By Gene Galin
Pittsboro, NC – If you want to understand Chatham County’s housing market in early 2026, start with this contradiction: people still want to live here, homes are still selling, and prices are still inching up — but for a growing number of working residents, the county is becoming harder to afford.
That tension sat at the center of my conversation with longtime Pittsboro broker Eric Andrews of Realty World Carolina Properties. Eric has been selling real estate in Chatham County for decades and lives in Bear Creek. Eric did not describe a market in free fall. He did not describe one that is roaring, either. What he described was something more complicated, and probably more familiar to anyone trying to buy a home right now: a market that has calmed down from the frenzy of the past few years, yet still feels painfully expensive.
Eric described a market still posting modest year-over-year gains in sales activity and prices, but one that is also slowing, stretching out on market time, and exposing a widening gap between local incomes and local home prices. The result, he suggested, is a county that remains highly desirable and economically resilient, yet increasingly out of reach for teachers, first responders, medical workers and many first-time buyers.
“There’s a lot of talk about, ‘Oh, prices are going down,’” Eric said. “But when we look at the data, it’s a slight increase.”
A market that is no longer surging, but still climbing
Not long ago, homes in Chatham County could hit the market and disappear almost immediately. Multiple offers piled up. Buyers rushed to make decisions. Sellers had the advantage, and everybody knew it.
That is not quite the story now.
Eric said the first quarter of 2026 looks more like a market settling into a slower pace. Sales appear to be up slightly from the same period a year ago. Prices also appear to be up slightly, in the range of 1% to 2%. Those are not the explosive gains people got used to during the hottest stretch of the market, but they are gains all the same.
So while the mood has changed, the math has not changed as much as people think.
Part of the confusion, Eric suggested, comes from the way the market feels on the ground. A house sits for a few weeks. A seller cuts the price. A listing closes below asking. To many people, that looks like decline. But Andrews said that when you step back and look at the broader numbers, Chatham County is still posting modest appreciation.
What has changed is the gap between expectation and reality.
That pattern mirrors national conditions, where the housing market has been cooling without collapsing. Existing-home sales in the United States rose 1.7% in February 2026 from the previous month, while the national median existing-home price was $398,000, up 0.3% from a year earlier. Inventory remained relatively tight at 3.8 months of supply, still below the roughly six months commonly associated with a balanced market.
In other words, Chatham County is not experiencing a housing crash. It is experiencing normalization, though in a county where prices had already climbed to levels that strain household budgets, even a “normal” market can feel punishing.
Sellers and agents, he said, have gotten used to building in a little optimism. In a county with very little inventory, that makes sense. If homes are scarce, people naturally start aiming high. But some of those expectations are running ahead of what buyers are willing or able to pay.
That is why the market feels softer to some people than it actually is. Homes are not flying off the shelf the way they used to. But that does not mean values are broadly falling. It means buyers have become more selective and sellers are learning, sometimes reluctantly, that the old playbook no longer works every time.
Why the numbers can sound different depending on who is talking
During our conversation I raised a common question from our readers and viewers of these quarterly real estate updates: where do all these numbers come from?
I think it is a fair question. Residents hear one housing figure at a public meeting, another from a local agent, and maybe a third from a county briefing. Then everybody starts arguing over who is right.
Eric, who works with Realty World Carolina Properties in downtown Pittsboro, said he draws from multiple sources, including his role on the board of directors for the Orange Chatham Association of Realtors, service on its governmental affairs committee, access to federal census-related data, statewide commercial real estate reporting, and local planning work through the Chatham County Planning Board.
But even with good information, numbers can shift depending on whether someone is talking about average price, median price, resale homes, new construction, or some narrower slice of the market.
That matters in Chatham County because new construction is pulling the top end higher.
Eric noted in our conversation that the average new construction home in the county is pushing close to $900,000. That is a startling figure, but it helps explain why public conversations about the local market can sound so disconnected from what many residents can actually afford.
A resale-heavy calculation may produce one average. A number that includes high-end new construction may produce another. The difference is not necessarily about bad data. It is about a changing county.
Still, the big takeaway is hard to miss. Chatham County is expensive.
Eric put the general range of average home prices somewhere around $675,000 to $725,000. Whether one figure is a little more precise than the other almost misses the larger point: either number is out of reach for a lot of households in Chatham County.
Homes are taking longer to sell. That doesn’t mean sellers are in trouble.
One statistic that helps explain the market’s mood shift is days on market.
Eric said homes are averaging just over 50 days before selling, and in some parts of the county and surrounding areas, the number has climbed above 60. A few years ago, that would have sounded glacial. Today, it simply sounds more normal.
Even so, Eric added some perspective. In real estate, he said, a rough break-even point is six months of inventory, about 180 days. That is the point where a market starts feeling balanced, or even tilted toward buyers. Chatham County is nowhere near that.
“We get so spoiled here,” he said.
In many places, a home taking 50 days to sell would not raise eyebrows. In Chatham County, after years of intense demand and short listing windows, it can feel like a slowdown. But Eric’s point was that the county remains in a market where prices are still generally supported.
There are even pockets of urgency.
“You’ll still hear of things that hit the market that are multiple-offer situations,” he said, especially with “special properties” or those “cute little things that everybody wants.”
I asked him to explain what he meant.
Eric was talking about the kinds of “cute” properties buyers still jump on: maybe a house around 1,800 to 2,400 square feet, maybe on a couple of acres, something manageable, attractive, and not priced at the very top of the county’s increasingly expensive range.
In other words, not luxury. Not sprawling. Just attainable enough to feel possible.
Those homes, when they appear, still create a buzz because they remain so hard to find.
The real story is not whether people want to move here. It’s who still can.
At several points in our conversation, we circled back to the same issue: workforce housing.
For both of us, that term clearly meant more than a planning-board buzzword. We were talking about teachers, police officers, firefighters, medical workers, county staff, public works employees — the people who keep a community running.
“If you’re a single person, you’re not making that much,” Eric said, after walking through the rough income needed to buy into the county’s average price range. “You’re not getting into the average price home.”
This is probably the most important point of our entire conversation. Because once you move past all the quarterly figures and market comparisons, that is the real question hanging over Chatham County: who still gets to live here?
If homes are selling around the upper six figures, or higher, the buyer pool narrows fast. A household may need well into six-figure income territory to purchase comfortably. That does not describe most teachers. It does not describe many first responders. It does not describe a lot of regular working professionals, even those with solid jobs.
So where do they go?
According to Eric, many of them go west or south. They look to Lee County, Moore County, Alamance County, Randolph County, or farther out into western Chatham. They keep working here, but they stop living here.
That shift matters.
It means the people staffing schools, responding to emergencies, maintaining local government services, or working in health care may be increasingly disconnected from the community where they spend their days. It means longer drives, heavier traffic, weaker neighborhood ties, and a county that risks becoming less accessible to the very people it depends on.
There is an affordability problem in Chatham County.
For first-time buyers, “for sale” doesn’t always mean “within reach”
The central concern of our conversation is not whether Chatham County remains desirable. It plainly does. The concern was who gets to live there. The market looks even tougher from the perspective of a first-time buyer.
Again and again, Eric returned to the county’s affordability challenge.
By his estimate, average home prices are now commonly discussed in a range of about $675,000 to $725,000. Using a rough rule of thumb that homes often price within three to four times annual household income, that kind of market puts average ownership out of reach for a large share of working residents.
At the upper end of that range, a household may need something on the order of $200,000 to $250,000 in annual income to comfortably compete for an average home, depending on debt, down payment, insurance, taxes and interest rates. For many teachers, sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, public works employees, and rank-and-file medical staff, that math simply does not work.
“If you’re a single person, you’re not making that much,” Andrews said. “You’re not getting into the average price home.”
At the entry-level end of the market, the problem is even sharper. Eric said there is very little available under $500,000, and much of what does exist may require repairs or upgrades that complicate financing. Buyers depending on conventional, FHA or other mainstream loan programs can run into lender standards related to condition. A house may look livable to a buyer but still fail to qualify cleanly for financing without added work, cash or renovation loan complexity.
For first-time buyers already stretching to afford payments, that can be enough to knock a listing out of contention.
Mortgage rates are not historically extreme, but they are still a drag
A second pressure point in the market is interest rates.
Eric noted that rates hovering above 6% are not shocking by long historical standards. I recalled buying my first house at 12%, while many older homeowners remember eras of even higher borrowing costs. But that historical perspective does not erase today’s problem.
The issue is not simply that rates are higher than they once were. It is that today’s rates are high relative to the ultra-low mortgages millions of current homeowners locked in during 2020 and 2021.
That creates what housing economists often call the “lock-in effect.” Owners with mortgages at 2.75% or 3.25% are often reluctant to sell and take on a new loan above 6%, unless a move is unavoidable.
“Why would you do it?” Eric said.
That hesitation suppresses inventory. People who might otherwise move up, downsize, relocate within the county, or sell an aging property are staying put. As a result, the normal churn that helps feed local housing supply remains constrained.
“The only reason why you’re moving is because you have to move,” he said of homeowners who locked in mortgage rates under 3% and now face the prospect of buying again at roughly double that cost.
The national mortgage backdrop remains challenging. Freddie Mac reported on March 26, 2026, that the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage stood at 6.38%, up from 6.22% the prior week. A year earlier, it was 6.65%. (Freddie Mac)
Even though rates are below the highs seen in late 2023, they remain elevated enough to weigh heavily on affordability and monthly payment calculations. That drag is especially meaningful in counties like Chatham, where home prices are already well above state and national medians.
Why demand hasn’t disappeared
Even with all of these pressures, Eric never sounded like someone worried that people would stop coming.
If Chatham County is expensive, why does demand remain resilient?
Chatham County still offers something a lot of buyers want: access to the Triangle, room to spread out, relatively low crime, strong schools, proximity to medical care, and a lifestyle that feels calmer than more urban parts of the region. It is close to major opportunities without feeling fully consumed by them.
At one point, Eric ran through the list in a way that sounded almost like a recruiter’s pitch: the climate, the location, the sports, the schools, the higher education institutions nearby, the broader medical infrastructure.
“We check a lot of boxes,” he said.
That line explains why Chatham County’s affordability problem is so stubborn. The county is not struggling because demand vanished. It is struggling because demand stayed strong while attainable supply did not keep up.
The state’s broader economic momentum adds to that pull. North Carolina was named CNBC’s Top State for Business in 2025, continuing a run in which the state has consistently ranked near the top nationally for corporate climate and economic competitiveness.
Migration patterns also continue to support demand. U-Haul’s 2025 migration rankings placed North Carolina third among growth states, trailing only Texas and Florida, while Charlotte and Raleigh both appeared among the company’s top growth metros.
That does not mean every newcomer is heading for Chatham County specifically. But it does reinforce the larger reality Andrews was describing: North Carolina remains a destination state, and counties in the Triangle orbit continue to benefit from that momentum.
That is the tradeoff now. Growth brings money, energy and investment. It also makes it harder for a regular buyer to compete.
Workforce housing is no longer a side issue. It is the issue.
Among the most notable parts of our conversation was the discussion of what might happen to current Chatham County government properties in downtown Pittsboro as some county operations move to sites farther out near U.S. 64.
Eric said county officials are considering a future in which some of that land could be transferred for town use. One idea under early discussion, he said, involves transforming the current law-enforcement building area into a mixed-use residential and retail project, with retail at street level, parking behind, and condo units above.
What caught his attention most was not the architecture. It was the possible price point.
If ownership units could be delivered around $200,000, he suggested, they could open the door to exactly the kind of buyers Chatham increasingly struggles to retain: teachers, firefighters, police officers, and medical workers who want to live near where they work.
That would matter for more than housing statistics.
It would build equity for working residents. It would support downtown businesses. It would create a more walkable town center. It would put residents near civic life rather than forcing them into long-distance commuting patterns. And it would help Pittsboro strengthen its historic core at a moment when growth pressures could easily push development ever farther outward.
For Eric, the appeal of the idea was straightforward. “That’s a number that works,” he said.
Whether such a project moves from concept to reality remains to be seen. He stressed that the discussions are preliminary. But the significance of the conversation is hard to miss. In a county where average new construction is nearing luxury-market territory, attainable in-town ownership has become not just desirable, but strategic.
A potentially important idea is taking shape in downtown Pittsboro
The conversation became especially interesting when it turned toward downtown Pittsboro and the future use of county-owned property.
Eric said Chatham County has secured property outside town and plans to move some major functions there. As that happens, land now occupied by government uses in downtown Pittsboro could eventually become available for something else.
What should that something else be?
For Eric , one early concept stood out. He described discussion of a mixed-use condo building in the area now occupied by law enforcement, with retail on the first floor and residential units above.
Then he got to the part that changed the tone of the conversation.
“Pricing was coming in roughly around $200,000,” he said.
For a moment, the entire housing discussion shifted. Because unlike so many other numbers floated in real estate conversations, that one sounded like it belonged to actual working people.
“Well, guess what?” Eric said. “That’s a number that works.”
He was almost emphatic about it. That kind of price point, if it can really be delivered, could open the door to teachers, firefighters, police officers, medical workers and others who are currently priced out of much of the local ownership market.
Eric also liked the fact that it would not just be housing. It would be housing in a place where people could walk.
“They’re walking downtown,” he said, describing the appeal of keeping residents close to shops, restaurants and civic life.
That matters in Pittsboro, where growth has raised constant questions about how to strengthen downtown without overwhelming it. A project like that, if done well, could do several things at once: support local business, create ownership opportunities, build equity for working residents, and keep the town center active.
It is still early. Eric made clear that the plans are preliminary. But the fact that such a conversation is happening at all says something important about where Chatham County is now. Workforce housing is no longer just a noble idea to mention in passing. It is becoming central to how the county imagines its future.
What kind of place does Pittsboro want to become?
Our conversation also touched on a broader debate playing out across many fast-growing communities: whether growth will be shaped by sprawl, density, or some combination of both.
In Pittsboro, Eric pointed to encouraging signs that local leaders are thinking seriously about downtown vitality, walkability and the long-term use of publicly controlled land. He praised town officials and described a vision in which downtown remains active rather than hollowed out.
That concern is not abstract. Many small and midsize Southern towns have spent decades trying to recover from patterns that left historic downtowns underused while growth moved outward to highways and subdivisions. Pittsboro now sits at a point where it could choose a different path.
Can Pittsboro remain a place where regular working people live near downtown? Can the county add housing without flattening its character? Can public land be used in a way that benefits the community rather than just feeding higher-end demand?
Those are not simple questions, and our conversation did not pretend otherwise. But it did make one thing clear: those questions can no longer be avoided.
Stability is real, but so is unease
Despite the county’s evident strengths, Eric did not describe a market without risks.
He mentioned geopolitical tensions, fuel prices and consumer unease as factors that can affect a commuter-heavy county. Chatham remains a place where many residents live locally but work elsewhere. If gas prices rise sharply or broader economic confidence weakens, household decision-making can become more cautious.
Mortgage-rate volatility compounds that uncertainty. A rise of even a few tenths of a percentage point can materially change monthly payments, especially for households already looking near the top of their budget.
And yet, none of that appears to have fundamentally broken buyer interest. Rather, it has produced a market defined by caution, selectivity and negotiation. Sellers may need to be more realistic. Buyers may have more time than they did two years ago. But the underlying demand for Chatham County remains intact.
The county is no longer riding pure momentum. It is being forced to confront the practical consequences of success: how to add supply, where to add it, and whether housing will remain accessible to the people who teach children, patrol streets, repair infrastructure and staff clinics.
The takeaway for Chatham County
The first-quarter 2026 picture in Chatham County is not one of collapse or boom. It is one of pressure.
Prices are still inching up. Homes are taking longer to sell, but not long enough to signal broad weakness. Inventory remains too thin, especially for lower-priced homes. Mortgage rates continue to suppress movement from existing owners while raising monthly costs for new buyers. And the county’s popularity shows little sign of fading, buoyed by North Carolina’s business climate and ongoing in-migration.
For local government and planning leaders, the message is increasingly clear: workforce housing can no longer be discussed as a future aspiration. It is a current necessity.
For buyers, the message is more mixed. The market is no longer as frantic as it was, and that creates opportunities for patience and negotiation. But affordability remains the defining barrier, especially for first-time buyers and middle-income households.
For sellers, the lesson may be realism. Scarcity still provides support, but aspirational pricing is more likely to meet resistance than it was during the county’s hottest stretches.
And for residents watching the county change, Eric’s comments point toward a larger civic challenge. Chatham County remains highly desirable. The question now is whether it can remain livable for the people who already serve it.
The next steps are not mysterious. They involve better use of public land, serious attention to in-town ownership opportunities, practical support for mixed-use and walkable development, and a willingness to confront the hard arithmetic of local wages against local housing costs. If those conversations continue with urgency, Pittsboro and Chatham County may still be able to shape growth rather than simply react to it.
If they do not, the county may keep attracting newcomers while slowly pricing out the very workforce needed to sustain its future.
For now, the first quarter of 2026 leaves Chatham County in a familiar but uncomfortable position: still desirable, still growing, still relatively strong — and increasingly difficult for ordinary buyers to enter.
Watch on YouTube – Chatham County Q1 2026 Real Estate Market Update with Eric Andrews by Merlin AI
Chatham County Q1 2026 Real Estate Insights: Market Trends, Average Prices, and Key Statistical Sources Explained by Eric Andrews.
00:17 Eric Andrews discusses sources and accuracy of Chatham County real estate statistics.
- Information is derived from multiple sources, including census data and the Chamber of Commerce.
- Variations in average home prices arise from including or excluding new construction in calculations.
02:38 Chatham County’s commercial real estate shows modest growth amidst low inventory.
- Commercial real estate includes non-residential properties like shopping centers and office spaces, with average rental and lease rates essential for market analysis.
- First Quarter 2026 shows 1-2% year-over-year sales growth, despite concerns of price declines and historically low inventory levels.
05:12 Chatham County’s real estate market shows slight price increases despite low inventory.
- Low inventory continues to drive price expectations, leading sellers to list homes higher than recent market data suggests.
- Average days on the market have increased to over 50 days, indicating a shift from the previous competitive market dynamics.
07:50 Chatham County’s real estate prices are appreciating with average homes above $675,000.
- Current market shows an average days on market at 50, indicating continued price appreciation.
- The low inventory under $500,000 creates affordability challenges, placing strain on potential buyers.
10:13 North Carolina sees growth in real estate and business amid economic factors.
- North Carolina is becoming a popular relocation destination, surpassing Florida and Texas in U-Haul moves.
- The state’s favorable business environment and recent stability signs indicate potential real estate appreciation challenges.
12:41 Interest rates and housing market trends significantly impact buyer decisions.
- Rising interest rates are discouraging homeowners from selling, as the benefits of low rates outweigh potential gains.
- The workforce housing gap persists, making it difficult for essential workers to afford homes in the current market.
15:16 Affordability in Chatham County’s real estate market is challenging for lower-income individuals.
- With an average home price of $725,000, potential buyers need an income of around $250,000 to afford typical homes.
- Residents earning less may be displaced to more affordable areas outside Chatham County, such as Moore or Lee County.
17:32 Chatham County is relocating key offices outside of Pittsboro.
- The county has secured property off Highway 64 for newer facilities that include schools and law enforcement offices.
- This move aims to streamline government operations and improve access to services for residents.
20:01 Pittsboro plans mixed-use developments to address workforce housing needs.
- A proposed plan involves transforming the current law enforcement building into condos and retail, enhancing urban living.
- Affordable condo pricing around $200,000 aims to support local workforce including teachers, medical, and emergency personnel.
22:32 Discussion on local building height restrictions and land elevation effects.
- Teresa is commended for her enthusiasm and positive energy during the briefing.
- Height restrictions in Pittsburgh limit building heights to that of the courthouse, with potential for changes based on land elevation.