Three brand-new homes on Seventh Avenue Drive Southwest in Hickory, North Carolina were hit with graffiti and gunfire just days after going up for sale, according to WSOC-TV. The homes had been finished the previous month and were listed for sale about a week before the damage was discovered.
According to the Charlotte ABC affiliate’s reporting, the vandalism appears to have happened Monday night, though neither the builders nor police realized what had occurred until WSOC-TV reporter Dave Faherty posted about the damage on Facebook Wednesday. Windows were shot out and exterior walls were covered in graffiti, with the outlet estimating the total damage at tens of thousands of dollars.
Neighbors who spoke with WSOC-TV said they were stunned by the scale of the destruction on a street where houses had only just been completed. “It’s ridiculous. It really is. People have no morals. It’s crazy,” resident Julie Henry told the station. Another neighbor, Cheyenne Dellinger, called the vandalism “pathetic,” adding that “people ought to be charged for stuff like that.” A third resident, Kaye Penley, said whoever is responsible should be made to clean up the mess themselves.
No motive has been publicly confirmed. Police told WSOC-TV they planned to canvass the neighborhood and review nearby surveillance footage for leads, but as of the station’s report, no suspects had been identified and no arrests had been made. The report did not identify the builder by name, nor did it specify listing prices for the three homes, leaving open questions about whether the properties were singled out for a specific reason or simply happened to be new, unoccupied, and an easy target.
The incident adds an unsettling wrinkle to what is otherwise a fairly ordinary new-construction listing in a growing part of Catawba County. Hickory has seen a steady stream of new subdivisions and infill construction in recent years as builders try to keep up with regional demand, which makes an attack like this one land differently: it is not a dispute between neighbors or a break-in gone wrong, but seemingly targeted damage to homes that had not yet found buyers. Until investigators release more information, the people living nearby are left with the same question as everyone reading about it from a distance — why these three houses, and why now.
For the builder, the timing compounds the financial hit. New-construction homes typically carry the highest asking prices on a street precisely because nothing has been used or worn down yet, which means damage like shattered windows and graffiti-covered siding has to be fully repaired, not just patched, before the properties can go back on the market at their original price point. Every day the homes sit vacant and damaged is also a day they’re not generating a closing, in a housing market where builders are already contending with slower buyer demand nationally.
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