Hurricane Helene was not a modest disruption. It was a disaster of historic scale. The North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management estimated total damage and recovery needs at $59.6 billion as of Dec. 2024, including damage to more than 73,000 homes, more than 100 confirmed deaths in North Carolina and a federal disaster declaration covering 39 counties.
As a broker in Western North Carolina (WNC), I am often asked why the commercial real estate market has remained as strong as it has. The answer is not that the market avoided pain. It did not. The answer is that a tightly supplied market behaves very differently from a soft market after a disaster.
In WNC, Hurricane Helene did not expose oversupply. It exposed scarcity.
Before Helene, the Asheville-area commercial market already had very little slack. In NAI Beverly-Hanks’ second-quarter 2024 Asheville MSA commercial market report, CoStar Group-derived vacancy stood at 5.3 percent for industrial, 2.8 percent for office and 1.6 percent for retail. Earlier 2024 reporting from the same source showed similarly constrained conditions, reinforcing the same point: this was already a tight market before the storm arrived.
A familiar recovery pattern
That pre-storm scarcity shaped the recovery pattern. If a business lost usable space, there was often no realistic option to wait for ideal conditions. Operators had to find replacement space, adapt to second-generation inventory or relocate into whatever functional buildings were available. The result was not a market defined by widespread dark space. It was a market defined by urgency.
The quarter-by-quarter vacancy data is telling because of what it does not show. In second-quarter 2025, vacancy measured 3 percent for industrial, 2.8 percent for office and 1.9 percent for retail. In third-quarter 2025, those figures were 3 percent, 2 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively.
By year-end 2025, vacancy was 3.1 percent for industrial, 2.3 percent for office and 1.6 percent for retail. In first-quarter 2026, vacancy was 4.6 percent, 2.5 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively.
That is movement, but it is not distress. It is a market repricing and re-sorting itself while remaining tight by national standards. Retail and office remained especially constrained. Industrial moved more, but even the first-quarter 2026 industrial vacancy rate remained below the 5.3 percent level reported before the storm in second-quarter 2024.
The business community still took a beating, and it is important not to romanticize recovery. A spring 2025 regional survey coordinated by the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce and partners gathered 1,155 responses and found that 90 percent of respondents projected revenue loss, 62 percent reported some level of physical damage and 60 percent cited decreased customer demand as a leading barrier to revenue recovery. The storm’s pain was real, especially in hospitality-linked districts, low-lying corridors and areas directly dependent on visitor activity.
Reopening happened faster than many outside perceptions suggested. Mountain BizWorks, a locally based Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), reported in July 2025 that 93 percent of surveyed small businesses had reopened, although 86 percent were still earning at or below pre-Helene levels. The nonprofit’s survey of more than 700 small business owners across 23 WNC counties also identified commercial real estate availability, move-in-ready space, flexible capital, infrastructure and revenue recovery as continuing challenges.
That finding matches what many brokers experienced on the ground: the post-storm commercial market was defined less by empty buildings than by a scramble for functional buildings.
Visitors activate WNC
Confidence returned first through visitors, then through capital. Buncombe County still recorded $2.65 billion in direct visitor spending in 2024, despite Helene’s late-September disruption. Calendar-year 2025 hotel performance in Asheville finished at 68 percent occupancy, $162 ADR (average daily rate) and $109 RevPAR (revenue per available room). By February 2026, destination performance reporting showed fiscal-year-to-date hotel occupancy of 63.8 percent, ADR of $172 and RevPAR of $110, with RevPAR up 0.7 percent year-over-year.
At the regional gateway level, Asheville Regional Airport served 2.2 million passengers in 2025, its second-busiest year on record. Downtown visitation also showed measurable recovery. By October 2025, out-of-market visitation to downtown Asheville totaled 595,000, nearly matching October 2023’s 598,400. By February 2026, downtown recorded 421,500 out-of-market visitors, up 5.8 percent year-over-year.
For commercial real estate, those figures matter. Visitor activity supports retail leasing confidence, restaurant sales and small shop survivability. It also helps explain the shift in local market commentary from immediate recovery to stabilization: from “Picking Up the Pieces” in early 2025 to “Open for Business” by third-quarter 2025 to “A New Rhythm” in first-quarter 2026.
New funding
Public and quasi-public recovery funding has also helped bridge the gap. North Carolina received approximately $1.4 billion in CDBG-DR (HUD’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery) federal funds for Hurricane Helene recovery, while the City of Asheville received a separate $225 million allocation. Asheville’s approved plan allocated major funding toward infrastructure, economic revitalization and housing.
At the state level, the SmBIZ program was created with a $55 million appropriation to support infrastructure that small businesses rely on, and by March 2026 the program had awarded nearly $30 million for recovery-related infrastructure projects. Buncombe County separately appropriated $1.5 million for Helene relief to be administered through Mountain BizWorks.
Mountain BizWorks’ WNC Strong: Helene Business Recovery Fund ultimately deployed approximately $59.6 million to 852 businesses across 29 counties, helping retain 7,069 jobs. Capital like that does not create demand on its own. What it does is give owner-users, tenants, and investors enough breathing room to make rational decisions rather than panic decisions.
Back to business
Some of the strongest local examples are stories of adaptation and renewed confidence. I had the privilege of representing the owner of a downtown Asheville portfolio encompassing nearly an entire city block, long known as the home of Moog Music. When the long-term tenant vacated shortly after Hurricane Helene, the assignment quickly became more than a traditional leasing effort. We worked diligently to re-tenant each building and space with a focus on helping displaced local businesses find a path forward.
Resurrection Studios Collective leased 27,000 square feet to create gallery and studio space for local artists after the River Arts District was devastated. DayTrip, a local riverside bar that was destroyed by the storm, found a new home on the block as well. Atomic Furnishings, a well-known local home furnishings and décor retailer that lost its location and inventory, also relocated there.
Numerous other businesses followed, and within a matter of months, the block was brought back to full occupancy. Just as important, after re-tenanting the portfolio, we were able to secure a buyer and complete a significant downtown Asheville sale, underscoring that investor confidence was returning alongside the leasing recovery.
For investors and owner-users evaluating WNC today, the market case is stronger than the headlines alone may suggest. Supply remains constrained, visitor confidence has materially improved, recovery capital is in motion and local leasing and transaction patterns point toward normalization rather than retreat.
The opportunity is real, but it rewards discipline. WNC’s long-term trajectory remains positive, but the best decisions will come from understanding both sides of the story: regional resilience and corridor-specific risk.
The storm changed the market, but it did not break it. In many ways, it clarified what has long made this region compelling: limited supply, strong local identity, durable demand and a business community that continues to adapt under pressure.
— By Jim Davis, Commercial Broker, NAI Beverly-Hanks. This article was originally published in the June 2026 issue of Southeast Real Estate Business.