Anson Economic Development Corporation

Starting around the first of the year, I began to notice a trend; there were for more "sold" and "sale pending" signs on homes around Wadesboro than there were six months earlier. Initially, I thought it might be a case of randomness or sample size, but conversations with two of our local real estate agents confirmed that, indeed, home sales in Anson County have accelerated significantly in 2017. The agents offered a couple of possible explanations, including a relative shortage of available properties in neighboring counties and the fact that real estate prices in Anson County offer prospective buyers more bang for their buck. While I think those are both factors, I think there are several other reasons why home sales in Wadesboro are surging: A lot of the county's housing stock, especially around Uptown Wadesboro, was built pre-1960. The proliferation of home "fixer-upper" shows have made buying an older home with a lot of character and restoring...

North Carolinians sometimes take the quality of our community college system for granted, but as an Ohio native who has worked with companies from all over the U.S. and the world, I can attest that what we do here in terms of technical training and education is the envy of nearly every other state, and the handful of states who are on a par with us are in that position largely because they have copied our model. Community colleges were the engine that propelled a mostly agrarian North Carolina economy into the Industrial Age and created factory jobs for hundreds of thousands of workers during the post-war boom of the 1950's and 1960's. As the global economy changed in the 1980's and 1990's, our community college system kept pace, diversifying into technology, medical and advanced manufacturing training. There are currently 58 community colleges serving the 100 North Carolina counties. Virtually every person living in the state is within a 30 min...