Charleston, SC is getting abundant positive publicity, both domestically and internationally. Top Chef just finished airing the season that was filmed here. The Tennis Channel is making a huge deal out of their first ever full week coverage of the WTA Volvo Car Open tournament here next week on Daniel Island, they are calling it the premier clay tournament in America (Volvo is the main sponsor and they are also busy building their new manufacturing plant built in Ridgeville, in the outskirts of the Charleston, SC Metro Area.
Charleston, SC residential real estate had its 2nd busiest year ever in 2016 and it looks like 2017 is setting up to be even better. Buying activity has been the strongest ever during the first 3 months of the year. Though February, we are up 12.4% in transactions over the same time from 2016. And we are up about 4% in median sales price to $244k.
Housing inventory is low and prices are starting to ratchet upward. We are seeing a boom in the 2nd home market here as well. In March alone, 87 homes priced over $1M went under contract.
However, real estate in our area is "hyper-local". This means that although the trend is uniform and positive, there can be substantial variations within each sub-market. A visual example can be seen in the following chart, which shows the "Months of Inventory" curves for Daniel Island vs. Mount Pleasant. As the graph shows, the Mount Pleasant market has been more stable, hovering around 4 months of inventory for the last 2 years, while Daniel Island has fluctuated more - it was stronger than Mount Pleasant in 2015-16 and now is "weaker" as a whole. This behavior may have to do with price points.
Apartments buildings are being built all over town to house all the new people moving here. There is a concern that institutional investors all jumped on the apartment market bandwagon in Charleston, SC and this may create an oversupply of multifamily units in the near future.
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