Developer Shawn Cummings invited The Alamance News to sit in Monday morning on a weekly projects meeting with his development team at his company’s headquarters in Graham, where they discussed their pending projects, residential market trends, and how inflationary pressures are prompting some builders to change their approach to new home construction (see related story, this edition).
Cummings pointed to a recent study showing that Alamance County is projected to have a deficit of 8,206 for-sale homes and 3,456 rental homes between 2024 and 2029, assuming current trends in population growth continue.
Job growth in the region – associated with incoming manufacturers such as the Toyota EV battery plant near Liberty, Boom Supersonic in Greensboro, and others – means that demand will continue to squeeze housing supply, Cummings told his team Monday morning. As an example, he said, “If you get 14,000 jobs, you need another 7,000 homes.”
“I think we are pretty-well positioned for the next decade,” the developer said during the discussion at his company’s headquarters Monday morning. “The population [in Alamance County] is growing at the fastest rate in years. We’re all-in on real estate.”
Cummings’ company, Graham-based Venn-Terra, currently has more than 6,500 residential lots either developed and/or underway, as well as commercial projects in the works (see related story, this edition).
Alamance County’s population is projected to increase by 5.5 percent (or by 10,135 residents), from 185,255 residents this year to 195,390 residents by 2030 – and to continue growing well into the future – according to the latest population estimates from the State Demographer’s Office within the Office of State Budget & Management (OSBM).
The study that Cummings cited during Monday’s discussion showed that Alamance County had one month’s supply of for-sale housing inventory (or 173 homes listed for sale) as of May 2024, according to the September 2024 Housing Supply Gap Analysis, which was commissioned by the North Carolina Chamber and conducted by Bowen National Research, a real estate consulting firm in Ohio. The study’s authors concluded that between four and six months’ supply of for-sale housing inventory is needed for a “healthy and well-balanced market.”
However, the supply of for-sale homes in Alamance County had increased significantly by the end of last month.
Alamance County had 5.27 months’ supply of for-sale housing inventory as of June 2025, according to the latest housing report from North Carolina Realtors (a trade association for the industry), which cited data from the Triad Multiple Listing Service. That marked an increase of 45.8 percent between June 2024 and June 2025, the latest housing report from N.C. Realtors shows.
The number of residential sales listings in Alamance County increased by 25.5 percent, from 882 in June 2024 to 1,107 in June 2025, according to the report from N.C. Realtors.
The median price for homes sold in Alamance County increased by 4.5 percent over the last year – from $325,000 in June 2024 to a median sales price of $340,000 in June 2025 – and the number of home sales in Alamance County increased by 10.5 percent, from 218 home sales in June 2024 to 241 home sales in June 2025, the report shows.
The largest share of residential sales listings (449) was in the $250,000 to $374,999 price range as of last month, according to the latest housing report from N.C. Realtors.
For his part, Cummings said that VennTerra is targeting unincorporated portions of Alamance and surrounding counties for new residential development. “The one thing that helps us is there’s no city taxes,” he said.
The developer nevertheless acknowledged Monday morning that persistently high interest rates (at 6.79 percent for the 30-year mortgage rate as of July 29) and other inflationary pressures – such as the statewide increase of 7.5 percent for homeowners’ insurance that the Rate Bureau approved on June 1 – are prompting some builders to get creative to help stabilize home prices while also maintaining their bottom lines.
“Builders are upping incentives – giving up 15 to 20 percent [of their profit margin on each home] to keep production where it is,” Cummings told the team during their weekly projects meeting on Monday morning. “It’s now an affordability issue; it’s affordability that’s crushing demand.”
One builder is “jacking down” lot sizes for single-family homes in an effort get the price point under $300,000, the developer said, without specifying which builder. Square footage is also shrinking, with area builders scaling back new homes to between 1,800 and 2,400 square feet, Cummings added.
“I think the trick is, don’t over-leverage yourself,” warned Joe DePasquale, regional president of Southern First bank in Greensboro, referring to other residential markets in the southeast that have become overbuilt. (Cummings later told the newspaper that DePasquale is one of the “core bankers” his company works with.)
In an earlier interview, Cummings told the newspaper, “We feel great about the Triad. I feel like this is the best period I’ve seen since [I moved here in] 1996. Alamance County and the associated cities and towns are growing at a much faster rate than they did previously. The Triad and Triangle seem to be merging.”
