Annual Real Estate Trends: What 159 Projects Tell Us About Wake County’s Growth

By Morgan Ross Bliss, Senior Research Manager, WCED

Each year Wake County Economic Development leads dozens and dozens of economic development projects considering Wake County for growth. That gives us unique data and insights into the real estate needs of these companies. Every year, WCED compiles this real estate data and analyzes it to uncover trends. This year’s analysis for calendar year 2024 provides some interesting insights. 

WCED lead 159 projects. The majority of which were looking for an existing building. WCED leads all economic development projects considering Wake County. In 2024, we saw a whopping 159 projects! The majority of these projects (50%) were seeking an existing building, and 29% were seeking either an existing building or a greenfield site. This is why it is so important to have a variety of inventory in our community.   

Building requests were overwhelmingly industrial or flex. The majority of existing building requests we received were looking for either industrial (57%) or flex space (35%). WCED did experience a slight increase in office requirements, though office requirements are generally underreported in the early stages of projects.  

Companies were looking for slightly less space than in 2023. One of the more interesting insights uncovered was the year-over-year decrease in the amount of space, on average, companies were requiring. However, interestingly the 100,000 s/f plus building requirement was the largest group (47%).  

For companies looking for greenfield sites, the average size was between 33 and 50 acres. Wake County has a wide array of greenfield sites either on the market or in some stage of development. 75% of the requests for greenfield sites WCED received in 2024 were for 75 acres or less. This means a lot of sites throughout the county can fulfill these requests.  

Of the 12 announcements in 2024, 50% were office projects. As mentioned earlier, WCED received fewer office projects than industrial projects, office projects accounted for half of the announcements. While Wake County continues to announce large-scale life science investments, office, and office-related projects still represent a strong share of our pipeline.