Apple workers would pinch Triangle's already tight housing market

The Triangle's real estate market is surging, which is good news for sellers but not so much for people looking for a home. An Apple campus bringing thousands of workers to the area would only add to that trend, but real estate professionals say the region can handle it.

Posted 9:35 p.m. Jun 6, 2018 — Updated 10:45 p.m. Jun 6, 2018

Brad Johansen

, WRAL anchor/reporter

RALEIGH, N.C. — The Triangle's real estate market is surging, which is good news for sellers but not so much for people looking for a home. An Apple campus bringing thousands of workers to the area would only add to that trend, but real estate professionals say the region can handle it.

Apple is reportedly considering an investment of $1.5 billion to $2 billion in North Carolina, including a Triangle campus that would have between 3,000 and 10,000 jobs.

"When IBM announced [in the 1960s] they were coming to this brand new development called the Research Triangle Park, there were similar concerns – can we handle it?" said Tom Gongaware, past president of the Raleigh Regional Association of Realtors. "We did it, and we'll do it again."

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The first 1,000 people who would be working at an Apple campus in the Triangle are expected to be in customer service. Real estate professionals say customer service workers are traditionally renters.

According to Colliers International, the Raleigh market's 58,000 multi-family units – apartments, condominiums and townhouses – are about 95 percent full, although about 3,500 units were under construction at the end of last year.

"So many of the millennials these days are living in multi-family residential units. They aren't necessarily buying," said developer John Kane, who also serves as chairman of the Research Triangle Regional Partnership. "We're building a lot of units, and our market is staying pretty strong with regards to that, so I don't think a lot would be buying homes. A lot would rent and be happy renting for a while."

Still, real estate analysis firm ATTOM Data Solutions says in a new study that Apple would drive up housing costs in the Triangle.

"Given the low vacant property rate, an influx of thousands of new workers would put upward pressure on both rents and home prices in the market," ATTOM Senior Vice President Daren Blomquist told WRAL TechWire.

For any Apple workers who do decide to buy instead of rent, industry professionals say they better get ready to pay.

"Prices are going up because there's a lack of inventory," Gongaware said.

Quarterly median home prices are up across the Triangle, from 6 percent in Raleigh to 13 percent in Durham to 11 percent in Wake Forest.

Online residential real estate site Trulia lists 2,700 single-family homes on the market in the area, with new housing starts up 26 percent.

"We're the envy of many marketplaces around the country, but we will start to lag behind if we fail to demonstrate the political will or power to keep our infrastructure up to date," Gongaware said.

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