Selling Greenville

We have the numbers for what happened in the month of July for real estate in the Upstate of SC, and the market is still showing resilience and the stabilization we've seen all year. BUT mortgage rates are at their highest levels in 20 years, and there is no doubt that will have an impact on the market going forward. What does it mean, and what should we expect? Sometimes looking back is the best...

"Doomers" - what I call those who have believed every year for the past 10+ years that real estate prices are going to crash - have been almost 100% wrong in their recent (and non-recent) real estate predictions. But they do have one thing right: at some point in the future it's highly likely that real estate prices will crash again. The problem is that too many people are basing their crash predi...

I frequently get the question: what does it cost to build a custom home in the Greenville area? And while I have an idea in my mind of what that would generally cost, it occurred to me that I've never really looked at what the data says. So today we dive into the Greenville Multiple Listing Service data to see exactly what the costs are to build a home in the Greenville area and how that compares...

I've heard some people say that real estate seems like a boring career, but that's not been my experience! Between battling dogs, buzzards, roaches, termites, etc. there's always something new and exciting around the corner - sometimes literally around the corner! So let's have some fun and talk about five of my craziest real estate encounters from the past couple years.  As always, if you have an...

As a tribute to my dad who passed away on July 3, 2023, I'd like to share ten lessons I learned from him that directly impact me as a real estate professional: 1. Work as hard as you can as long as you can. 2. Talk to people. 3. Treat your network like they are your net worth. 4. Run, don’t walk!  5. Contentment isn’t always easy, but it is always available.  6. “A penny saved is a penny earned.”...

In May we saw Greenville SC's median home sale price have it's first year-on-year decline in a long time, but that reversed in June when prices hit an all-time high. Long story short, that data as well as all the other data provided by the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors paints the picture of a resilient seller's market that, despite not being as crazy as it was in 2021-22 is still much...

As the Fed tinkers with the economy, mortgage rates fluctuate. But never in history have we seen rates double in such a short period of time as we have the past year. So will they be coming back down any time soon? It's easy to give opinions, but what does the data say? It's time to look at the historical data for 30 year fixed rate mortgages to see what's happened in the past, and then perhaps we...

Greenville County narrowly averted a county-wide shutdown when the County Council passed (after initially not passing) a budget that includes the first Greenville County property tax increase in 3 decades. The tax increase was met with fierce opposition from the public, but the council insisted it was necessary for several reasons, one of which was to support affordable housing. But raising proper...

For several years we went through a stretch where real estate buyers had basically no choice but to offer at or above the price that a home was listed for, with demand at all time highs and supply at all time lows. But as the market has softened, sellers are more frequently having to accept offers below list price or with seller concessions. I frequently get asked by buyer clients, "How low can I...

We have the Greenville real estate market stats for the month of May (courtesy of the Greater Greenville Association of REALTORS), and for the first time in roughly 3 years, the median price of a home in Greenville went down year-on-year. What does that mean short- and longterm? Are prices collapsing? Are we entering a buyer's market? And what did the Fed do last week that had a major impact on mo...

The world of real estate is constantly shifting, and nobody has felt that more than real estate professionals. There's always value in looking at the past and seeing how it has evolved into today. So let's look back at the past 7.5 years to see how realtors (specifically, Stan) have had to adjust their approach and what they focus on for buyers and sellers in order to accommodate the shifting wind...

The Federal Reserve is the last ultra-powerful part of the US government that hasn't become subject to Republican or Democrat partisanship. But with how much impact the Fed has on the economy - and specifically on real estate - it seems obvious that politicians will imminently turn the Fed into a partisan institution, much like what has happened with the Supreme Court in recent decades. This could...

Mortgage rates recently eclipsed 7%, and the real estate market was not happy. A lot of activity has slowed down as potential buyers decide to wait it out to see whether rates will come down. But is it even reasonable to expect rates to come down any time soon? And if we are entering a multi-month season of 7%+ mortgage rates, how will that impact the market? These are a few things on my mind goin...

As real estate has become more politicized, people who are against developments happening near them (known as “NIMBYs”, which is short for “Not In My Backyard”) have proven to be a major political force in the Greenville area. Their concerns vary from believing Greenville is turning into Charlotte, NC, to concerns that our infrastructure can’t maintain more developments, to concerns that “we need...

Hao Wu is a real estate investor in Greenville, SC who has found a way to "crack the code" on how to utilize real estate to achieve a "Four Hour Work Week" (to borrow from Tim Ferriss's phrase and popular book). In this wide-ranging discussion, we talk about his path from China to the military to Greenville, how he got into real estate investing, and how he has oriented his life and investments in...

In June 2022, when the post-pandemic housing recession began, we discussed on Selling Greenville what it looks like to invest in a shifting market, and we did this by looking back at what the real estate market looked like at various points in time between 2008-2020 in order to reverse engineer what real estate in 2023 and beyond might look. Well, now that we’ve experienced nearly a year of a hous...

We now have over a quarter of 2023 real estate in the books, and it's time to review our bold predictions episode from January! Which predictions missed the mark, which ones have already hit, and which ones are looking good to hit (or not)? It was fun going back and looking at predictions made 4 months ago and how that compares to the current data.  As always, if you have any questions or comments...

Looking at the most recently released Greater Greenville Association of Realtors Market Stats, we see a local real estate market that is stabilizing in a way that disproportionately benefits sellers. All the news is about how real estate is slowing down, but that's simply not the case (at least not yet) in the Greenville market. With tight inventory and a seasonal uptick in demand, prices continue...

Buying new construction might sound like a pipe dream to many, but with over half of homes currently for sale being new construction, combined with the fact that builders are offering some pretty crazy incentives to buyers, going the new construction route actually makes a lot of sense for many buyers. But building a new home is vastly different than buying an existing home, and there are many pot...

Involving extended family in a real estate transaction can be a blessing... or a curse. In many cases parents, grandparents, siblings, etc. play an integral role in real estate choices that people make, but it's important to understand where it could be helpful to place boundaries in terms of involving them and factoring them into a home purchase or sale. So let's discuss 5 dos (and don'ts) of inv...

It's time to state the obvious: we are in a housing market recession. Home sales are down to their lowest levels since the Great Recession. (Yes, even lower than they were during COVID lockdowns!) And yet, if you're trying to buy in this market, it doesn't feel like a recession. Where are all the cheap houses? Where are the foreclosures? And why is it that everyone on Twitter seems so angry when t...

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence language tool, is all the rage right now, but can it be used for real estate? For those who don't know programming languages, the capabilities are pretty limited, but there are some interesting and useful datapoints that homebuyers and sellers can gather from chatting with ChatGPT. In this episode of Selling Greenville, Stan enters live questions into ChatGPT ab...

The Greater Greenville Association of Realtors released its market stats through the month of February, and there are some juicy tidbits in here. Prices flatlined YoY, inventory went up but remained low, and pending sales and closings showed surprising strength. But more importantly, there were a lot of big changes versus previous months that warrant our attention. As always, if you have any quest...

At long last, we finally have an interview! In this episode, Stan chats with Derek Horton, Senior VP and Mortgage Executive with Southern First Bank. In this wide-ranging interview, we discuss what it's like being in the mortgage world during such a crazy market, what it's like for loan officers to work with good (and bad) realtors, where mortgage rates are heading, and what all of this means for...

Investing in real estate is as popular as ever, and at some point, every investor needs a realtor to help them out. But not every realtor who claims to be "investor friendly" truly understands real estate investing. So how do we sift the wheat from the chaff when interviewing realtors? Sometimes trick questions can reveal how knowledgeable a person truly is on a subject, and real estate investing...