Luxury infill rises in Raleigh, highlighting Triangle’s growing housing divide
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- The City Homes are a collection of eight residences at Birney Park in Hayes Barton.
- The City Homes start in the mid $3 million and are expected to deliver late 2027.
- The Triangle’s median single-family sale price was $439,000 in April, per DoorifyMLS.
Construction is underway on the next phase of Birney Park, a boutique “village-like” infill community in one of Raleigh’s oldest and most established neighborhoods, Hayes Barton.
Developed by Raleigh-based Beacon Street and designed by Historical Concepts, The City Homes is a collection of eight multi-level residences up to 4,900 square feet with private rooftop terraces.
It’s expected to deliver in late 2027. The price tag: starting around $3.5 million.
According to the developer, two of the eight homes have already been reserved.
“We’re encouraged by the response so far,” said Jim Wiley, president of Beacon Street, in a release.
The enclave sits inside the Birney Park site at Fairview and Oberlin roads and expands the initial phase — The Brightbury, an 18‑unit Georgian-inspired condominium building where homes start at $1.8 million.
The third and fourth phases of Birney Park are planned as The Caroline and The Elizabeth, though the developer has not yet released design or construction details.
“We’re excited to see this next chapter begin to take shape,” Wiley added. “With limited opportunities and early momentum, The City Homes represent a rare offering.”
The project also underscores a broader Triangle trend: even as cities push for more housing options, the most desirable neighborhoods continue to see high‑end infill while affordable and middle‑income homes remain scarce.
Citywide, Raleigh continues to encourage more housing options through zoning reforms. But in established neighborhoods, where land costs are high and parcels are limited, most new residential construction remains concentrated at the upper end of the market.
Hayes Barton, part of the Five Points area, is one of the city’s most tightly held neighborhoods. New development there is rare. When it occurs, it typically takes the form of single‑family replacements or small, high‑end infill projects like Birney Park.
Beacon Street’s portfolio also includes The Wade, a five‑story luxury condo building near the Village District, formerly Cameron Village, completed in 2021; and Fairview Row, a boutique set of high‑end residences in Hayes Barton completed in 2019, plus new neighborhoods in Durham and along the North Carolina coast.
Several other infill projects across the Triangle mirror the pattern.
Among them: Robuck Homes’ Claridge neighborhood, a collection of 10 homes in North Raleigh, which are expected to climb into the $1.3 million range; and Stonewall, an enclave of eight homes in northern Hillsborough that start at about $800,000.
Compare that to the Triangle’s overall median sale price for single-family homes, which stood at $439,000 in April, according to DoorifyMLS, the Cary-based multiple listing service covering 19 counties across central and eastern North Carolina.
That’s down 1.3% from a year ago.
