Clt Dwellings Team 🌆🏙️🏘️

Four strangers eating dinner on a sidewalk in Paris is a $3 billion urban planning decision from 1853. This is Place Saint-Sulpice, 6th arrondissement. Those people having dinner on the sidewalk are sitting in infrastructure that took 17 years and the demolition of 20,000 buildings to create. Baron Haussmann redesigned Paris between 1853 and 1870, replacing five-meter medieval streets with 30-meter boulevards. The mandate was "aérer, unir, et embellir." Ventilate, unite, and beautify. He built 34,000 new buildings with strict rules: identical limestone facades, five stories max, uniform cornices, height proportional to street width. The chairs all face the street. That's not random. Parisian terrasse culture treats the sidewalk as a theater where the city is the performance. You sit side by side with your companion, not across from each other. The table is yours for as long as you want it. No check dropped on your table 35 minutes in. No manager optimizing table turns per hour. The entire economic model of the French café rejects the premise that a seat is a unit of revenue to be maximized. Paris has over 12,000 cafés. If you visited a different terrasse every single day, it would take you almost 30 years to see them all. The city applied for UNESCO heritage status for its café terrasses in 2018, arguing they're a form of intangible cultural infrastructure. The reason most cities can't replicate this photo is the same reason most companies can't replicate a good culture. The inputs are boring. Wide sidewalks. Uniform building heights that create human-scale streetscapes. Zoning that puts residential above commercial. A cultural norm that leisure in public space is a right, not a purchase. Every American city chose parking lots and drive-throughs instead. The architecture made the behavior impossible before anyone even had the chance to choose it. Nothing is stopping humanity from living like this. Except concrete, zoning laws, and a 70-year bet on the automobile that most cities are still too proud to reverse.

For the first time since 1776, the Halifax Resolves are back home in North Carolina! The Halifax Resolves were the first official call for independence by any American colony and became the reason North Carolina gained our title as the First in Freedom State.

Visit Halifax, if not this weekend, then sometime this summer, to see the only copy of the Halifax Resolves -- the first official act by a colony declaring independence from the Crown.

@JustMe08838341 @m3_melody Yes! We are fortunate to be very diversified in jobs. In addition to moratoriums, one county next door is having to limit septic/sewer permits & SC adjacent counties decided to pass school costs to buyers - up to $15K per home.

There are alot of challenges in high growth areas. We are certainly a country by large that is defined by sprawl. Established neighborhoods don't want to condense (lot split). We enjoy our space to a large degree. This pushes new homes towards the edges where services are lacking and the commutes are longer. This also pushes up the value of land towards the center. States like NC have done a fantastic job of attracting business and with that comes a balance of housing. That balance is not always an easy task. Once the economy turns the corner I would expect the Sun Belt to take another trip upwards as business and individuals continue to flee high tax states. NC was if memory serves #2 in job growth in 2025 and largely driven by construction and technology, which is a good sign as its not heavy on healthcare which will take a hit in 2028 and onward as Medicaid cuts take affect.

Charlotte, NC in trouble Largest % increase in inventory YoY for the cities I track with populations over 500K (19.17%) Did they realize that Mecklenburg only added 11.1K households last year? L=New Home Source R=Zillow Remember Zillow only has about 25% of new home listings

@JustMe08838341 @m3_melody Yeah. 214 people moving here a day (7 min mark) + not enough multi-fam in the pipeline & lots of surrounding areas with bldg moratoriums. youtube.com/watch?v=2D2Wfp…

@m3_melody Looks dire. I’m sure it will crash soon.

@m3_melody @GT28115 @SinnerReformed1 Our commute is 8 - 12 min to most things. About 20 min to Costco. Don't know anyone with more than 25 min commute.

@GT28115 @SinnerReformed1 I have lived in many of those towns including NYC for 7 years. Was just in LA, and I still stand by my statement What is your commute?

Trails predict where land will reprice. Years before the cranes show up. New York saw it. Chicago saw it. Atlanta saw it. Dallas is next. And it's running the largest version of this experiment any American city has ever attempted. Here's the pattern: Every major American city is fighting the same battle. The suburbs keep growing. The urban core fights to hold its tax base. People say they want walkability and community. Then they leave for places that feel safer and easier to navigate. Cities have big ambitions. Dallas. Chicago. Atlanta. They want to attract people, businesses, and jobs. That takes money. Aging infrastructure needs replacing. New amenities need building. The tax base isn't shrinking. But it's not growing fast enough to fund those ambitions without raising rates. And raising rates pushes more people out. There's another approach. Build infrastructure that makes land more valuable. Not highways. Not stadiums. Trails. It sounds too simple. When you build a connected trail network, you create the walkability people crave. Neighborhoods that were cut off become accessible. Land values rise. Tax revenue grows without raising anyone's rate. The evidence is hard to argue with. New York built the High Line. Property values jumped 35%. Chicago built The 606. Home prices spiked 48%. Atlanta built the BeltLine. Developers have poured more than $9 billion into land along it. The pattern holds whether the city runs red, blue, or purple. Build the connection. Land reprices. Dallas is now running this experiment at the largest scale any American city has attempted. The Loop Dallas is a 50-mile trail circuit. It connects the Katy Trail, White Rock Lake, the Trinity Forest, Fair Park, the Design District, and Pleasant Grove. Every quadrant of the city. The Design District already proves the thesis. The city built a short connector to plug the area into the Uptown trail network. Before, it was an isolated pocket of warehouses. After, it became part of the Uptown ecosystem. Taxable value climbed 383%. Developers flipped their blueprints. Buildings now face the trail, not the street. South Dallas is next. A 1,200-foot bridge is opening the Trinity Forest Spine Trail. Neighborhoods cut off for decades by the river, the railroad, and the highways are about to become connected. Every city that built a loop trail system saw the same result. Remove the barriers. Capital follows. Trails aren't expenses. They're leading indicators. They tell you where land is about to reprice, years before the cranes arrive. If you want to understand where Dallas is heading, don't watch the skyline. Follow the trail.

@CREgir1 Those are very informative additions. Can't tell you how many hours we've wasted trying to get this basic info.

Small change I made to my leasing brochures that made the largest impact: -Included “Ready to move in” spaces on all 2nd-gen spaces -Labeling the previous use -Adding actual photos of the space From a tenants perspective, it’s a lot less overwhelming and more clarity upfront for them, helping them visualize themselves in the space immediately.

This is awesome!

This UNCC State of Hsg video has only 49 views. That's crazy b/c it highlights the latest Charlotte region growth numbers (7 min mark): A whopping 214 people per day have been moving to the region!!! Also talks abt the coming multifam shortage in '28: youtu.be/2D2Wfp5V1xI?si…

Law firms are signing longer leases, paying record TI packages, and cutting their footprints by 30%. The office is not dead. It just got completely rebuilt. Here is what the data actually says.

Lennar, America's 2nd largest builder, has cut prices 24% from peak. Their price on new deliveries hit $491k in 2022. But they've cut by over $110k since then, through price reductions and mortgage buydowns. The result is a $374k net price in 2026, down -8% YoY and -24% from peak. This is the cheapest we've seen in a decade, even lower than the pre-pandemic norms. This is actually great news for homebuyers. Housing deflation is setting in, and Lennar is leading the charge for builders in returning affordability to buyers.

Welcome to Charlotte! instagram.com/reel/DWBtVL4hh…

Less than 3 months in, and he’s tackling permit reform.

Thankful we mostly drive our electric car (which is virtually free to charge on our regular electrical outlet) so our hybrid only uses about 30 gallons a year + we filled up right b4 the US attacked Iran.

Agree! That's why we don't use them or Sirius XM.

You go figure out how your AI agent is going to help you win while the people who will actually win are cold-calling and grinding like crazy. If you want a hack, real estate is not for you. The winners in this arena don’t look for shortcuts.