Builders in Waxhaw, Weddington and Wesley Chapel are running into the same walls slowing homebuilding across the Charlotte metro: sewer lines near capacity, septic-only towns and land prices that keep climbing.
U.S. Census Bureau data shows 7,871 single-family homes were approved metro-wide from January through July 2026, a 28% drop from the same period in 2025. Overall housing permits, including apartments, totaled 12,221 units, down 17.7%. The Charlotte Business Journal first analyzed the data, and WSOC-TV reported the findings Sept. 22.
Joe Padilla, director of land acquisition for Keystone Custom Homes and a vice president with the Home Builders Association of Greater Charlotte, pointed to two structural barriers.
"Rising land prices and limited sewer capacity are making it harder to build homes at prices many buyers can afford," Padilla told WSOC-TV.
Those constraints play out block by block in Union County. The county's Board of Commissioners has capped new sewer connections at 95% of rated treatment capacity since January 2021, according to a development analysis by The Longleaf Group. When a wastewater basin runs too close to that ceiling, the county can pause new hookups.
The 12 Mile Creek wastewater facility, which serves much of the Waxhaw-area growth corridor, is in the middle of a $48.5 million expansion to reach 9 million gallons per day, according to the same analysis. The county is also replacing more than 14,000 linear feet of the Crooked Creek Basin trunk sewer.
That capacity crunch has already shaped local projects. In March 2022 development standards filed with the Town of Weddington for the Weddington Green project on Providence Road, engineers noted the 12 Mile Creek basin lacked the capacity to serve the development. The workaround: a pump station and forcemain to route sewer flows across Providence Road into Charlotte Water's Six Mile Creek basin.
Weddington faces a separate constraint. The town has no municipal sewer system at all, according to View Charlotte. Every home runs on a private septic system, and the town's one-acre minimum lot size exists because of that limitation. New homes arrive in small batches.
Toll Brothers received improvement permits from Union County Environmental Health in January 2026 for 14 single-family lots in the Morris Farm subdivision on Weddington Matthews Road. Each lot is designed for a five-bedroom home with an on-site septic system.
In Wesley Chapel, three residential developments were in the pipeline as of the village's Feb. 9 council meeting: McCoy Farm, where Pulte Homes submitted a final plat for 22 remaining homes; Aurora at Price Mill, expecting a preliminary plat application for 35 lots; and Quintessa, with a preliminary plat for 15 lots under review, according to village council minutes. No updated status was available.
Waxhaw's largest approved project, Emerson Park at 801 N. Broome St., calls for 850 residential units and 132,600 square feet of retail and office space. The town approved the mixed-use development May 28, 2024, according to Waxhaw's project page.
Padilla also said density restrictions are adding to development costs and could make it harder for the region to maintain a balance between jobs and available housing.
Union County commissioners included a wastewater treatment capacity update on their Aug. 17 meeting agenda, a sign that officials are tracking basin levels month to month as the expansion work continues.
