GREENWOOD, S.C. Home sales are starting to pick up in some parts of South Carolina hardest hit by the real estate crunch, such as the once-overheated coast, and prices are steadily rising in other housing markets that never spiked in the first place.
“We’ve seen a steady market for the most part, if you take out the highs and lows of the coastal market,” said Nick Kremydas, executive director of the South Carolina Realtors Association.
Cities like Aiken and Columbia saw 2010 prices return to 2006 levels and in the Pee Dee and Sumter areas, last year’s median sales prices went up 5 percent in the same period.
The small city of Greenwood, about 75 miles west of Columbia, is an ideal example of a steady housing market in South Carolina: There was no run-up in prices during the real estate boom, so there was no bubble to burst when sales dried up. Total sales in the last three years dropped by half, but the median price increased 9 percent in 2010 from 2006.
“We never had that high rise in prices,” said Greenwood Mayor Welborn Adams, a real estate attorney who has felt the decline in total sales. “There were no speculators, no one thinking ‘I can turn this around and resell it for a profit.’”
That’s what drove the unsustainable growth along the coast, Kremydas said.
“Those in the area that saw the dramatic run-up and with the flipping and all the other stuff that was going on down there artificially driving the cost of these homes up so high, I think when the market turned, they’re the ones that got hit the hardest,” Kremydas said.
One of Greenwood’s top Realtors said while the area’s median prices may have increased, individual property owners – especially those in expensive homes along Lake Greenwood – have seen some declines in value.
“The story may be that prices have held up during a terrible recession – except for lake sales,” said Chuck Fox, a retired Air Force general who has owned the Re/Max Realty franchise in Greenwood for 20 years.
Mark Warner, chief executive of the Greenwood Partnership Alliance, said he thinks high-end homes are the ones selling right now. That pushes the median sales price up, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is seeing rising home values.
“A lot of our home sales in the last five or six years have been related to our lake properties and our gated communities and more retiree populations,” said Warner, who sold real estate in Greenwood for a couple of years before he got into economic development.
Greenwood would have appealed to retirees who could not afford the ever-increasing prices along the coast. Median home prices in Hilton Head peaked at $370,000 in 2007, when the Great Recession officially began. Last year, that median was down to $235,000 – a decline of more than 35 percent.
Kremydas says he thinks the coast has adjusted to its new market reality and people are buying again. Almost 2,500 homes were sold last year in Hilton Head, up from 2,100 the year before and up from less than 2,000 in 2008.
There are other signs of optimism about the housing market. In Greenwood’s downtown, a well-known carpet installer and his son-in-law have opened a new flooring business.
Jimmy Reagan, 72, said he decided to go into business for himself when he was laid off in May from his job at a local building supply company. His son-in-law Jimmy Logan, 46, had some savings from his days as an investment banker.
“Our premise was, let’s go ahead and start now at the bottom of the recession so that when it does come back in one year, two years, three years, four years, we’re there, we’re established,” Logan said. “He knows flooring and, hopefully, I know a little bit of the business aspect.”
The men say they know it will be slow-going, but are heartened by the amount of business they’ve seen even without much new construction.
“This is definitely a long-term investment,” Logan said. “It may be two, three, four years before the economy comes back. I don’t think we’ll ever see the housing bubble back to where it was pre-fall of 2008. I don’t think we’ll see it, not in our lifetime.”
Greenwood’s Mayor Adams, who had to lay off an employee in his law office because of slow sales, says he has been telling his staff to hold on, things are going to get better.
“Last year, I told them to hold on until spring,” Adams said. “This year, I’m telling them, ‘Just hold on until spring.’ … You kind of wonder, is this the way it’s going to be?”
