The Triangle is booming – but not all corners are growing the same way, report shows
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- Raleigh metro ranked No. 14 out of 150 for new home construction and sales.
- The Raleigh metro issued 2,741 building permits and recorded 1,025 new home sales.
- Durham–Chapel Hill ranked 53rd with 928 permits and 256 new home sales in early 2026.
Despite economic headwinds like rising land costs and high interest rates, the Triangle is booming — but it’s uneven, new data from ConsumerAffairs shows.
The Raleigh metro area, including Cary, Apex, Morrisville and Holly Springs, continued to operate like “one of the nation’s top builder metros,” ranking No. 14 out of 150 in an analysis of new home construction and sales during the first two months of 2026, the research platform said.
The metro issued 2,741 building permits — No. 12 nationally — and recorded 1,025 new construction home sales, placing it No. 11 in the country and more than doubling the sales pace from early 2025, analysis showed using U.S. Census Bureau and Zillow data.
The study counts all new residential building permits, which includes both single‑family homes and multifamily units (apartments, townhomes, duplexes).
Raleigh’s numbers look nothing like the median U.S. metro, which recorded just 575 permits and 172 new home sales during the same period, said Rebecca Sowell, lead researcher at ConsumerAffairs.
“Raleigh’s activity levels were several times higher than what we observed in a typical U.S. market,” she said.
Much of that scale comes from the region’s mega communities. Among them: Veridea, the 1,100-acre “mini city” currently under construction in Apex; and Wendell Falls, the 1,100-acre master-planned community in its final phase just east of Raleigh. Both are expected to add thousands of new homes to Wake County over the next decade.
But just west of Raleigh, the Durham–Chapel Hill metro area tells a different story.
It ranked No. 53 in the ConsumerAffairs analysis, unchanged from last year. The metro issued 928 building permits and recorded 256 new construction home sales during the first two months of 2026.
Its construction pace remains “healthy but far more moderate,” Sowell said, shaped by less available land and a development pattern built around infill, townhomes, and redevelopment rather than large master-planned communities.
“It’s still a relatively active level of new construction compared to many metros nationwide,” she added.
Charlotte ranked No. 9 nationally, issuing more than 3,000 permits and recording over 1,000 new home sales — the only other North Carolina metro in the top 15.
Texas metros dominate the very top of the list, but Sowell notes that the Triangle remains one of the strongest performing regions outside Texas, thanks largely to Raleigh’s scale and sales velocity.
This story was originally published May 26, 2026 at 3:47 PM with the headline "The Triangle is booming – but not all corners are growing the same way, report shows."
