2017 Market Review and 2018 Predictions

We just wrapped up our first month of 2018, but I wanted to take a little time to talk about what happened in the 2017 market, as well as to talk about where we’re headed in 2018.

2017 was a fantastic year for Charleston real estate. The Charleston Chamber of Commerce just released a report that showed that every single area of Charleston experience price increases of at least 10% from the 2006 boom. Folly Beach is the only exception.

Inventory was also incredibly low. Throughout 2017, we had more buyers on the market than we had houses in supply.

45 people move to Charleston per day, which is a nice, steady growth of 2.2% per year. The issue is that policymakers have put a stop on the amount of housing starts we can build. Although we need 7,500 new homes each year to keep up with the 2.2% population growth, we’re actually only averaging about 5,600 new housing builds. That’s a shortage of 33% of the homes that we need. It’s our hope that policymakers start to allow us to build more homes this coming year.

Last year, we saw that sellers held the advantage in the market. However, we also saw that sellers weren’t able to ask for unrealistic prices on their properties. Even though prices have gone up, prices can’t outpace our wages. If people can’t afford the high prices a seller is trying to ask for, then the seller simply won’t be successful.

Home prices increased overall by 4.7% in 2017, with our prediction for that year being a 4% to 4.5% increase. We were really close.

All in all, we expect similar things for 2018.

If you have any further questions about Charleston real estate, feel free to reach out to us. We look forward to hearing from you.