAKE FOREST 2020-2021
Over $300,000
Under $300,000
Source: Zillow
17
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