OK. Perhaps Allen Tate rolling up one-fourth of its offices will convince folks that Charlotte is just at the start of a sharp, possibly long, real estate correction.
Again, this was easy to see coming as Charlotte has roughly twice as many financial services jobs as the rest of the country. Although other markets had more investor speculation, none are more vulnerable to loss of income, the seed corn of all consumption including housing. Put still another way, if over-lax lending standards and banking boom times allowed Charlotte to over-consume housing, what do you think tight-lending and banking contraction will do the local housing market?
How about leave one-fifth of all apartments Uptown vacant? Those condo developers who planned to “convert” hundreds of units to apartments must be on suicide watch.
Recall we were told that the tight apartment market — on the order of 4 or 5 percent vacant until recently — could easily absorb new units without much downward pressure on rents. Think again. It is all part of the corrective process. And it has just begun.
