read more posts by
John Murphy
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.
We still don’t know if our schools will be playing high school sports this fall. The South Carolina State High School League will hold a public meeting via Zoom tomorrow, July 15th at 8am eastern. It will be broadcast live from the SCHSL Facebook Page.
Fox Hill Business Park / Fox Carolina
The first major Class A business park development in 20 years was announced last month. The massive 172 acre development was announced by the Greenville Area Development Corporation. The development will be named Fox Hill Business Park. GADC chose New Jersey Developer, Sudler Companies to develop the property.
It’s a very impressive and ambitious plan with nearly 2.5 million square feet of development designed to meet the needs for manufacturing, distribution or warehouse. It demonstrates that there is strong belief that the growth we have seen in the Upstate of South Carolina will continue. Greenville Business Magazine’s story on the Fox Hill Business Park has a lot of excellent additional details about the development project.
Fountain Inn is within easy access to the Inland Port and GSP Airport as well as interstate 385 and 85. There is also lots of expected housing growth in the Fountain Inn area. Greenville County Schools is also building a brand new Fountain Inn High School. It’s set to open for the fall 2021 – if we ever go back to school again 🙂
NAI Earle Furman will be working with Sudler Companies to market the property.
South Carolina State Parks just issued a mask mandate requiring visitors over the age of two to wear masks while visiting the parks.
According to the South Carolina State Parks Facebook Page:
“Effective immediately, visitors over the age of two years old are required to wear a mask in any state park facility staffed by employees or where the general public may congregate. This includes park offices, visitor centers, stores, nature centers, restrooms or while touring any indoor facility being considered for rent. In the event that visitors do not have a mask, they will be asked to remain outside of the facility and park employees will assist them and accommodate their needs, if possible.
Any park rental facility to include cabins, campsites, picnic shelters, group facilities, etc, are considered as having restricted use and will be the responsibility of the party renting that facility. It is recommended that they follow all CDC and SCDHEC guidelines regarding social distancing and mask wearing, but park staff will not be responsible for reinforcing those guidelines.
We thank you for your cooperation and understanding as we work to stop the spread and protect our visitors and employees.”
This sounds serious folks. The Greenville County Schools Board of Trustees are holding a meeting tomorrow morning at 9am to discuss the upcoming school year.
Given the incredible rise in positive coronavirus cases in the past 6-7 weeks here in South Carolina, I’ve been of the opinion that they will not be going back to school this year and that everything will be virtual. Just today, South Carolina DHEC announced that we had 1,532 new Covid-19 cases and 13 new deaths…205 are on ventilators. We’ll see what the Trustees have to say after tomorrow’s meeting.
Note, I’d like to see the students go back to face to face education. We’ve seen the sharp spike in Covid cases but not a corresponding rise in deaths fortunately. Perhaps we’ve nearly achieved herd immunity? Maybe the virus is weaking? I don’t know but just following the data, I personally don’t have big concerns at this time.