Which Cornelius houses actually justify copper
Cornelius is a steady two-decade town (24.1% of the housing built in the 1990s and 32.5% in the 2000s, with a median of 2002), which gives it an unusually even spread of gutter ages rather than the single cohort of its Union County counterparts. Failures here are spread out rather than arriving street by street. What sets Cornelius apart is not the housing age at all but where the housing is: a large share of it is on or near the Lake Norman shore, and that changes the debris problem in a way the build year does not describe.
Copper earns its place on some of that and not on the rest, and we would rather say which before quoting four to five times the aluminium rate. It belongs on genuine period property, where an aluminium K-style run across original eaves detailing is a visible compromise on a building that deserves better, and on architect-specified work where the metal is a deliberate part of the elevation. On modern subdivision housing it performs no better in any way that matters, because an under-drained copper gutter overflows exactly like an under-drained aluminium one. If the appeal is the look, painted aluminium half-round at $16 to $26 a foot gets most of the way there for roughly a third of the money.
Where copper is right, the specification decides everything. Copper is a noble metal and aluminium is not, so a copper gutter on aluminium hangers makes the hanger the actively corroding half of a galvanic cell, wet, every time it rains, for years. The gutter stays immaculate and the bracket wastes away, and in fifteen years the run comes off a house whose owner was expecting a lifetime. Copper or bronze hangers, copper or stainless fasteners, copper downspouts and straps, and soldered joints rather than sealant.
One check specific to the property rather than the town: copper runoff corrodes bare aluminium and galvanised steel below it, so anything downstream on the elevation (flashings, a porch roof, an existing downspout) gets looked at before we hang a foot of it.

What Cornelius itself changes
What drops on these roofs
Moderate on the lots themselves, and the interesting part is what arrives from elsewhere. Wind coming across open water carries leaves, pine needles and seed laterally onto lakeside roofs from trees that are not on the property and sometimes not on the street, which is why lakeside houses here fill up faster than their own planting would predict. Homeowners routinely tell us they have no trees, and their gutters are full, and both of those are true.
Getting to the gutters
Generally good, with the significant exception of the lake side. Houses built into the fall of the land towards the water are frequently a storey taller on the lake elevation than they appear from the road, and the ground below that elevation is often sloped, terraced or decked. That is the run most likely to be blocked and the hardest to reach, so it gets quoted individually rather than under a flat surcharge.