You are not alone: Macon housing needs assessment tells familiar story
When Patrick Bowen, president of Bowen National Research, presented a housing needs assessment to the Macon County’s board of commissioners earlier this month, there was one thing he kept coming back to.
“We’re seeing it around the country,” Bowen said of most of the trends he described in the Macon County housing market.
Macon County is growing and is expected to add more than 500 households over the five-year period between 2023 and 2028.
“You’re going to have growth continue to come to the area; that’s going to drive part of your housing needs in the future at a pace that’s just slightly below the state average but still really positive growth,” said Bowen.
The biggest growth in households in Macon County is expected to occur among seniors ages 75 and older, but the county is also growing among households between the ages of 35 and 44.
“That’s a national trend,” Bowen said. “You have older millennials sweeping through the nation and then you have the baby boomers. Macon County is no different but that will affect housing.”
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In the rental market, surveyors working on the housing needs assessment found that almost 60% of renter households in the county earn less than $40,000 annually. This trend is expected to continue through 2028. However, the most growth among renter households in the county is expected to be among those making between $60,000 and $99,000. According to Bowen, this will drive demand for high-end rental products even though most renters need more affordable units.
The owner household market tells a similar story. While over half of owner households make $60,000 or more annually, growth among owner households in Macon County is expected to be concentrated among those earning more than $100,000 a year.
“The projected growth among higher-income owner households is indicative of a shift in the distribution of owner households by income toward the higher earning cohorts, though it is important to note that more than one-quarter of all owner households are projected to continue to earn less than $40,000 through 2028,” the housing needs assessment reads.
Researchers found that nearly 4,000 individuals commute from surrounding areas into Macon County for work, accounting for 36.6% of people employed in the county. Close to half of those commuters are between the ages of 30 and 54, and about 40% of them earn over $40,000 annually.
“There are reasons why people don’t choose to live in a particular town or county — taxes, schools, whatever it may be,” said Bowen. “But I will tell you this, housing does play a role.”
Bowen postulated that the lack of available rentals and houses for sale encourage commuting into the county for work.
“When you have a lot of people that are commuting into an area, they will choose to live in that area if housing is available,” said Bowen. “When we do this survey in other markets, typically about 40% of people that commute into a county want to live in that county if housing is available and affordable to them.”
But like many counties in North Carolina and around the United States, Macon County is suffering from lack of available housing.
The demand for multifamily rentals is significant, with zero vacant units out of 316 total in the county. Each of the eight multifamily properties surveyed within the county maintain a waiting list for the next available unit, with a total of 300 households across waiting lists and a 12-month wait for government-subsidized projects.
“Nothing is available,” Bowen said. “That is incredibly rare where we find a market where we can’t find anything to rent among these apartments.”
The county’s overall multifamily occupancy rate is 100% while a healthy, well-balanced market operates at an occupancy rate of 94-96%.
“[There’s] a lot of pent-up demand,” Bowen said.
But in addition to multifamily rentals, Macon County has a large sector of non-conventional rentals, which include single-family homes, duplexes, mobile homes, and other units available for rent.
These non-conventional rentals make up more than 84% of the county’s rental products with about 3,835 units in existence.
Out of those 3,835 units, the housing needs assessment found only seven currently available for rent, representing a vacancy rate of just 0.2%.
“That’s good for property owners, investors of real estate, that’s not good for the community,” Bowen said. “You normally want to be about 4-6% vacant. You want vacancies for a healthy market, as people get married, have kids, all kids of changes in life, they need housing to be available.”
Again, housing sales tell a similar story.
The volume of home sales in the county has declined every year from 2021 to 2024, while the median sales price has increased dramatically, maxing out at $334,500 in 2023. In 2020 the median sales price for a home in Macon County was $250,000, and in 2024, projected year end median sale price is $305,000.
“You can see home prices are so high and have been escalating and they’re far outpacing wages,” said Bowen. “That makes it difficult for folks to be able to afford housing.”
With about 179 homes available for sale in Macon County, the availability (vacancy) rate is 1.4%, well below the healthy range of 2-3%. Most of these available homes are priced $400,000 or higher.
The majority of available homes, relative to total housing, are located in Highlands, where the availability rate sits at 6%. This availability in Highlands, where 98.7% of homes are priced over $400,000, somewhat skews housing availability data for the county. If Highlands is not counted in the county’s availability rate, it would sit even lower, below the 1% mark. In Franklin, availability is at 0.7%.
County-wide, there are just 17 houses priced under $200,000, less than 10% of housing stock.
“You are not alone,” said Bowen. “We are seeing that in market after market here in North Carolina and throughout the United States. Very small supply of what we would classify as affordable for-sale houses.”
With lack of availability come consequences. Researchers conducting the housing needs assessment found that 322 Macon County Households live in substandard housing — 227 overcrowded housing units and 95 housing units with either incomplete indoor plumbing or indoor kitchen facilities.
Additionally, nearly 1,900 Macon County households live in severely cost-burdened housing, meaning they pay over 50% of their income toward housing, with 891 renters and 990 owner households experiencing this financial burden.
Short-term rentals in the county have increased steadily since 2020, jumping from 446 units in 2020 to 748 by July 2023. Visitor spending in Macon County totaled $350 million in 2023, increasing by 3.8% from the preceding year, which accounted for the largest increase among Macon, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Jackson and Swain counties.
About 14.5% of the county’s workforce, or 1,706 people are employed in tourism-related occupations. The housing needs assessment found that very few of these tourism-related occupations pay sufficient wages to enable workers to reasonably afford to rent or buy a home in Macon County.
“This is a major economic challenge for this area,” said Bowen. “Affordable workforce housing would play an important role in the future of Macon County’s economy.”
The team identified 40 sites across the county as potential residential development sites. Of those, 22 are vacant or undeveloped parcels of land, eight consist of over 10 acres each, and 18 contain at least one existing building.
The team also identified over 50 potential development partners, ranging from nonprofit groups to lenders and developers.
Ultimately, the team found that at least 629 rental units would be needed to solve all issues, accounting for both growth, and improvement or movement for some of those residents living in substandard, or cost-burdened housing.
The greatest need for rentals are those under $1,000 per month.
The team found that between 1,400 and 1,500 for-sale houses are needed county-side, and that the greatest need is for homes priced under $200,000.
Among the list of recommendations that came with the housing needs assessment, there were a few that were specific to Macon County. One of those is that consideration should be given to improving the education and job training opportunities for adult residents to raise earning capacity and expand the skilled labor force associated with the construction industry.
“Those that are in plumbing, electricians, roofers, you have a really low share of those skilled trained workers,” said Bowen. “How do we solve some of our affordability issues? You want the workforce locally here.”
