Mecklenburg Times: News for Mecklenburg, Union and Iredell counties Real Estate, Development, Construction, and Community News in the Charlotte area and throughout Mecklenburg, Union and Iredell counties

WASHINGTON  — Americans stepped up their spending at retailers in May, especially for autos, clothes and building materials, in a sign that strong job growth has begun to boost store sales. Retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 1.2 percent after ...

NEW YORK  — A Danish architect has revealed the design for the fourth and final tower at the World Trade Center. Architect Bjarke Ingels says 2 World Trade Center will be 80 stories and appear as seven separate boxes stacked ...

WASHINGTON  — Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates jumped this week to their highest levels this year, with the key 30-year rate topping 4 percent for the first time since late 2014. Rates have been surging amid signs of improvement in ...

DETROIT – A University of Michigan class is teaching students from Detroit how to acquire abandoned homes, fix them up and rent them out as part of an effort to create lively, walkable neighborhoods. Peter Allen, an adjunct lecturer at ...

SAN FRANCISCO  — San Francisco supervisors are expected to revisit a sticky issue Tuesday that has generated impassioned pleas from tenants and homeowners alike — Airbnb regulations. People who want stricter controls on home-shares say landlords are taking hundreds of ...

NEW ORLEANS  — Thomas Stone says Chinese drywall has ruined his life, repeatedly corroding fixtures and appliances in the house he bought and rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina. A hearing Tuesday will decide how much money he and 3,000 other homeowners ...

NEW YORK  — They’re accused of showing up unexpectedly, calling again and again, following their targets to work and even approaching their relatives. They aren’t bill collectors or bounty hunters but a curious feature of New York’s superheated housing market: ...

U.S. economic growth in the second quarter will be far weaker than previously expected and it will prevent the pace of growth from exceeding last year’s 2.4 percent, according to a forecast by a group of U.S. business economists. Growth ...

NEW YORK — Those record profits that companies are reporting may not be all they’re cracked up to be. As the stock market climbs ever higher, professional investors are warning that companies are presenting misleading versions of their results that ...

WASHINGTON  — U.S. employers added a robust 280,000 jobs in May, showing that the economy is back on track after starting 2015 in a slump. The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate ticked up to 5.5 percent from ...