Charlotte, NC: A Top Local Market to Watch in 2027
The Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC MSA, has long one of the financial powerhouses of the Southeast, and a healthy share of its growth is tied into the expansion or renovation of the large regional or national offices for banks such as Bank of America, Truist Financial, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. (SMBC) Citigroup and U.S. Bank in the area.
Electrical sales potential in the Charlotte metropolitan market is up +4.2% through 2Q 2026 to an estimated$1.6 billion according to Electrical Wholesaling estimates, carried largely by a +6.9% increase in estimated electrical contractor sales potential. This is sure to continue in the second half of 2027 because of new hospital construction, airport work, utility expansion and industrial construction.
The Charlotte market area is seeing quite a bit of construction in suburban counties like Mecklenburg, Union, Gaston and Shelby Counties, including a billion-dollar job at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport; a 12-story, a 1.1-million-square-foot advanced-care tower at Carolinas Medical Center near uptown Charlotte and a $450-million hospital in nearby Fort Mill, SC; more than 5,000 single- and multi-family construction homes in the 1,400-acre River District; the $150-million Siemens Energy manufacturing expansion for transformers; and Jabil’s $500-million factory that will produce cloud-computing and artificial-intelligence data-center equipment.
Utility construction is also big business in the area, and Charlotte is Duke Energy’s corporate home and sits in the heart of its Carolinas service territory. Duke is in the middle of a $83-billion five-year capital plan covering generation, transmission, distribution and grid modernization across its jurisdictions, in Charlotte and throughout North Carolina.
ESTIMATED ELECTRICAL SALES POTENTIAL
2Q 2026 Total Sales Estimate: $1,559.4 million
2026 Electrical Contractor Est. ($ millions): $961.5 million
2026 Estimated Industrial Sales: $286 million.
POPULATION GROWTH
2025 Population Estimate: 2,938,830
2020-2025 Population # Change: 270,488
2020-2025 Population % Change: 10.1%
New Residents per day: 117
BUILDING PERMITS
June 2026 - Single-family (SF) permits: 6,762 permits
# Change SF YOY: (2,723) permits
% Change SF YOY: -28.7%
June 2026 -Multi-family (MF) permits: 4,092 permits
# Change MF YOY: 475
% Change MF YOY: 13.1%
Electrical Wholesaling's Top 10 Local Markets to Watch gives you a taste of the mountain of electrical market sales estimates and other local market data available at Electrical Marketing newsletter for just $99 per year. This data includes:
- Local market sales estimates, building permits and population data for more than 300 other Metropolitan Statistical areas
- The Electrical Price Index (EPI) - A monthly compilation of pricing trends for more than 20 key electrical product groups
- Annual product sales estimates from 16 key electrical products
Sources of market data: Local market data collected by Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and county. Sales estimates developed with sales-per-employee multipliers from Electrical Wholesaling’s Market Planning Guide ($83572 per electrical contractor employee and $2,7289 per industrial employee) and employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Building permit and population data downloaded from U.S. Census Bureau website.
About the Author
Jim Lucy
Editor-in-Chief
Over the past 40-plus years, hundreds of Jim’s articles have been published in Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing newsletter on topics such as the impact of new competitors on the electrical market’s channels of distribution, energy-efficient lighting and renewables, and local market economics. In addition to his published work, Jim regularly gives presentations on these topics to C-suite executives, industry groups and investment analysts.
He recently launched a new subscription-based data product for Electrical Marketing that offers electrical sales potential estimates and related market data for more than 300 metropolitan areas, and in 1999 he published his first book, “The Electrical Marketer’s Survival Guide” for electrical industry executives looking for an overview of key market trends.
While managing Electrical Wholesaling’s editorial operations, Jim and the publication’s staff won several Jesse H. Neal awards for editorial excellence, the highest honor in the business press, and numerous national and regional awards from the American Society of Business Press Editors. He has a master’s degree in Communications and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, N.J. (now Rowan University).