Lower Beaufort Home Prices Offer Retirement, Investment Opportunities

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 continue to impact the Beaufort market, as well, as declining prices bear out.

So far this year, there have been 820 home sales via the Beaufort Multiple Listing Service, at an average sales price of $160,000. During the same time period in 2010, 876 homes sold for a median sales price of $174,000, according to Beaufort MLS stats.

Market-wide, the average pending contract is $179,999. These median pending contract numbers are based on the asking price, so the median sales price for these 173 homes will be lower, although we won't know any prices until after closing.

These declining prices, of course, mean opportunity. Buyers from Maine to Florida -- literally -- are buying homes in Beaufort right now for current use, and also for future retirement and relocation purposes.

If you are interested in a retirement, second, vacation, primary or investment home in Beaufort, SC or the surrounding Lowcountry, please don't hesitate to let us know.