North Hills Keeps Adding Homes. Very Few of Them Are for Sale.

Stand on St. Albans Drive this fall and you can count the cranes. Tributary is rising south of the street. A greenway segment from St. Albans Drive to Hardimont Road has opened. Over in the Park District, a 20-story tower called The Strand is climbing toward a summer 2027 delivery. To a buyer comparing Midtown with other parts of Raleigh, all this activity suggests a simple story: more homes are on the way, so waiting might bring more choices.

For anyone who wants to own, that story is wrong. Nearly every residential project now under construction or planned in North Hills is an apartment building. Over the next several years the district will gain neighbors, restaurants, and rooftop pools. It will gain very few homes a buyer can purchase.

The pipeline, sorted by who can own it

North Hills' upcoming projects are usually counted together as "units." Sorting them by whether a buyer can own one gives a different picture.

The five projects reported as apartments add up to roughly 1,700 rental homes. Vesper's count varies by outlet: Raleigh Magazine's October 2026 development roundup lists 346 units, while The News & Observer's report on the expansion put it at 357. Either way, the total is about the same. Veranda's ownership model has not been announced in the coverage so far, so it belongs in neither column yet.

Recent history follows the same pattern. Since late 2020, Kane's Innovation District has delivered Vine North Hills with 326 apartments, Channel House with 200 apartments, and St. Albans Lofts with 396 apartments in 2025. That is more than 900 homes, and every one of them is a rental.

The same expansion also removes homes

The new phase of the Innovation District sits on 28 acres between Navaho Drive and I-440, which Kane and Los Angeles-based McCourt Partners bought in January for $72 million. The land includes The Pointe at Midtown, a 365-unit community, along with the Grove Towers office building, and The News & Observer reported that Kane says it will demolish both to make way for the expansion.

So the net gain from the Navaho Drive phase is smaller than its headline figure of more than 1,200 new homes. Most of what goes up is rental, and existing housing comes down to make room. For a buyer, the effect on the number of homes for sale near the district is close to zero.

One for-sale project in a field of rentals

Against all this, the only new ownership lead in the district is small. In October 2026, Triangle Business Journal reported that Beacon Street, a Raleigh developer known for luxury condos, plans a 32-unit condo tower and is "joining the rush to build in North Hills." The project's address, pricing, and schedule have not appeared in public coverage.

Beacon Street's past work shows what that scale looks like. The firm's completed Raleigh condominiums include The Wade, with 29 residences, finished in 2021, and Fairview Row, with 14 condominiums, finished in 2019. These are boutique buildings. Even if the North Hills tower is approved and built, it would add a few dozen ownable homes next to well over a thousand rentals.

What this means for a Midtown purchase

The district's amenities scale with total population, and rentals count toward that population. The Strand brings 9,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and a promenade designed for outdoor dining. Merit adds 10,000 square feet of neighborhood-serving retail. Tributary adds 6,000 square feet. The plans also include a hotel of up to 250 rooms, an office tower, and a greenway that will eventually connect to a planned multimodal bridge over I-440.

Each of those additions makes a walkable North Hills address more useful to live in. The number of such addresses available to own stays about where it is. For a buyer who wants to own within walking distance of the district, the options through 2029 look much like today's, plus one possible addition:

1. Existing condos and townhomes. These come up only when an owner decides to sell, so the timing follows owners' lives, not construction schedules.
2. Beacon Street's 32-unit tower, if it moves forward. For now it is a lead with a headline and no public details.
3. Detached homes in the established streets around the district. These are a different product at a different price, covered in our Midtown home prices explainer.

For a buyer, this changes how waiting works. Elsewhere in the Triangle, a buyer who passes on a home this fall can reasonably expect new construction or fresh resale listings by spring. In walkable North Hills, no new homes are scheduled to arrive by spring, and the first big delivery, The Strand in summer 2027, will be a rental. Waiting for "more inventory" there mostly means waiting for an existing owner to list. The structural differences between condo and townhome ownership still matter when that listing appears, and our condo vs. townhome guide for Midtown walks through them.

The broader market is looser than North Hills' ownership supply

The wider market numbers can make this harder to see. Across North Carolina in September 2026, NC REALTORS reported 5.93 months of inventory, listings up 3.5% from a year earlier, closed sales down 11%, and a median price of $370,000, up 0.7%. Closer to home, Doorify MLS's July 2026 figures for the broader Triangle showed about 11,500 active listings, roughly 4.2 months of supply, 73 days on market, and a 94.8% sale-to-list ratio.

Those numbers describe a market where buyers in general have more time and more leverage than they did a few years ago. They are regional and statewide averages, and they combine detached homes with every kind of attached home. They say nothing specific about the small group of condos and townhomes within walking distance of North Hills Commons, where the supply story above applies. Inventory near the district grows only when existing owners list.

For context on what is actually opening around the district this season, see what's new in Midtown this fall.

A few questions buyers ask

Are any of the new North Hills towers selling condos? Based on how they have been described publicly, The Strand, Tributary, Life Time Living at The Exchange, Merit, and Vesper are apartment projects. The only for-sale project reported so far is Beacon Street's planned 32-unit condo tower.

What about Veranda? Veranda is planned as 207 units of 55-plus housing at 901 Navaho Drive, arriving in 2029. Coverage so far has not said whether its units will be leased or sold.

When does the next wave of rentals arrive? The Strand is expected in summer 2027, Tributary in 2028, and Merit and Vesper in 2029. Life Time Living at The Exchange was scheduled to break ground in October 2026.

If you own a condo or townhome near North Hills, you hold a type of home the district is not building more of, and how you present it should reflect that. Mundra Residential Group can show you where your home sits in this limited ownership market and how design-led preparation can make it stand out. Request a Luxury Home Valuation to start that conversation.