November 2011

If you are a Realtor, you get asked a lot about what price-range homes are moving. Whether you are in the lock room at the gym, or at a local eatery, everybody wants the skinny on the Beaufort real estate market.

Let me answer this question two ways. From a personal standpoint, it has been foreclosure and short sale city.

I just closed on a house in Shell Point a few days ago, for $116,000. It was a foreclosure. I am working with four other buyers who currently have homes under contract. Three are under $140,000, and one is a new home for $230,000. Aside from the new home, in the terrific new neighborhood of Somerset Point on Lady's Island, all of my pending contracts and recent sales are either short sales or foreclosures.

Foreclosures and short sales…

A few years ago, if you put the words "deep-water homesite" in the same sentence with "Lady's Island,"  you were generally talking about a property which would cost a minimum of $600,000, maybe more.

Not so, anymore.

Like every other segment of Beaufort's real estate market, the Lady's Island deep-water market has responded to the sluggish sales of recent years, and prices have been reduced. It's now possible to purchase a homesite with spectacular views of downtown Beaufort, with deep-water access, for under $200,000. Please note that this particular property comes with an asterisk, since this $175,000 property, overlooking Factory Creek and the Beaufort River, can possibly be purchased with a slip at the adjacent marina. Without the slip, which the owner…

It's fitting that we take a moment to look back on this past month on Halloween, because it has been a creepy month for Realtors, with a mere 52 homes going under contract so far in October.

Before we go any further, this is not a gloom and doom post. All things considered, there are some encouraging signs to be found in Beaufort's real estate market.

There are several communities that have had real success in the area which ha e had great success selling new homes at the new price point. Liberty Point in Shell Point, which recently broke ground on its new homes, has placed five homes under contract in the past few months, in the $80 to $115 per square foot price point.

Somerset Point on Lady's Island has seen 17 homes go under contract this year, in the $98…