Veteran viewers of local Charlotte television news are familiar with Hidden Valley,
a 4,600-home neighborhood that for years struggled with rising crime and declining property values.
Started in 1959 and home to an estimated 12,000 people, Hidden Valley is famous in the Queen City because it was ground zero for “white flight” in the 1970s and ‘80s. In less than a generation, the area went from an all-white population to mostly Black. The change has been well-chronicled by local historians. It occurred because of misinformation from real estate agents looking for commissions and vulture investing by rental-property investors, coupled with the desire of many Black families seeking housing in a well-designed neighborhood accessible to Charlotte’s center city and the UNC Charlotte area.
Fortunately, Marjorie Parker and other longtime residents are working to restore Hidden Valley’s reputation, block by block. A resident since 1977 and president of the community association, Parker says Hidden Valley is experiencing lower crime rates, more resident participation in neighborhood improvement efforts and rising property values. She credits better collaboration with Charlotte police and other city agencies.
In that mix, Cyrus Mojdehi and Daniel Hirschberg saw an opportunity where others saw turmoil. Their Northway Homes has built more than 40 detached, single-family homes in Hidden Valley since 2021. Several homes in their latest project, Echo Glen at Hidden Valley, were still on the market in early August.
It’s the most new construction in Hidden Valley since the 1960s.
“We look at Northway as a positive investment in the community,” Parker says. “They have sold homes to people who want to live in the neighborhood, and they have built nice homes that look good.”
Taking chances in unconventional places and an aggressive approach has made Northway one of North Carolina’s faster-growing home builders and attracted national attention. In July, the EY consulting firm named Mojdehi a finalist for its national Entrepreneur of the Year honors.
It’s a respected awards program that measures entrepreneurial spirit, purpose, growth and impact. Three other N.C. executives made the list, including Raleigh’s Cindy Eckert, who previously sold her female libido drug company for $1 billion.
Northway’s success comes in an industry that is mostly split between large, national builders that dominate the market and dozens of smaller, closely held companies that tend to build fewer than 25 homes annually. “No one else does what we are doing in Charlotte at a production scale,” Mojdehi says.
North Carolina is a great place for homebuilders because so many people want to live here. It ranked fourth nationally among the states with 365,000 new homes constructed between April 2020 and July 2024, according to Census Bureau data.
Mecklenburg County added 48,000 single and multifamily units in that period, 19th most in the U.S., while Wake County added 66,000, ranking sixth.
Most of the single-family construction comes from big companies based in other states. The 10 largest builders in the Charlotte area accounted for 75% of closings in 2023, building from 467 to 1,326 homes, according to Charlotte Business Journal research. They tend to sell most of their homes in several large subdivisions, in tranches of dozens or hundreds of units. Only one N.C.-based company ranked in the top 10: Monroe’s True Homes, which ranked third with 1,141 closings in 2023, for a 10% market share.
Northway is a rare mid-sized company that builds on smaller parcels scattered in many places. It completed 260 homes last year, It expects to add 300 more this year, spaced around about 150 locations, such as Hidden Valley. Most sites are in the Charlotte metro area, extending as far as Hickory.
Most of the homes are targeted at first-home buyers and
sell for less than $400,000. Wickenden Partners, a separate company owned by Mojdehi and Hirschberg, originates construction loans to third-party developers for homes that in some cases top $1 million.
Now $400,000 may not sound like a starter home. But the median price of a new home in Mecklenburg County has topped $400,000 since 2023 and was $465,000 in June, according to the Redfin real estate research firm.
In 2024, 19% of Mecklenburg homes sold for less than $300,000, while only 2% sold for less than $150,000, according to UNC Charlotte’s Childress Klein’s Center for Research. That is a massive change from a decade earlier when 75% of homes sold for less than $300,000, and about 34% traded for less than $150,000.
Mecklenburg households would “need to assume that starter homes are those with prices of $375,000 or higher,” the UNC Charlotte researchers wrote in their 2024 annual report.
Theoretically, 71% of Charlotte-area households don’t make enough money to afford a median home priced at $435,000, according to National Association of Home Builders research. The crunch is even worse in most other N.C.
metro areas.
Northway’s homes at its Echo Glen at Hidden Valley site are priced at $380,000 for a four-bedroom, three-bathroom, 1,929-square-foot home. A slightly larger model is offered at $435,000. Older homes for sale on nearby streets are mostly priced at $250,000 to $300,000, which is in many cases triple the valuations of 10 or 15 years ago.
Land prices in Hidden Valley, though among the lowest in Mecklenburg County, make it infeasible to build new homes at prices that used to be considered affordable, Mojdehi says.
The economics are different in outlying areas such as Hickory and Shelby, where Northway has started selling newly built, 726-square-foot homes with two bedrooms and a bathroom for $185,000. Demand for the small homes has been strong from first-time home buyers, so Mojdehi says Northway is looking for property to establish similar homes.
WATER POLO AND TENNIS
Taking a different approach than the mainstream has worked for Northway. “We came into the business with no bad habits,” he says.
Instead, they entered with Ivy League and Wall Street pedigrees.
Hirschberg played tennis at Brown University, then spent six years at the Macquarie Group and Pacific Coast Capital Partners firms in New York, before joining Mojdehi to found Northway in 2021. Mojdehi had played water polo at Brown, then took a job with San Diego-based Alliance Real Estate investments, assigned to find distressed homes to purchase in Charlotte and other Southeast cities. Four years there provided lots of exposure to real estate investing. He later earned an MBA at Columbia Business School and worked at a New York private equity business specializing in real estate before starting Northway.
They had limited financial resources, but bootstrapped during the post-COVID days when a shortage of homes sparked frenzied competition for homes. They bought their initial land with a dollar of equity leveraged by $10 of borrowing.
“We took a lot of risk, but our building cycle was very quick, about 70 to 90 days, and we felt like the economy was going to be fine,” Mojdehi says. “And we didn’t have much to lose.”
Reaching 32 employees and the annual pace of 300 homes within five years of starting the company has required some unconventional strategies. Mojdehi ticks off several:
✓ Designing a precise, software-driven plan for the building process that defines specific, repeatable steps.
✓ Developing simple housing plans, repeated over and over.
✓ Completing homes several weeks faster than the industry average.
✓ Providing subcontractors with a steady volume of work, reducing pressure to constantly look for new painters, roofers, carpenters and others.
“We’ve been able to attract a lot of family businesses who have stayed with us over the years,” he says. “They’ve found ways to scale with us, and a lot of them only work for us. It’s a luxury for them because they don’t have to do business development.”
Northway’s goal is to “never have a dead day” in which construction slows or stops because of various snafus. “Our subcontractors often joke with us that they are on top of each other because of how we schedule,” Mojdehi says.
Most Northway homebuyers tend to be former apartment dwellers whose monthly mortgage outlay equates to Charlotte’s pricey, inflating rental rates. “Our customers enjoy having a backyard, and they want to build equity and actually own something,” he adds.
Because neither founder had much building experience, they have leaned heavily on their construction head, John Hardisty, who was a longtime family friend and an experienced contractor. Having two owners with different, complementary skills has also been important. Hirschberg oversees operations, while Mojdehi is the strategist and deal guy.
“Daniel is just a great operator. I’m risk on, he’s risk off, but we get to the right place,” Mojdehi says. “We make every decision together and we have a healthy debate every day. We need consensus before we make a decision.”
Higher interest rates and a more sluggish economy are slowing the first-time home buyer market, prompting Northway to reduce prices and offer increased incentives. The company has started its own mortgage company and is expanding outside of Mecklenburg County, where it does about 80% of its business, down from 95% a few years back.
“It’s been a lot of fun to work in a great environment with a hardworking, competitive group of people,” Mojdehi says. “The majority of our homes are the most affordable available on the market. It’s been fun to deliver as many homes as we have.” ■
David Mildenberg is editor of Business North Carolina. Reach him at dmildenberg@businessnc.com.