Standing in a smelly old house with particle board covering the back door, County Commissioner Rob Zapple gave the space a once-over with a developer's eye.
"If you got, you know, work on the walls, and you painted it, and you redid the floors, you would probably eliminate the smell, along with giving a whole new, fresh look," Zapple said, adding, "maybe some new casing, some moldings down here.”
Zapple and several other local officials took this tour of Cape Fear Collective’s homes in downtown Wilmington. This particular house hasn’t had much work done yet, other than emptying the place.
Cape Fear Collective’s Housing Director Suzanne Rogers said this one will stay a rental: they plan to put an ADU in the backyard for an additional unit of housing.
"This is an example of a house that we had a tenant in until maybe a year and a half ago. There's some issues under the floor, so we decided not to re-rent it [at the time]," she said. "We will be renovating, rehabbing it, and renting it again.”
Cape Fear Collective purchased these homes with money from private investors, promising tremendous social impact from their investments. The $10.6 million purchase in 2022 set the data science non-profit on a path to become a major housing provider in the city.
CFC tried to keep a lot of tenants in place, but the housing they bought was in shockingly poor condition. Some homes were unsafe to live in, so they cleared them out to make way for repairs.
Some of the homes that were originally in the worst condition are now ready to be leased up again, or about to be sold, for intentionally below market value, Rogers said. "We are working in partnership on some of these houses with Cape Fear Community Land Trust.”
That means the homes will have conditions when they sell — the land trust maintains control of the land, but the new homeowner owns the house. That helps keep the property below-market, and if the family resells it in the future, they’re only allowed to make 25% of the appreciation back.
Land Trust Executive Director Paul Stavovy explained: "They can claim 25% of the appreciation added onto the purchase price, not the appraisal price, so they would be able to sell it for $25,000 over 250, right?”
They’re putting homes for sale at $100,000-$200,000 below comparable properties on the same block. Many of these homes in the rapidly gentrifying downtown area have doubled, quadrupled, or even gone up ten times in price in the past 6-8 years. Realtor Tom Gale came along to offer those comparisons. He said one property nearby sold for $68,000 in 2020, sold the next year for $167,000, and sold in 2023 for $205,000. Another property across the street sold for $350,000 in March of 2026.
That kind of rapid price growth is exactly why CFC is trying to step into the housing space: To stabilize housing prices and make sure all kinds of Wilmingtonians can afford to live in the city. Stavovy said most of these homes cost more than $100K to fix up. This property at 209 S. 13th took a whole lot of work — and they’ve listed it for $335,000.
“It's not where I want it to be price-wise, but we have that much in it. So we're not gonna make a penny at all. We're not even gonna cover all the closing costs with that,” he said.
Regardless, he's thrilled to be making this progress.
"It feels so good. There were about four of those five years where stuff was just being triaged, you know, they were doing the best they could, putting on new roofs, putting in new HVAC, little things. But now we're at the major renovation stage," he said. "Unfortunately, in those five years, everything got way more expensive, so we're having to struggle a little bit to find the money to make it happen."
That funding came from the Endowment, to the tune of $837,000 in 2024, and Rogers said another $835,000 or so came from the city.
It's likely to get a bit better as CFC works through its housing stock. With the infusion of cash from the Endowment and the City of Wilmington, they set to work on the very worst homes they'd purchased. One home still in progress was torn down to the studs in the kitchen, the rafters fully on display. As they work down the list, each set of repairs should become less expensive — accounting for inflation.
Other properties they’ve worked on will be rentals — like two shotgun houses next door to each other near Princess Street, in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood recently dubbed the Soda Pop District. The average age of these homes is 85 years, and you feel it in these homes, some of which sag and tilt so much that it almost feels like being in a funhouse mirror.
Wilmington Councilwoman Chakema Clinton-Quintana noted the bar across the street could be noisy, but said it has some nice amenities — a backyard, laundry in the kitchen. She expects it will be ideal for workforce housing.
These 2-bedroom single home rentals will go for under $1,000 per month, which is now nearly unheard of in the Wilmington area. Councilwoman JC Lyle said it's amazing to see the progress.
"It's very rewarding to see the end product. You know, you look at budgets, and you look at policies, and when you get out in where the people live, and you know, feel the person who's going to be living in there, and feel like you're blessing them. It's just really special," she said.
These homes are a good start, but CFC has a very long way to go — and still needs funding for many of the remaining homes — including $5.5 million to tear down and replace six of the worst properties with 15 units of housing.
There are ten properties currently under construction out of the 74 CFC owns. They need another $5.4 million to rehab the rest of the occupied units, and Rogers expects it’ll take five years to complete them all — if they get the resources and funding they need.
