Understanding What Property Value Maps Reveal About Raleigh’s Past, Present and Future
Raleigh has grown enormously over the past two decades. That growth is clearly visible in these new property value maps developed by the City covering 2004 to 2024. Drawn from Wake County’s tax assessment data and visualized using total assessed value per acre, the maps help tell a much larger story about where the City invests, who benefits, and what that means for Raleigh’s future.
At the heart of the map lies a dramatic truth: property values are not distributed equally across the City. The highest per-acre values are clustered around Downtown Raleigh, North Hills, and several key employment and medical hubs like NC State University, Rex Hospital, and WakeMed. These spikes in value (shown as tall, dark spikes) are concentrated in walkable, mixed-use areas that combine housing, jobs, shopping, and convenient transportation.
But move away from these core areas, and the landscape flattens literally and figuratively. Much of suburban Raleigh, particularly areas outside of the 440 Beltline, southeast Raleigh and areas in North Raleigh and toward Garner and Knightdale, show significantly lower per-acre values. In other words, these neighborhoods consume large amounts of land but generate relatively low tax revenue per acre. That’s important because the City of Raleigh provides infrastructure like roads, water, sewer, fire protection and parks to every resident in every area, regardless of whether a property generates enough value to support those services.
When looking at the historical change maps, property values have risen steadily across most of Raleigh since 2004. But again, the gains are uneven. The value per acre in already-wealthy areas has grown faster than elsewhere. This trend, if unchecked, will worsen geographic inequality. It also weakens the City’s ability to add new public amenities and services to lower-value areas unless those areas can also become more fiscally productive.
Why does this matter to everyday Raleigh residents?
Taxes. The City funds most of its general services from property tax revenue. When land is used efficiently through higher density, mixed uses, and better connectivity it produces more revenue per acre without raising tax rates. That’s why a modest apartment building or mixed-use development downtown yields more revenue than a sprawling subdivision. If Raleigh fails to implement policies that encourage higher density and diverse housing options in more places across the City, it risks losing the ability to maintain its sprawling infrastructure without higher, more frequent tax increases.
Public Investment. Areas with higher value per acre and stronger sales activity can better support transit, sidewalks, schools, parks, and other civic assets. But when public investment lags behind or avoids areas of lower land value, those neighborhoods fall into a cycle of underinvestment. This is particularly relevant in southeast Raleigh, where land values remain disproportionately low despite the community’s historic importance and ongoing contributions to the City’s cultural fabric.
Public Infrastructure. As the City embraced suburban growth between the mid-1980’s through the 2010’s, it required developers to install infrastructure for newer developments like those in Wakefield, Brier Creek and Olde Town. In doing so, the City also requires developers to install “upsized” infrastructure to serve areas beyond a specific development but reimburses those developers for the differential between the cost to serve a proposed development and the added cost to upsize that same infrastructure, so it has the capacity to serve other areas beyond one specific development. But, after the initial installation, the City accepts maintenance responsibility for that infrastructure into the future. So, while areas like Wakefield, Renaissance Park and Brier Creek have relatively new infrastructure, those areas will soon begin consuming Raleigh tax revenue as that aging infrastructure needs repairs.
Raleigh’s Fiscal Health. This is a slow-moving crisis as the cost to maintain what has already been built rises faster than the tax base expands. As infrastructure ages and maintenance costs rise, elected officials lean into deferred maintenance and reduced public investment. Only after reducing investment and deferring maintenance as long as possible will elected officials then turn to tax increases to address the inevitable need to raise more revenue to fill the gap between current revenue and the rapidly increasing cost of maintaining deteriorating public infrastructure. As this mismatch between revenue and expenses widens, it crowds out Raleigh’s ability to fund new public amenities like Dix Park’s Gipson Play Area, new community buildings, parks and greenways, not to mention roads and sidewalks.
That is precisely what is happening in Cary. Cary is running out of developable land and is mostly home to master planned communities that are highly regulated by private restrictive covenants, which makes any effort to redevelop for more diverse housing nearly impossible. As a result, Cary is having to raise taxes and user fees to maintain its public amenities and infrastructure. ltimately, Cary’s slowing growth will make it much harder to build new amenities like parks and greenways in coming years without persistent tax increases.
Equity and Opportunity. The maps also reveal a legacy of discrimination and exclusion. Historically, neighborhoods that were subject to racial covenants, exclusionary zoning and disinvestment lagged in value capture because residents were unable to borrow money to reinvest in their properties and build generational wealth. To alter the prevailing power dynamic that perpetuates the status quo, planning and zoning decisions must encourage diverse housing options in resource-rich areas that are also served by transit. This recent research note from the Pew Charitable shows why adding diverse housing supply slows rent growth particularly with respect to older, more affordable housing stock. In other words, by adding diverse housing near these emerging growth areas and resource-rich neighborhoods, it takes some of the economic pressure off of lower cost areas where teardowns have accelerated over the last few years.
Sales Tax. If Raleigh adopts policies that encourage mixed-use developments with more diverse, higher-density housing near transit, it can continue attracting new businesses and residents to sustain the City’s social and economic vitality. Denser, walkable neighborhoods boost local spending at businesses, resulting in increased sales tax revenue and greater fiscal efficiency per acre. Raleigh’s sales tax revenue is partially governed by an agreement with Wake County and its other municipalities that allocates some proceeds to tourism projects that drive economic activity. Examples include Raleigh’s Performing Arts Center, WakeMed Soccer Park, the USA Baseball National Training Complex, planned Raleigh Convention Center renovations, and the upcoming improvement to and around the Lenovo Arena. These major amenities rely on population growth, strong commercial activity, and strategic land use.
The Future. The data shows Raleigh must plan for growth differently than in the past by supporting diverse housing, mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods near transit, and rethinking exclusionary zoning that causes economic and spatial inequality. That’s why the process for developing Raleigh’s next Comprehensive Planning is so vital. If done right, the new Comprehensive Plan will include policies and forecast future regulatory reforms to guide Raleigh’s growth in ways that encourage the efficient use of land paired with robust investment in transit and other infrastructure and amenities. Doing so won’t be easy because the defenders of the status quo are not easily vanquished. But bowing to them will lead to fiscal distress, unsustainable tax increases and accelerating erosion of the quality of life that draws people to Raleigh from across the country and around the world. If viewed with a nuanced perspective, these maps illustrate how land value today shapes who gets to live in Raleigh tomorrow, and whether Raleigh remains livable, inclusive, and financially stable for decades to come.
This policy brief is a companion to one RaleighForward published last month titled “Policy Brief: Understanding Housing, Transportation, and Inequality Trends through Spatial Analysis.”