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John Murphy
South Carolina has so much going for it. It’s a high growth area as more and more people decide to leave cold weather climates and head south. The economy has lots of business activity particularly in the area of manufacturing and health care…and of course there are always the lovely and highly popular South Carolina Beaches.
So you’re thinking of making a move south and you’re wondering what the tax ramifications might be of living in the state of South Carolina? Well, here is a terrific resource about South Carolina taxes from Smart Asset that goes through much of what you’ll probably be looking for as you make your decision to move to South Carolina. I don’t think this has the information about how South Carolina will tax you when you bring vehicles in to the state from another state. That’s always a BIG surprise for folks and I’ll either add that to this post tomorrow or do a separate one on that issue. That tax will leave a mark 🙂
A few weeks ago I was driving along Laurens Road in Greenville heading towards Verdae. On the northeast corner at Laurens and Verdae I noticed that the land had been cleared and it was a fairly large parcel. I’d never really noticed it before because it was so hidden by trees and brush along Laurens. Turns out this is going to be the new and very impressive headquarters for Southern First Bank.
The Upstate Business Journal does a great job of talking through how Southern First Bank decided they needed a new HQ and what their plans are for the building. This will be a stunning addition to the area and seems to be a great example of some of the beautiful new buildings going up in Greenville.
Downtown Simpsonville is continuing to see redevelopment. The Greenville Journal does a great job highlighting key points from Simpsonville City Manager, Dianna Gracely. Those items noted include:
- Conversion of Simpsonville Elementary to the new Simpsonville Arts Center
- Burdette Central redevelopment
- Heritage Park
- Swamp Rabbit Trail extension
Here’s the link to the Simpsonville Comprehensive Plan. Here’s an additional helpful resource. It’s a link to the Simpsonville Planning Department. It has notices of meetings as well as various zoning, planning and land use maps.
Clearly one of the big winners to come out of the coronavirus crisis is the U.S. housing market. Demand remains incredibly strong and the mortgage market is proof of that. Loan originations just hit a 20 year high of $1.1 Trillion for the quarter for both purchase money mortgages and refinances.
It seems that many are getting repositioned either with putting cheaper financing on their existing home due to record low mortgage rates, or they are buying a different home possibly in a different area as a result of Covid.
It seems we say this every year of late, but there’s never been a better time to sell your home than right now from what I recall having been in the business for 17 years.
The City of Greenville has a new Economic Director – Merle Johnson. Mr. Johnson comes to Greenville most recently from being the Economic Director for Charleston County, SC. He is replacing Nancy Whitworth who has been doing the work for the past 40 years. The Upstate Business Journal has an excellent story on our new Economic Director. Welcome Mr. Johnson!
The South Carolina Department of Education has come out with busing protocols for the 2020-2021 school year. They have an entire web site called Dedication to Education to provide guidance as to how schools should operate this year during Covid-19. This comes from the work led by State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman who convened school administration leaders and teachers from all over the state to participate in the AccelerateED task force.
From Dedication to Education:
“The first thing you should know is that all our focus, and every single one of our priorities, are directed toward protecting the health, safety and wellness of students and staff while giving students the best possible learning experience that is as close to normal as health and safety allow.”
There still appears to be a lot up in the air yet for this coming school year. We are waiting to hear from Greenville County Schools supposedly by July 21st as to what their plan will be for opening.
Governor McMaster yesterday suggested that schools should delay the opening until September 8th due to the spike in Covid cases right now in South Carolina.
At some point maybe people will start looking at the data that is staring us all right in the face. South Carolina has seen an increase in Covid-19 positive cases by 400-700% over the past 6 weeks. We had been tracking about 250-300 cases per day to now 1500-2200 per day. And yet today, we heard from SC DHEC that they had NO CONFIRMED DEATHS due to Covid-19. WOW!
We’ve seen no uptick in deaths in the past 6 weeks. We have seen an increase of hospital usage in the past 6 weeks but nothing at this point to worry about.
Today there have been discussions about opening or not opening schools in person. We’ve also seen the SCHSL decide to delay the start of the fall sports season for now with the potential to cancel it altogether.
My guess is if we just stopped wearing masks and moved on to other topics, people would soon enough forget about the virus.
The Greenville area was not immune to Covid this spring as it took hold in March. Home sales declined significantly in April and May but have come back strong in June 2020. The Greenville area just hit a new median home price high of $235,000 for the month of June.
The market continues to remain healthy at this point. Homes under $300,000 still typically sell very fast. The overall Days on Market for June was just 54 days…that’s the time it takes to have the property go under contract and go pending where the inspection contingency has been removed. Homes priced over $300,000 were seeing it take 73 days in June.
Closed sales jumped 13.7% compared to last June to a new high of 1591. Some of that in all likelihood was recaptured from sales that did not happen in April or May.
There’s plenty of new construction inventory coming on line in the Greenville and surrounding area. We’d still like to see more existing housing come up for sale but that is still an uphill battle with homeowners. I am seeing signs that maybe we are at the inventory trough and we’ll start to see better inventory levels in the coming months and years. The problem is, I’ve expected to see this now for two years in-a-row and have been proven wrong each year 🙁
Months supply of housing for sale is another metric to gauge a marketplace. We are just starting to see an uptick here.
