2020 Real Estate Market Update: Charleston, South Carolina

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With 2020 in full swing, now is an ideal time for a real estate market update on Charleston, South Carolina, one of America’s most beautiful cities. Founded in 1670, Charleston is both the oldest and largest city in South Carolina. As a popular tourist destination, Charleston offers scenic waterfront properties, historic buildings, delicious southern cuisine, and much more. To help you get started with your research on Charleston, SC, we gathered important market data from two leading online databases.

Zillow

Zillow is the leading online real estate database. According to Zillow, home values in Charleston have increased by 0.8% over the past year. This data set also includes a projection that home values in this city will continue to increase by 0.4% by November 2020.

Zillow Charleston, SC Profile:

Below is a quick market summary of Charleston, SC as of 2019:

Median home value: $328,806
Median price of homes currently listed in Charleston: $375,000 (Oct 31, 2019)
Median price of homes that sold: $316,100 (Oct 31, 2019)

Realtor.com

According to Realtor.com’s Top 10 Hot Housing market list, the region of Charleston-North Charleston ranked #9 on the 2020 housing forecast. This ranking demonstrates the strong strong local economy of this region, as well as available inventory at entry-level price points.

There are 69 neighborhoods total in Charleston. Some of the most popular neighborhoods include Downtown Charleston, South of Broad, and Harleston Village.
There are 2,166 homes for sale currently.
The Park at Rivers Edge is the most affordable neighborhood for a 150k-200k budget, with a median listing price of $165,000.

Are you ready for a new home in Charleston, South Carolina? With so many reasons to consider this charming city as your future hometown, Charleston is the perfect place to start your search this year.

HUD Foreclosures

HUD foreclosures and VA Foreclosures are some of the best homes to buy when price is part of the equation. As with most Americans, price is always a concern. If not buying the same house for less, why not buy more house for the same dollar invested? When looking for a good deal it is hard to do better than the VA or HUD foreclosures market. The simple truth is that there are just more VA and HUD homes on the market, as they represent such a large number of mortgages that are generated each year. This translates into more foreclosures just by the magnitude of difference between all others comparing to the two largest.

The two largest also being government owned and operated means that they have less time to wait to make money back on the home. The FHA is especially known for selling HUD homes for less than the average sales price in a given area. FHA foreclosures represent a fraction of HUD but they are still a significant number of homes and both should be considered.

VA (Veterans Administration) and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) have different and unique opportunities for the buyer. Both are often forgiven for the local taxes normally associated with the purchase of a home (this is on a county by county basis). Be sure to ask the local title company or escrow company to look into it for you before closing as this is often missed due to their are not used to dealing with the 2 to 3 percent of the market that VA and HUD foreclosures represent.

Foreclosure Listings Increasing

As the market settled after the mortgage meltdown foreclosure listings also settled and fewer homes were on the market with a placard reading “Bank Foreclosure” in big red lettering. This was a good thing for the entire real estate market. Having an abundance of foreclosures brings the entire market down and it makes it harder for home owners, who would like to move, to get the appropriate price for their home as a similar home down the same street was sold for substantially less and the appraiser is using the foreclosure as a comparable sale.

This is just one of the problems when there are too many foreclosure listings in any area. Another issue is the television set that sits in everyone’s living room harping about the price of homes based on the number of foreclosures and this constant barrage of negative information makes most people sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to either implode completely or to correct itself. Meanwhile while they wait, others are buying foreclosure listings and making great investments.

Whatever the reason, a market can only handle so many foreclosure listings at any given time. The more foreclosures, the lower the market gets and this is a lesson the banks that were foreclosing and selling off realized too late. The market and their investments would have been better off if there had not been a rush to divest themselves of the toxic assets made more toxic by their own actions.