Asheville's Economy After Hurricane Helene: What Local Leaders Saw in Late 2024

Asheville's economy split into two recoveries after Hurricane Helene: housing bounced back fast, hospitality braced for a hard 2025. That was the picture at the 3rd Annual State of Our Economy, the December 2024 AVLmeetup at The Mule at Devil's Foot Beverage, where 86 people heard from three panelists: Susan Aplin, former CEO of Cúrate and the Katie Button restaurant group; Mike Figura, owner of Mosaic Realty; and Christopher Larsen, founder of Next-Level Income.

Key Takeaways

Zac Ruiz's opening market report tracked roughly 4,000 homes across seven counties active or under contract the day before Helene. By report day, 40% were still active, 16% were under contract, 25% had already closed, and only 14.5% (571 homes) had landed in the "bad" category of withdrawn or expired, with another 5.1% (200 homes) temporarily off the market.
In Buncombe County, the Ruiz Report showed homes going under contract up 83% month over month and down just 5% year over year, with new listings up 65% month over month and 11% year over year, despite what Zac Ruiz called the worst storm in North Carolina's history.
Susan Aplin said hospitality is about 20% of Buncombe County's GDP and employed roughly 29,000 workers pre-storm. By November 2024 the county had logged about 12,000 unemployment claims, and the Tourism Development Authority was projecting tourism 30% to 35% below normal into 2025.
Mike Figura said rents were projected to fall about 10%, with some managers projecting another 10% to 15% drop as service industry workers left.
Christopher Larsen and his team built an ad hoc fuel distribution network with local farmers after Helene, and said it took four months to get their relief nonprofit's bank account approved.

The First 72 Hours After Helene

Susan Aplin, then CEO of Cúrate, canceled weddings and events the day before Helene hit. With no communication the next day, she and two colleagues drove around for about an hour to find one bar of signal to text all 160 employees. By day three, Cúrate had partnered with World Central Kitchen, producing about 26,000 meals for employees and the community.

Christopher Larsen was on an anniversary trip to Cancun when the storm hit, watching it online while his in-laws lost power at his home in Kenilworth. He flew back to Charlotte that Sunday, then drove seven hours to Asheville with gas cans for his director of operations, stranded in Cane Creek after a bridge washed out. That trip became the fuel network his team still ran months later. Mike Figura had flown out the day before for college tours in Michigan and relayed information home before flying in to help.

Zac Ruiz's Market Report: A Resilient Housing Market

Zac Ruiz opened the night tracking what he called the "Helene homes": roughly 4,000 single-family listings across seven WNC counties active or under contract the day before the storm. He tracked net inventory, new listings minus homes withdrawn, and said the line never dipped below zero, even right after the storm.

New listings had run 1,608 in the month before Helene, then dropped to 898 by November 1. Ruiz called it a resilient market.

Hospitality's Rough Math

Aplin explained why hospitality could not shrug off Helene the way housing did. Most restaurants and small businesses run at a loss for the first nine months, she said, and make their money in that one quarter, October through December, with October itself nicknamed "Super Bowl." The Tourism Development Authority projected Q4 down 70%, Q1 2025 down roughly 50%, before a slow climb back by year's end. The panel moderator noted Buncombe County had gone from the lowest to the highest unemployment rate in North Carolina in the storm's wake. Aplin's bright spot: the governor-elect had established a bipartisan advisory committee for Western North Carolina recovery.

What the Panel Wants to See Change Permanently

Figura compared the moment to the 2008 financial crisis, when closures thinned competition and things got better for whoever survived; he expected the same pattern in Asheville hospitality and real estate.

Aplin argued for real disaster planning, including a current employee roster with phone numbers, and a hard lesson about insurance: "Don't negotiate your insurance policy without an attorney there going forward," she said. Figura urged realtors, business owners, and the self-employed to keep six months to a year of cash on hand. Larsen agreed, adding that basic preparedness (a generator, a radio, half a tank of gas, a Starlink) matters as much as an emergency fund.

Questions

What institutional changes should Asheville make for the next 5 to 10 years? An attendee who had lived through a wildfire destroying their previous Southern Oregon town asked what should change. Figura wants real flood control, citing a monsoonal Asia model where areas like the JBL soccer fields are intentionally flooded to protect Biltmore Village and the River Arts District downstream. Aplin wants a real city preparedness plan, since Helene left no list of where trucks could unload donated goods or which facilities had spare refrigeration.
Are ordinances around RVs and tiny homes changing to reflect how people are actually housed? Figura had not seen quick changes. He requested that grandfathered short-term rentals be temporarily allowed to convert to long-term rentals without losing that status, but the request stalled with city staff and politicians.
Could Asheville turn its recovery into a model other places could learn from? Larsen said his team had discussed replicating their fuel network elsewhere, but cautioned that aid was lagging need, with heating fuel and housing needs expected to run four more months.
What could attract other industries so Asheville relies less on tourism? Figura noted Asheville has always been a tourist economy and argued the fix is a more sustainable, equitable tourism economy. Aplin said tourism, hospitality, and retail combined make up roughly 30% to 33% of the economy, with the rest in healthcare, manufacturing, and other sectors.
Will homes in flood zones or on steep, landslide-prone slopes lose value? Figura said it depends on insurance: floodplain maps are outdated and could take about four years to update, and if insurance properly prices the risk, buyers looking for affordable floodplain homes will think twice. Larsen pointed to French Broad River Academy, a school built to flood: the site took on water, but the building itself was undamaged.

AVLmeetup's next meetup was 2024 Year in Review, picking up on how the storm would shape 2025.