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Charleston's housing market


ChasDeign

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^There is a high demand for people wanting to live in teh Chas. area. Many northeasterners who are plagued by the high costs of owning a home (esp. property taxes) sell their house and then buy something which they think is a bargain. Thus, this is pricing out natives which is a sad thing.

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It seems that prices are hitting a wall now, at least in my neighborhood. About 4 months ago, it seemed like half the houses in my area went on sale, at jaw-dropping prices. Not a single house has sold. We're talking twenty or so houses sitting on the market way past the one month mark, which is considered a sign that buyers are not very interested. If the homes stay unsold through the summer, I'll have to take it that the boom in prices is over, at least where I live.

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Many of the new developments have no problem at all selling houses and expensive condos. I know of 9 different developments that are sold out at their current phase and some that are completely sold out and not even fully constructed yet.

What makes these homes "overvalued" is their cost related to average income I would imagine, I couldn't find how they came to their conclusions. One would think if Charleston were to lure more high paying jobs this would offset this, while it may by a little bit the numbers will still be skewed. These new jobs will just lure more people to the area to take those positions, the influx of people with money to the costal areas will still happen so there is no easy fix to this problem.

This is not something unique to Charleston all of our costal peers are seeing this same trend.

Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC $220,000 27.5%

Wilmington, NC $178,000 36.7%

Myrtle Beach, SC $148,500 25.4%

Charleston, SC $168,200 31.2%

Savannah, GA $144,300 22.2%

Jacksonville, FL $179,000 31.4%

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I think that one problem is that the most affordable places in Charleston are actually the furthest away from the city- Summerville, Berkeley County, etc. If you want to live in Charleston proper or Mt Pleasant you have to pay lots of money. I understand that even West Ashley is seeing its prices go up. Thats why you're seeing more condominium projects and more dense developments in that part of town... owners have to build up to afford it.

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  • 1 year later...

The problem I have withthat article is that it only talks about solutions form the homebuilder's perspective. What about the fact that Charleston is not attracting enough high-paying, white collar jobs that can afford that type of house? This slump in the market has been talked about for along time in Charleston. Now its here. Do something.

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There are two unrelated situations here.

1. Charleston is desirable and, in terms of home prices in other parts of the US such as the Northeast, home prices are not high.

2. There are not many high-paying jobs in Charleston.

High paying jobs need not be in desirable areas (ex New Jersey). Desirable places need not have a lot of high paying jobs (ex The Caribbean).

A solution to #2 is needed. We need to draw more industry to CHS. With the low salary levels and the aforementioned desirablility, it should be easy to attract good employees at low cost and companies want that.

However, #1 isn't going away and it's the major factor in the divergence between local income and local housing costs.

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You are right in that a solution to #2 will help #1. But the two are relative in that there is a significant disconnect as to what people can afford versus what they will buy. Right now it might be supplemented by the yankee retiree population. Eventually that will impact the housing market, if nothing is done to correct it.

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"Right now it might be supplemented by the yankee retiree population."

The yankee retirees and/or lifestyle seekers are the CAUSE of the high housing costs. Their outside money is what sustains and inflates the market. Without that (#1 in my example above) we would be stuck with #2, which would lead to a much lower housing market.

#1 isn't going away. Charleston has long been "discovered". It all started after Hugo in 89, by my recollection (ok so I was 16 then...). That is a constant.

The only solution, if we want natives to remain living in nice areas, is #2. Or, to leave and work at the income level needed to live in our parents' neighborhood, which is what I had to do.

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You can tout all the high-paying jobs you want, but the fact of the matter is teachers, police, firefighters, cooks, waiters, and the people at the verizon store all need places to live too. To imply that we simply need to bring more high paying jobs in would exacerbate the problem faced by the people in theses and similar professions. Unfortunately, I think the market has to correct itself (read crash) before any serious re-alignment of income vs housing cost will be realized.

I attended the growth forum on workforce housing 2 weeks ago and the outlook is bleak. All of the solutions posed by the panel of experts involved gov't intervention and subsidies, whcih I don't think is a viable long-term alternative. One of the things that came out of the briefing was that there is not a single zip code in the Charleston metro where the median income in that zip code can afford the median home in that zip code. And there are only 3 zip codes (Isle of Palms, Mount Pleasant, and Sullivans Island) where the median income can afford the median home for the region.

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