Hello everyone and Welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in the upstate of South Carolina I am your host as always Stan McCune realtor right here in the greater Greenville area and just a reminder as always you can find all my contact information in the show notes if you need to reach out to me for any of your real estate needs or just discuss the Pod or whatever the case may be that's how you can reach me and as well just a reminder please subscribe to the show if you haven't already if you love the show please leave a five star rating please click the button for hitting and leaving a short little review I would appreciate all of that we have you know I was looking recently that this podcast is like ranked number 37 in the how two section of podcasts something to that effect it's hard to actually track that kind of stuff but but anyway we don't have the ratings or the reviews to reflect that we're getting that many lessons so I would appreciate if you're a listener that you please go ahead and leave a rating leave a review that would really go a long way for me and for the pot I'd appreciate that today we're going to be talking about what is happening in the state and local government because you may know that this is a very very big year for the political scene the local political scene here in Greenville we have a lot of Elections happening this year in fact we've already had one we had a special election primary that happened a few weeks ago in Greer and there's going to be a whole lot more coming here in in the upcoming in in the future and these elections are extremely important we had an election last last time around which I'm trying to think I think it was a couple of years ago is the one that I'm thinking of that ended up being decided by I believe it was four votes this was a County Council election four votes decided it and guess what the person that won has done done some very controversial things and for the most part I haven't heard a lot of good things about it I'm going to be very careful with with what I say here because last time around that we had elections I endorsed some people and some of those people I regret endorsing and I you know would not endorse them the second time around so I'm probably not going to do endorsements unless I have a really strong opinion and I don't have that yet for most of the people running so we're going to keep this on a higher level but I just want you guys to to start thinking in your mind these County Council these state house you know representative positions candidates that these people are running for these are very very important these directly impact you in a lot of ways more than what your state senator or your State or sorry your Federal Representatives your legislator on the federal level and whatnot these tend to be the people that directly impact you the most because they are your state and local officials and and yet in spite of that a lot of people tend to get more excited about presidential elections about Federal elections those types of things what happens in Washington DC does obviously impact you but what happens in Columbia South Carolina impacts you usually more quickly and in more direct ways than what happens in DC okay with all of that in mind here's where I want to take this podcast right now because this episode specifically because like I said I'm not going to be making indorsements or not going to be talking about specific candidates here what I want to talk about is kind of what the state and local candidates and officials that I have spoken to so far are thinking about when it comes to real estate where their heads space is when it comes to real estate concerns either directly or indirectly within within the upstate now you might be thinking how do I know this where do I where do I have this Insider information well I'm a member of the realtor realtor political action committee and rpac which is obviously the abbreviation for it is a group that's designed designed to help promote development fair housing affordable housing anything related private property ownership anything related to housing our Pac we try to support that and part of how we try to support that is when there are candidates for elections when there are elections coming up we actually interview as many candidates as we can basically any candidates that will sign up for an interview we reach out to all of them if they agree to an interview we interview them and as part of that interview process we determine whether we're going to support and endorse them and usually we take some time to make sure that they understand what issues are important to us because those that at the end of the day we represent about 4,000 members the the realtor political action committee does we have 4,000 roughly speaking realtors in the upstate and so that's a that's a big group in comparison to some of the other Consolidated groups that they're talking to in the upstate now to clarify one thing because I have gotten this question before I don't do lobbying okay and and those of us the realtors in there that are part of the of the pack we don't do lobbying that's not part of being on the realtor political action committee now does the Realtor Association do lobbying yes they have lobbyists that is not what I'm doing okay so just to be clear on that because some people might get triggered by the idea of me being a part of the realtor a part of a political action committee but but that's not what my role is that's not anything that I'm doing in this so in election years as I said we talk to candidates and support those we think will do things that will help the housing generally speaking the housing market in Greenville this is a nonpartisan committee we don't we're not you know endorsing inherently one party versus another it's just talking about housing that's the important thing now all of the PE people and I've the past week I've interviewed as part of the committee several people running for office all of them were either re running for Greenville County Council or running for state house so that's important to keep in mind as I discuss you know what issues we were talking about so what are the candidates at least the ones that I've spoken to so far talking about specifically from a real estate standpoint and what should you be thinking about when assessing who to vote for again these issues are really really important and these are the things that that these candidates are bringing up because their constituents or their potential constituents are bringing them up to them first and foremost I mean what we heard from almost everyone as like a primary concern in in many cases the number one concern was infrastructure and how to pay for it and this is one of those indirect things with regard to real estate because the how to pay for it bit is a very important detail right so here's what we keep seeing happening we need to build more houses we've talked about this before we have very low inventory the only way that we ease inventory is by building more houses it it's literally that simple infrastructure though is has to be part of that right there has to be Road widening there has to be expansion of utilities sewer water things like that and who pays for that is a and how that happens is a major part of this is that a fee that should get passed on to the developers that would be kind of a more libertarian type of approach and those of you who know me know that I lean more libertarian but from a housing perspective most Realtors would be against what we call impact fees fees that developers have to pay in order to bring in this additional infrastructure there's a logic behind it the the logic behind it is that if you have let's say an area that has 5,000 homes in it and and a developer comes in and says hey I want to build 200 homes you know in this area why are they having to shoulder all of the burden to widen the roads to to you know do all these different things repave areas to help the entire area when they're only adding to the homes by a fraction of an amount in comparison to a small fraction in comparison to what the other homes in that area consists of so that's that's a big point of debate the like it or not the realtor political action committee in the past has has encouraged increasing gas taxes in order to help with the road situation here in the the state I don't know that that's going to be very popular for improving this in in the future because of of how high you know gas prices are last time we had a gas tax increase it was when gas prices were very very low they kind of took advantage of that and you know here we are now that said South Carolina does have pretty low gas taxes in comparison to the rest of the US so that's going to be a big debate that we probably here happen after the after the midterms they're going to have to decide okay are we going to increase gases gas taxes rather in order to try to help the infrastructure specifically the road situation here in the state of South Carolina but right now probably the number one concern I heard from people running for County Council for people running for State House is the concern for infrastructure and who's going to pay pay for it that's going to be a major Battleground cuz and and you know part of this too is you have some areas some very rural areas that are just getting neglected and that's not surprising where do you think that money is going to to tend to flow to it's going to tend to flow to those more urban areas that have more people in them so you know if you have roads that are getting just more traffic on them those tend to be the priority but then then you've got these rural areas and and they are still growing as well where what happens when their roads are just completely crumbling how do you handle that and you've got developers wanting to build out there and those are areas that are are growing and and are expanding but if you've got crumbling infrastructure out there that's a big problem so you've got some people fighting for their District seeing like hey out in Pickins County we have some pretty dangerous and narrow roads with a lot of potholes around here what do we do about that and when are we going to actually see some money out there versus going you know to the the more densely populated areas of Greenville County so all of those things are are are being debated right now and our and our major talking points for those running this year for the various positions that that are open this second thing on my list here and and the rest of these aren't necessarily in any particular order that infrastructure one was was one for a reason but the next one that gets that got brought up honestly a lot we didn't for with some candidates we had to bring it up and and you know asked them if it was important to them a lot of them this is just a natural part of their platform was housing affordability now and and that's music to everyone's ears right we all want housing housing has gotten so unaffordable in the upstate we need it to be more affordable and I've I've discussed this a lot of times in my podcast now for what most of the of these candidates what most of them meant when they talked about housing affordability was basically finding developers who would incorporate affordable housing into their developments and then basically incentivizing them on a government level and maybe on a public private partnership level to do that so that's the that was the idea that we heard the most was to when there are new developments coming into town that they need to dedicate a portion of that development to quote unquote affordable housing which can mean a few different things that can mean that that part of the development has to be basically offered for cheaper for people to purchase but most frequently what that means is that as developers are building you know rental units apartments and whatnot that they have committed to setting aside a large portion of those rental units to be affordable by various metrics and so that's something that is on the front of mind for a lot of these candidates those who are incumbents those who are already in office are already in the council and are running again they generally understand that there needs to be more development in general not just affordable units the the focus on the affordable units was generally by people who aren't incumbents which Cuts both ways right the incumbents need to understand that there that there may be a need for developers to just bring in affordable housing not just to develop more and on the flip side those who are running for the first time or are are attempting to win for the first time they need to understand that affordability on the whole happens when there's more Supply and and so you don't just impact affordability by focusing on affordable housing you also have to to talk about develop to scale and driving you know maybe not driving down the price of housing but but making it to where there's more opportunities for people to buy which then as Supply increases that helps to make things more affordable just in general however obviously this can then be at odds with the infrastructure concern right if you're building if you're developing more then that takes us back to the infrastructure concern so there is really a tug OFW War here between the infrastructure concern and the housing affordability concern because then you run into if you have a developer that's that's developing affordable housing which generally speaking they're not going to make as much money doing that as they would just developing not affordable housing what what one candidate called market rate housing they're going to make more money building market rate housing than affordable housing that that's obvious but then if they're building the affordable housing and then they're also responsible for paying for the infrastructure you know widening roads and doing things like that now so combining both of those concerns the infrastructure concern with the housing affordability concern now you're kind of squeezing the developers in both directions and that might result in no development so these candidates they're going to have to they're going to have to figure this out County Council is going to have to figure this out our state reps are going to have to to figure this out as well there there's a lot of different opinions and different approaches to be taken and hopefully they are able to make some some steps in the right direction in the upcoming months when it and and years when we have these elections and then when they step into office or step into the council all of this leads to the matter of growth another buzzword that we heard a lot which it's an important word it's not just a buzzword growth U which means a lot of different things but on the most basic level it means population growth because that's what we're seeing Greenville County is supposed to grow in population by another 200 to 250,000 people roughly speaking in the next 10 years is my understanding and so that's a lot of people you know I haven't looked at it recently but I think Greenville County right now is in the the maybe 600,000 person range so we're talking about you know maybe increasing that by a third that's a massive increase and there's a lot that has to be done over the next 10 years to to prepare for that which is why the infrastructure concern is a legitimate concern but we also as you have that many people coming in where are they going to live they have to live somewhere and so every District wants growth to slow in their District right nobody you know out in Pickin County where they have all that you know Farmland everyone has you know several Acres that they live on generally speaking nobody wants a big development to go up next to them they all want that development to go you know several miles away or to a different District or or what have you and several people that we interviewed insinuated that they they they came right out and said that they want the other districts to shoulder the growth responsibility they don't want growth in their District well this is a problem right this is this is not going to help generally speaking the the housing affordability aspect of of this discussion but as well you know those people that want growth they have to have houses in order to to grow in order to just not get stagnant right they they want growth but they don't want growth a lot of these people in office and a lot of these candidates they they want you know you know the downtown areas to be nicer for there to be more green space for there' be more businesses for there to be better grocery stores all these things but they don't want houses to accompany all of those things well what happens if you build all of those things again not trying to to pick on Pickins County but you've got all of those things people wanting all of those things in Pickins County but are they where are they supposed to live are they supposed to commute from Greenville to go out to Pickins why not build houses in Pickins to support that growth so again there's a lot of push and pull when it comes to all these different things that quite frankly a lot of these candidates don't fully understand you have to you'll have to do your research when you find out who you're you're going to be voting for in the upcoming elections we got primaries first and then the general do your research and and hear what their platforms are and whether those platforms are even reasonable I I will say I was impressed that one candidate that we interviewed only one out of many really understood that his district desperately needed more housing in general that it wasn't just affordable housing that they needed more housing specifically for one reason this person has is a district that covers that Donaldson Center area of Greenville and those of you that know that area know that there's really no grocery store anywhere near there and that's a major problem particularly for those who do have lower income and and perhaps don't have reliable transportation if they have to drive 20 25 minutes to a grocery store that's a big deal as opposed to maybe being able to take some public transportation or or maybe being able to even afford to Uber or or maybe even be able to walk or ride a bike bike so for a long time we've had people trying to push to get grocery stores in that area but there's a major problem the the grocery stores either want the general income level of that District of that area to be higher or they want the population to be higher in order for them to to be able to to put a grocery store they have very strict metrics by which they determine where they put a a new grocery store and so there was one candidate that that is attempting to represent that area that realized we just need we need more houses in this area so that we can potentially help the entire area with more commercial development specifically having at least one grocery store in the area so so that was interesting to see another Topic in the real estate discussion that got brought up a lot not not as much as as these others but it got brought up a decent amount was the issue of gentrification and this was an interesting one several candidates have an interest and seeing people who get pushed out of a community due to gentrification or or out of their house because they can no longer afford to keep up with it the area has gentrified so they have to sell they're they're kind of pushed into that option or perhaps they're on a fixed income and as areas get gentrified they get reassessed by the county and then their property taxes go up and now they can't even afford their property taxes there are several candidates that want to there to be a pathway for these people to be able to go back into those communities this is going to be a an interesting discussion and it it's a tricky one as well and we didn't get into specifics on this obviously our interviews could only go so long but but there was one candidate in particular that this is a very major part of his platform and the the only thing that I can figure that he's thinking is if people are pushed out of a house that they have somewhere that they can go that they can rent that would be affordable which probably wouldn't be a house it would probably be an apartment or a condo or something like that but what whatever the case may be we all recognize that and I've talked about this many times before gentrification Cuts both ways it does kick people out of a community that they've perhaps been in for a very very long time but it also helps people's home values to go up if we could find a way to keep people's home values going up and still allow people to to stay within their communities they they won't be able to necessarily stay within their house because of the things that I just that I just brought up but if they have if they're forced into a position where they have to sell they they have options where they don't have to completely just move to you know from Greenville and down to Fountain in or something drastic like that so that was an issue that got brought up a lot we're going to be hearing more and more about this as the hous housing affordability goes down and down and and this has been this has been kind of one of those topics that a lot of people have tried to avoid for years and years is the topic of gentrification and we're going to see this becoming a bigger talking point because it's a it's a bigger issue it's something that is increasingly needing to be discussed and so that that will be interesting to see how the different candidates discuss that topic in these upcoming elections last but not least taxes got brought up and this gets brought up more for those running for the State House than those running for for County Council technically the county does collect the tax but there's a lot of State influence in terms of of what taxes actually what is actually in those property taxes and and how the rates get determined and and various things like that that it it's a mixture right the county influen it some the state INF influences it some but generally speaking when it came to the tax discussion because the state ultimately controls the entire tax code and you can't really overhaul property taxes in any meaningful way without overhauling the entire tax code this discussion got brought up much more with those running for state house and those running for County Council and and it got brought up enough to Warrant a discussion here now for the most part I think that most think that property taxes are where they need to be I've mentioned this before but South Carolina has one of the lowest owner occupied tax rates in the US and one of the highest non-owner occupied tax rates in the US and I had to remind a few of these candidates as they talked about issues of gentrification and whatnot and issues of of lack of affordable rental properties that rents ballooning in Greenville are largely due to property taxes going up and how severely landlords are penalized here in in the state of South Carolina so that was something I made sure to point out to them there's no easy fix for that because there's so much the the tax code is relying so much on those landlords and on Commercial properties in order to to pay the bills and I mentioned before that some of the candidates who are more concerned about about affordable housing we're concerned with the fact that owner occupied tax rates or or really the tax assessments are the are the proper way of saying that the owner occupied taxes due to higher tax assessments are going up and hurting people on a fixed income and with the result that some people are getting kicked out of homes that they don't even have a mortgage on that they have owned for 30 40 years because they can no longer afford their property taxes but again as I already said South Carolina has one of the lowest owner occupied tax rates in the US and one candidate mentioned that for every $1 that a homeowner pays on their owner occupied property they actually get back statistically A14 cents of services so they're not paying into the system what they're getting out it's the landlords and businesses that are shouldering the burden for everyone else in the state basically and and so the end result of that is that there's a lot more encouragement for then commercial development than there is for residential which as a realtor I'm okay with commercial development but not at the expense of housing obviously the idea of changing the property tax code is something that Columbia has Tau talked about this is something our governor has talked about this is something that our legislators have discussed and from a real estate standpoint Realtors would generally like things to be a little bit more Equitable that we don't like the fact that the rental property tax rate is so high why are why are Mom and popop landlords paying the same amount as a major commercial Enterprise is paying in in property taxes that doesn't seem fair and so that's something that's being discussed and that that's a big deal that's hurting again the housing affordability for when it comes to rental properties but in order for that to be changed in any meaningful way again you have to change the entire tax code and and that's going to be daunting I I don't see how we're going to do that there's a lot of division right now in Colombia and getting the getting the the tax code written to make the property tax situation better for for landlords that's going to be tough that that's that's going to be a tough sell for a lot of people a lot of people don't like landlords they they have this uh misconception that landlords are all these big you know institutionalized companies that are just raking in tons and tons of money they don't have the the concept of most landlords 90% of landlords are just Mom and Pop landlords in that only own you know one 2 3 four units but but the reality is the public perception it's really hard to change that so we'll have to see where things go with that but that was the the tax situation the property tax situation specifically was brought up by by multiple candidates some that that recognized that there are issues when it comes to that some that that didn't some that are just running on a just low tax lower tax platform in general they just want to see all the taxes get lowered they think that our state government is too big so there's a lot of varying opinions when it comes to this but I encourage all of you when the time comes to vote look at what these people are campaigning what platforms they're Campa campaigning on there are some like I said some very important elections coming up the chairman of County Council has an has a reelection going on here and he has several people running against him that's a very important election to watch go through the new go through the news and and read about some of the things that the Greenville County Council chairman has been doing the past year I think that will be pretty eye opening for a lot of you and again that's not me saying to vote for him or not to vote for him but it's important that you know what's actually happening and I will probably have more information as we get through the primary season as we interview more people for the general election but for right now that is what I'm seeing those are the real estate related concerns that I'm seeing locally and and and it's good to see it's good to see that they aren't just concerned about about things that aren't related to housing because we know that there are these infrastructure concerns that that we do have housing affordability concerns that we do have gentrification concerns that we do have tax code concerns so it's good that these candidates are recognizing that and now we just need to get the right people in there with the right Solutions and and hopefully we can do that I appreciate you guys for listening all my contact information is in the show notes as always rate review subscribe to the show and we'll talk again next week [Music]