Charlotte's Underbelly

June 25, 2008
Lynnsy Logue The Real Estate Lady® and Condo CanDo® in Charlotte, NC

Charlotte’s Underbelly…

By now you know all too well that I love this city. I have lived here for almost 55 years and have driven up and down most of the roads and streets and now loops and Interstates many, many times. I used to motorcycle into uptown on Sunday mornings and go up and down the alleyways and through and around new construction…and then out to Unionville and down to Lancaster, S.C. because it was beautiful farmland. And part of what I want to do with both podcast and blog is give folks an accurate picture of our hometown.
Charlotte is a beautiful city, the people are friendly and welcoming and folks are coming here from all over the world…with or without jobs…with or without families, coming because they hear or know it is really a good place to call home, find a job, raise a family.

But we have our underbelly and I thought I might just mention a few issues. The morning paper helped me decide this. The headlines read “Dozens Held In Gang Sweep” with the caption under the faces of young men reading,” The faces of defendants charged in a scheme that spanned two countries, three states, and several North Carolina cities.” The caption on another front page picture, “ Eastland Mall was once a shining jewel of Charlotte’s eastside, but a quarter of its tenants have left.” An article earlier in the week spoke about the owners of the mall having a 42 million dollar loan coming due and responding that the mall was not valued at that today and they might just walk away.On the other hand the city takes an option on a part of the mall… pushing forward an effort to tear the mall down and replace it with homes and businesses. There is the Ying and the Yang of Charlotte.
Another headline reads Charlotte-Area Home Price Drop is First Since 1991.Our drop was one tenth of one percent and another report showed increase in sales by 4% in our South region. Prices are down, closings are up…incrementally. I tried to figure a way to compare realistically last year with this. I went back and read last years real estate reports, and on line to see if I could find anything to hang my hat on…last year and this year here in Charlotte is like comparing tires with oranges. So the numbers are just some kind of benchmark.

And then there was the report that Charlotte ranks 90th out of a hundred cities for the nation’s worst gas hogs. Followed by an article about how some of our council members are heading to Chicago to study the transit system. Our new lite rail…much fought over between our citizenry…is quite the darling. Ying and Yang.

And of course there is the weekly harangue with and within the school system. The daily journal of what is going on with our banks…the schools are always in the spotlight, they should be, it’s our kids. The banks…they’ll figure it out with us watching daily.
Charlotte is still great…with broken water mains and I-77 traffic…we are growing, sometimes it’s not so pretty…but mostly it is. Ying, Yang.

Lynnsy Logue The Real Estate Lady® and Condo CanDo® in Charlotte, NC