More for the old, less for the new

CHARLOTTE ─ When it comes to older houses, Charlotte is a more expensive place to buy a place to live than elsewhere in the nation.

But homebuyers who purchased a domicile built since 2007 got a bit of a bargain.

Those are the headlines of the just-released 2011 American Housing Survey of homes by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Census Bureau.

Homeowners in the Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, N.C.-S.C. metro area paid a median of $132,000 for their houses, or 20 percent more than those across the country, who spent a median of $110,000.

But buyers of homes in the Queen City who purchased new (built in 2011) or almost-new (2007 and up) housing units got a 4 percent discount at $225,000, or $10,000 less than the national median.

Deeper down in the study are these trivia, just in case you want to win a bar bet:

– Slightly more homes in Charlotte were heated by natural gas (48.3 percent) than electricity (44.7 percent). While Charlotte’s stat on gas usage is statistically about the same as the nation’s (50.4 percent), far fewer homes across the country use electricity (35 percent), while the rest use fuel oil, propane, coal or renewable sources.

– The median age of Charlotte homes (1989) means the area’s housing stock is a lot younger than the national median (1974).

– A lot more homes in the Queen City environs have carbon monoxide detectors (61.4 percent) than nationally (46.3 percent).

– In the not-so-surprising category, owner-occupied homes in the Queen City environs are much more likely to have central air (93.6 percent) compared to the national figure (72.5 percent).

– And when it comes to median monthly homeowner expenses, Charlotte has the edge on real estate taxes ($121 versus $151 nationally) and property insurance ($50 versus $58 across the country). But electricity here is more expensive ($130 versus $121 nationally).