Greetings from the Grand Strand!

My busiest April in 8 years was followed by my busiest May in 8 years. Lots of buyers, lots of sellers, and the typical profiles and motivations for each seem to be changing. I'll cover this in more detail below but first, the good news continues for real estate sales and rental incomes!

As reported in a Sun News article on May 28, year-to-date single family home sales were up 11.5% and condo sales were up 10%. Pending sales were even more impressive, up 29.7% for single-family homes and 21.8% for condos. Here's a link to the complete article, Condo Sales Surge the Surprise of Spring Home Market. 

A Sun News article published May 3 offered some impressive spring rental numbers. For condos, hotels, and campsites, from March 8 through April 18, lodging occupancy was about 61%, up 5% compared to the same period in 2014. The average daily rate was up 12%. This led to a 17% increase in revenue per available room, or RevPar, a key gauge in the lodging industry. Here's a link to the complete article, Spring Tourism Solid Along the Grand Strand.

I mentioned in the opening paragraph that I've noticed changes in the types of buyers and sellers I've been working with this year. It's not so much a change as it is an expansion to a much greater variety. This may be why the number of transactions has increased, both for me and for the area in general.

Over the past 6 or 7 years, the majority of the buyers I've dealt with have been bargain-hunting investors looking to take advantage of the depressed prices and the resulting favorable cash flows (compared to historical norms). Although investors still make up a large percentage of my buyer clients, in recent months, I've worked with:

True second home purchasers who don't plan to rent at all.

Second home purchasers who plan to rent to offset some of their carrying costs even though they don't consider these to be investment properties.

Purchasers of oceanfront condos as primary residences.

Trade-up purchasers who sell their smaller one-bedroom and efficiency condos in order to purchase bigger, nicer, two, three and four bedroom condos.

Current owners purchasing additional properties. These are typically investors who have been happy with their initial purchases and see more opportunities available in our market.

As with my buyer clients, many of my seller clients over the past 6 or 7 years have been similar to each other - generally distressed owners who had no choice but to sell because they were upside down and experiencing significant negative cash flows. These truly desperate sellers are becoming rare, as evidenced by the fact that there are very few distress sales currently available in the resort condo market. A client recently asked me to send him a list of all the oceanfront bank-owned condo listings (foreclosures) on the entire Grand Strand. My MLS search only turned up 4 active bank-owned listings- out of almost 1300 total oceanfront condo listings.

The variety of seller types and motivations has also expanded. Although I still occasionally work with sellers who are upside down and need to sell, in recent months, my seller clients have also included:

Sellers with no mortgages on their properties who have simply decided it was time to sell even though they could have continued to carry the properties indefinitely. Some of the reasons for selling included infrequent personal usage, a desire to simplify and/or consolidate a personal financial situation, and plans to use the proceeds to buy property elsewhere or for other purposes.

Trade-up sellers who wanted to purchase larger properties because of growing families, increased financial capabilities (They bought a nicer place just because they wanted it and they could afford it now!) or other reasons.

Sellers (typically investors) who wanted to shuffle their real estate portfolio by selling low return properties and replacing them with higher return properties.

You may notice that a number of these buyer and seller categories included individuals who were both buying and selling. This has also resulted in a growing number of 1031 tax-deferred exchanges. This strategy, under certain circumstances, enables an owner to sell a property with a taxable profit and defer paying the taxes on this profit. Please contact me if you would like more information.

Whatever the reason, if you want to buy or sell (or both), my team and I will be glad to help!

That's it for this month. Read on for the latest monthly reports and my Best Buys.

Come see me at the beach!