Gone are the days when buying a house in South Carolina was a less-expensive option.
That’s especially true if you’re looking to buy along the coast or in parts of the Upstate, according to data from the real estate firm Redfin,
Redfin’s data show that the median home at the end of July would set you back more than a half-million dollars in Beaufort, Charleston, and Saluda counties.
While you can still find median home prices under $200,000 in eight counties around the state, the median price to buy in South Carolina now is above $373,400 – up just over 4% from a year ago and up more than $100,000 compared to five years ago.
At the same time, home building in the Carolinas and Georgia is swift, as the Southeast continues to be a destination for out-of-state movers. May to July, Myrtle Beach was the country’s ninth-most-moved-to destination.
Housing demand at the end of July was back to 2020 levels, after a huge rush to move to South Carolina from early 2021 to mid-2022.
While the number of homes listed for sale at the end of July was up 17% from the previous summer (6,857 homes), the number of homes sold over the past year have dropped back to pre-Covid norms. July ended with a three-month supply of homes for sale, also the pre-pandemic level.
The rising prices coincide are part of a building boom in the Southeast. Industry website Construction Coverage finds that North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia are building the eighth-, ninth-, and tenth- most homes in the country, respectively.
Meanwhile South Carolina having the fifth highest foreclosure rate in the country. One in every 2500 homes saw a foreclosure filing in July, according to industry tracker ATTOM.
Columbia had the third-highest foreclosure rate in the US in July among metros of at least 200,000 people – one foreclosure for every 1,747 units.
