Charlotte BTR Investors Pause Deals As They Await Fate Of Federal Housing Bill

Charlotte investors are bracing for potential changes to the build-to-rent space.

Charlotte has emerged as one of the strongest BTR markets in recent years, driven in part by population growth and rising housing costs. But some investors are pausing sales as a federal housing bill moves through Congress. The latest version of the bill retains protections for the BTR industry, but its fate remains uncertain.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Jason Esposito, CEO of South Carolina-based homebuilder Center Park Group, which specializes in BTR. “It's got to go back to the Senate and pass.”

Esposito was speaking at Bisnow’s Multifamily Annual Conference on May 19 at The Union at Station West in Charlotte. Eric Speckman, co-founding principal of investment and development firm Beauxwright, noted a “lack of transaction volume” in the Charlotte BTR market as companies await the bill’s final passage.

“We’re seeing this in real time, particularly on build-to-rent,” Speckman said. “So it'll be nice, once the legislation gets worked out, to remove some of this uncertainty that investors have.”

In March, major investors mostly stopped buying and financing BTR sites due to the uncertainty of the the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. “Now, it’s kind of a wait-and-see game,” Esposito said. “We have a lot of projects that are at the starting gate that are ready to go.”

On May 20, the House of Representatives passed an amended version of the housing bill that eliminated a controversial BTR provision. That provision, found in a previous Senate version, would have required BTR operators to sell properties after seven years of ownership. The latest bill heads back to the Senate, where a fresh showdown is expected.

Esposito said the provision, if restored, would “completely eliminate additional supply.”

Last year, demand for BTR residences was on the rise in the Queen City, according to the Charlotte Business Journal. As of mid-2025, the Charlotte metro area had more than 4,100 BTR single-family homes under construction, according to a 2025 report by interior building supplier Best Supply, and was ranked second in the space behind Phoenix. 

But the report noted that some national investors had been “slowing new acquisitions after years of aggressive expansion.”

Alex Barroso, executive vice president of Portman Residential, said at the event that BTR is currently facing a lack of tenant demand. 

“Charlotte’s seen a ton of build-to-rent, but some of those have been difficult to lease up,” Barroso said. “They’re a lot slower, which perhaps a lot of developers didn't assume when they underwrote them.”

Though the space remains “viable,” he says “money is slowly moving away from it.”

But factors like high housing and land costs continued to draw developers to BTR opportunities in Charlotte last year to meet local demand. Among some of the notable deals was Progress Residential’s $27.3M purchase of BTR community Harmon Five Points in October. Barroso said that just a few years ago, BTR was “all everybody and anybody was looking to invest in” in Charlotte.

David Lee, director of land acquisition at JPI, added that “the reason we saw a lot of those deals” is because they are “easier to capitalize.”

Charlotte is still listed among the major markets where “employment diversity, household growth, and suburban expansion continue to support build-to-rent demand” in 2026, according to a recent report by Catalyst Capital Partners.

But the forecast is dependent on what happens with the housing bill. Esposito said investors will continue to pause operations until they see “closure and certainty on the bill.”