Why should Cleveland County be left out? | Opinion

By Rod Powell | Guest Opinion

OPINION — A young couple trying to buy their first home in Cleveland County already has plenty working against them. Home prices are high. Interest rates are high. Insurance isn't cheap, and saving enough for a down payment can take years.

Then they finally find a modest house they can afford and discover they're competing against a large investment company with cash ready to go. That's happening in North Carolina.

Around Charlotte, corporate investors have bought thousands of single-family homes and turned them into rentals. UNC Charlotte researchers found that they owned just under 20,000 single-family homes in Mecklenburg County by the end of 2023. In some working-class neighborhoods, the percentage was much higher than the county average.

Raleigh has been looking at this problem for a while. In 2023, House Bill 114, called Home Ownership Market Manipulation, was introduced in the North Carolina House. It went to the Rules Committee and never moved.

The idea came back in 2025. Senate Bill 199 was filed by Republican Sen. Timothy Moffitt and drew cosponsors from both parties. Senate Bill 432 and House Bill 1010 offered similar proposals. None has made it out of the Rules committees.

So this isn't an idea that belongs to one party.

The basic idea is fairly simple. Once a company and its related businesses already own 100 or more single-family rental homes in a qualifying county, they would be limited from buying more houses there and turning them into rentals.

Here's the part that caught my attention. A qualifying county has to have more than 150,000 people. That means Gaston County would be covered, but Cleveland and Lincoln counties would not.

I don't see much sense in that.

If large corporate buyers can become a problem for families trying to buy homes in Charlotte or Gastonia, why couldn't the same thing happen in Shelby, Kings Mountain, Casar, Lawndale or anywhere else around here? A county line doesn't mean much to a young couple who just lost out on a house they hoped to buy.

I also want to be clear about who I'm talking about. I'm not talking about somebody around here who owns a rental house or two. Plenty of local people own rental property. They worked hard to buy it, they keep it up, and they rent it to people in the community. I'm talking about companies with enough money behind them to buy houses by the hundreds.

For generations, buying a home has been one of the ways working people got ahead. You make the payment every month, build some equity and, after a while, you've got something that belongs to you. Maybe you leave it to your children. Maybe you sell it when you retire. Maybe it simply gives you some security after years of working and paying bills.

When more starter homes end up in large corporate portfolios, fewer families get that chance.

I don't know whether 100 houses is the right cutoff, and there may be other parts of these bills that need work. That's what committees are there for. Bring one up, ask the questions, hear from people on both sides and change what needs changing.

Then vote on it.

And while they're at it, somebody ought to explain why a family in Cleveland County should be treated differently from a family in Gaston County just because one county has more people.

That part doesn't make much sense to me.

This isn't really a Charlotte story. It's about whether young people growing up around here are going to have a decent shot at buying a home here someday.

That’s worth talking about.

Rod Powell is a retired public school history and civics teacher, Chair of the Cleveland County Democratic Party, and Democratic candidate for North Carolina Senate District 44. He lives in Casar.

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