As homebuyers look south, Harnett County is becoming a Triangle suburb
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The Triangle is growing up and out
Construction crews should again be busy in 2023, in the heart of RTP and across the mushrooming Triangle region. We’ve identified five spots you’ll want to keep an eye on for the rest of year, places where the region’s continuing growth will be easily visible.
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Three years ago, the federal government added Harnett County to the Fayetteville metropolitan statistical area, recognizing Harnett’s close ties with its southern neighbor.
But the county’s north side is rapidly becoming part of the Triangle. As Wake County’s population has swelled and housing prices rise, developers are looking to the fields and woods of northern Harnett County to build new homes, and buyers are following them.
“With the growth that they’re seeing in Wake County, we’re obviously at this point a bedroom community to that area,” says Mark Locklear, Harnett’s director of development services.
Not long ago, Harnett was still primarily a rural county of farms and small towns. That began to change about 20 years ago, particularly on the south side when military base closures in other parts of the country brought more people to Fort Bragg. Military families and retirees drawn to new subdivisions off N.C. 24 helped make Harnett one of the fastest-growing counties in the state.
Now the heaviest growth is happening to the north, Locklear said. The county issued 1,084 permits for new single-family homes in the most recent fiscal year, double what it granted two years earlier.
That doesn’t include areas controlled by the towns. Angier, just south of the Wake line, expects its population to double to near 12,000 in the next five years, according to Gerry Vincent, the town manager.
The population in the northwest part of the county, which includes the rapidly growing N.C. 210 and U.S. 401 corridors, grew by 50% between 2000 and 2017, according to a county growth plan for the area. The population in this part of the county is expected to more than double by 2038, according to the Triangle J Council of Governments.
A big draw for developers and home buyers is the availability of relatively inexpensive land, which makes houses cheaper to build. The median sales price of a home in Harnett in 2022 was $305,550, compared with $499,000 in the Fuquay-Varina and Holly Springs area of Wake County, according to Triangle Multiple Listing Services.
“Folks can get more house for their money, and I think that that’s probably the No. 1 driver,” Locklear said. “And we have housing availability, so folks who are having trouble finding a home in the Holly Springs or Fuquay or Raleigh areas, they’re looking to get more bang for their buck, and we offer that. And not to mention that Harnett County is a beautiful county.”
Harnett attracting people from beyond North Carolina
Price is a selling point at Atherstone, a nearly 400-lot subdivision off N.C. 210 between Angier and Lillington where new homes start at $300,000. But sales associate Ray Ruiz said people are also attracted by what they get for the money.
“Something that you don’t see in Raleigh is the space,” Ruiz said. “The average lot size we have is about a half acre here.”
Ruiz says he’s spoken with prospective buyers from Texas, California, Florida and “up north,” some who plan to commute into Wake County but also people who work at home and just want to be near a metro area. He tells them the Food Lion in Lillington is six minutes away, and a wider selection of restaurants and big box stores is about a 15-minute drive to Fuquay-Varina.
Unlike Wake County, Harnett has its own water and sewer system that can serve subdivisions and commercial developments outside of towns. The county is also building new schools and other facilities, including a new library and resource center that recently opened in Lillington.
But roads remain a challenge. There are no four-lane roads in or out of Wake County, and the two-lane country roads are already filling with traffic.
This spring, N.C. Department of Transportation contractors will begin building a four-lane bypass to carry N.C. 55 around Angier, shaping and enabling development on the town’s west side. Longer term, transportation planners are studying how to create a four-lane bypass for U.S. 401 around Fuquay-Varina.
Locklear said Harnett County has long been clamoring for better access to Wake County but is at the mercy of NCDOT and Triangle transportation planners.
“We make sure that they hear us loud and clear that we would prefer not to be reactionary when it comes to transportation projects for the county,” he said. “But unfortunately, that’s how a lot of transportation works. It’s reactionary to issues after they’ve gotten to a really bad state.”
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This story was originally published February 3, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "As homebuyers look south, Harnett County is becoming a Triangle suburb."
