Expert Believes South Carolina Housing Market is Steady

In a typical calendar year, Rusty Findley’s construction company will build seven to eight new homes in and around the Aiken, S.C., area.

“We’re working on two custom jobs right now and a dentist’s office,” Findley said. “It’s slowed down a pretty good little bit.”

Findley, president of the Home Builders Association of Aiken County, is not alone. As housing starts nationwide dipped in July to their lowest level in 10 years, builders in this real estate market, one of the most stable in the South Carolina housing market, also has felt the pinch.

“It’s kind of ironic because this is a good building time. The weather’s good. The lumber prices are staying down very low. Sheetrock just drastically fell the other day. So, the material prices are extremely good right now. It’s just that the buyer’s market is not quite as good,” said Findley.

South Carolina mortgage rates have also remained low, while the relative affordability of home prices continues to keep the area going strong.

Since 2001, the Aiken real estate market has seen a near-steady increase in the number of new homes added to the yearly tax rolls.

“The peaks and the valleys always seem to be there,” Findley said.

“It looks like we’ve come off a peak and now we’re headed back toward more of a valley. I think the last few years around Aiken have been just about as good as it’s been … A lot of people were moving in, then it slowed down.”

According to Mark Thompson, president of the Aiken Board of Realtors, 2006 was a record year for sales in South Carolina and, by extension, Aiken.

Much of the recent growth in Aiken’s real estate market has been attributed to an in-migration of retiring professionals from other regions, including the Florida housing market and the Northeast.

“We’re very, very fortunate to live in Aiken. The rest of the country does not reflect the steady market that we have here,” Thompson said.

However, as home sales across the nation have slowed — existing home sales fell in 41 states during the April to July quarter — “people in other parts of the country aren’t able to sell their houses in as fast a time frame as they were counting on, and it’s delaying their moves,” Thompson said.

“The dollar-per-sale has gone up, but the volume has been off a little bit, and there is more inventory on the market,” he said.

Indeed, the median price of residential properties sold in the Aiken market is up nearly 3.8 percent over 2006 to $153,000. That is slightly below the statewide average of $161,000 and well below average prices in Hilton Head ($349,000), Beaufort ($239,000) and Charleston ($211,000).

Though home sales in Aiken are down 8 percent so far from last year, this year’s figures are “almost identical to 2005, which was the best year in history in real estate for the rest of the country,” Thompson said.

Continue reading in the Aiken Standard …