Earlier this year, Halah Kablan Ladson kept seeing the same thing. She wrote in a LinkedIn article that “good Charlotte rental houses were sitting longer than I expected.” The homes were showing and people were asking questions, but five vacant days became 10, and 10 became 20.
Canopy MLS’s standard rental report does not measure how long a rental takes to lease. So Ladson, broker-in-charge of Queen City Management Services (QCMS) in Charlotte, North Carolina, had her firm pull the data directly. “So I stopped guessing and pulled the MLS data,” she wrote.
The analysis covered 10,817 Mecklenburg County residential rental listings from January 2025 through August 2026. Within that set, 6,423 were single-family homes. For those houses, the average of the monthly median days to lease rose from 24.4 in 2025 to 27.1 in 2026, about 11 percent longer.
The more surprising finding was what did not move. From April through August, the median single-family lease closed at 100 percent of its original asking rent in both years. Owners were not cutting rent. They were absorbing the delay as vacancy. At Canopy’s average Mecklenburg lease price of about $2,211 a month, the extra 2.75 days works out to roughly $200 per turnover in lost occupancy, before utilities and maintenance.
The research was covered by The Charlotte Ledger on September 30, 2026, in its Real Estate Whispers column.
The point Ladson draws is practical. Rent held, but time did not, and an owner who watches only the rent number misses where the pressure showed up. The pressure showed up in vacancy time before it showed up in rent cuts.
The data has limits, and the firm says so. It covers MLS-listed rentals, not apartment communities or build-to-rent properties that lease directly, and the broader all-property sample moved differently from the single-family one. The method and the full results are published in the QCMS rental market report.
Ladson has 22 years in real estate across four states and founded QCMS in 2013. She is licensed in North Carolina and South Carolina.
OPTIONAL EXHIBITS (send only if the outlet accepts images or tables)
Table. Mecklenburg County rental leasing, 2025 vs. 2026 (January through August).
| Measure | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single-family rentals (6,423 listings): average of monthly median days to lease | 24.4 | 27.1 | about +11% |
| All residential rentals (10,817 listings): median days to lease | 28 | 32 | about +14% |
| Median single-family lease as % of original asking rent (April to August) | 100% | 100% | no change |
| Estimated added vacancy cost per turnover, single-family | about $200 | from about 2.75 extra days at about $2,211 a month |
Source: QCMS custom Canopy MLS Stats analysis, Mecklenburg County, residential rentals, January 2025 to August 2026. MLS-listed rentals only; apartment and build-to-rent communities that lease directly are not captured.
Chart.
Median days to lease, single-family rentals, Mecklenburg County. Source: QCMS custom Canopy MLS Stats analysis, 6,423 listings, January 2025 to August 2026.