While doing a search for a customer today, I happened to check through the listings at Colleton River Plantation, an upscale golf community in Bluffton, SC, that suffered a crash in home and land prices during the recession. Overzealous purchasing of lots that sold for as much as $400,000 just before the recession left some residents looking to dump those extra lots at ridiculous prices from 2009. The definition of “ridiculous” was $1.
The reason for the crazy pricing is that golf membership is mandatory at Colleton River, as it is at its fine neighboring golf communities of Berkeley Hall and Belfair Plantation. Even if you own a home in these communities and purchase a lot, you must commit to a second golf membership with an annual dues obligation approaching $20,000 (including the homeowner association dues and other assessments). The 45 holes of Pete Dye and Jack Nicklaus golf are about as good as you will find inside the gates of any golf community, but there are no mulligans for that extra obligation. Once you commit, it is like the Roach Motel: You can check in (for membership) but you can’t check out until someone buys your lot.
Colleton River Plantation in Bluffton, SC, features 45 holes by Pete Dye and Jack Nicklaus and almost a dozen home sites priced at just $1.
My customer is looking for a home priced up to $500,000, and I figured that, post recession, there still might be a selection of homes in that range. Boy, was I wrong; there are no homes currently for sale below $539,000 in Colleton River. That caused me to assume that the Colleton market has risen dramatically overall, and that those $1 lots were long gone. But when I scanned the list of current lots for sale, there were 11 priced at $1, and some of them were beautifully sited. Here’s a description of one that is over a half-acre in size: “Long panoramic golf views of the 2nd fairway of the fabulous Dye Course...Seller will pay the Colleton River Initiation Fee and balance of 2016 Dues.” In other words, the seller is giving you something like $20,000 (in value) to take his nice piece of property off his hands.
About $200 per square foot in construction costs should get you a nicely outfitted brand new home, or a total of $500,000 for a 2,500 square foot house. Sorry: Make that $500,001.
At first blush, August real estate sales in the Wilmington, NC, area, seem like an anomaly, but the numbers imply this may be a good time to buy a home inside or outside a golf community in the area.
Year over year sales for the month of August leaped by 30% in New Hanover, Pender and northern Brunswick Counties, which surround Wilmington. But –- and it is a big but -– median prices decreased more than 5% according to the area’s MLS (multiple listing service). Average sales price of a home in the region reached $260,000 in August, although the median price dropped to $206,000. The conclusion one can draw from those two numbers is that a disproportionate number of expensive homes sold during the month.
The increase in homes sold, from 683 to 889, implies that inventory could begin to dry up in Wilmington, assuming most of those who purchased homes intend to live in them for at least a few years or use them as vacation homes (as opposed to buying them as investments). Those who planned to sell their homes beginning in 2008 but held off when the recession sent
Down the coast in Myrtle Beach, which holds strong appeal to vacationing families and golfers, single-family homes and prices dropped in the July to August period by 6.5% and 4.5%, respectively. But the prices of condos increased by 1.5% to an average $120,000 and the number of condo units sold increased by 8.35%. In Pawleys Island’s Pawleys Plantation, for example, with a fine Jack Nicklaus golf course at its core and the beach just a five-minute drive away, the lowest priced condos have risen from around $125,000 to $200,000 in just the last year.
Those who have been contemplating a vacation home in the Myrtle Beach area have enough evidence that prices are rising after years of price erosion in the area’s condo market. On the other hand, folks who are interested in a single-family home in the area will find some bargains in advance of the winter, when those who visit the Grand Strand from Canada, New England and other frigid places generally warm to the idea of a retirement home in the coastal South.
Please contact us if you are interested in more information about Southern real estate.
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