Despite COVID, SC house sales boomed in 2020. Here’s why
Four years ago, when Chase Kiebler and his wife Laura bought their two bedroom home in Columbia’s Earlewood neighborhood, it checked all their boxes. It was close to the excitement of downtown and had just enough space for the two of them.
But after the coronavirus pandemic hit, their once beloved home started to lose its luster.
“We were both working from home and having to share a workspace on the kitchen table,” Kiebler said. The couple had also stopped going out as much, so the downtown location was no longer a priority for them.
In July they closed on a four bedroom in Lexington with plenty of space for two home offices and a nursery for the baby they are expecting in May.
Families like the Kieblers, who decided to move because of the pandemic, may be the driving force behind an unprecedented spike in home sales across South Carolina.
Closed sales were up by 20% in 2020 over 2019 with a record breaking 101,500 transactions, according to data from South Carolina Realtors.
With the pandemic shutting down workplaces, schools, and entertainment venues, “everyone has been spending more time at home.” said Morris Lyles, president of South Carolina Realtors. “A lot of people were noticing all the little flaws in their homes and decided there was no reason for them to stay.”
Historically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve to encourage economic growth during the pandemic have provided an added incentive, especially for first-time home buyers.
Savannah Ament and her boyfriend Bryce Reeves were planning to rent a place together once Reeves’ lease expired, but they struggled to find something that was both in their price range and their preferred location.
“We didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for an apartment and with the interest rates so low right now it ended up making more sense to buy,” Ament said.
The monthly mortgage for their three bedroom home in Cayce is about $200 less than rent for the apartments they were looking at.
More buyers saturating the market has caused inventory to drop by 40% compared to last year, according to South Carolina Realtors. Midlands homebuilders are scrambling to keep up with that demand.
Lexington County issued 2,338 single family building permits in 2020, a 15% increase over the previous year and the highest since 2007, before the housing bubble burst. Richland County issued 1,178 single-family permits, a minor increase compared to the 1,167 permits issued in 2019.
Kim O’Quinn, corporate vice president of marketing for Mungo Homes, said her company has exceeded sales projections for all of its developments across the state. She believes a big part of that is a recent influx of buyers coming from out of state.
“A lot of people want to move down south where it’s warmer and they can get away from the crowds of the big cities,” she said.
For years, Emily Ver Hoven dreamed of moving her family of five from Michigan to South Carolina, but the timing was never right. Then, over the summer her husband’s employer gave him the okay to work remote indefinitely.
In October they signed a purchase agreement on a home in the Palmetto Shores development in Chapin and plan to move in later this month once construction is finished.
“This move has been so great for us because when COVID hit in Michigan we were going crazy with cabin fever,” Ver Hoven said. “The rules were so much stricter. Here we are at least able to have our kids in school in person, which was really important.”
Nearly a year into the pandemic, Lyles from South Carolina Realtors said the housing boom shows no signs of slowing. Even December, which is typically one of the slowest months in the real estate industry, was busier than usual.
“It’s hard to tell how long this trend will last,” Lyles said. “But we fought early on to have real estate be considered an essential service and it seems like once we figured out how to navigate that, each month just got better and better.”
