[Music] Hello everyone and Welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in Greenville South Carolina I'm your host as always Stan McCune realtor right here in the upstate of South Carolina you can find all of my contact information in the show notes if you need to reach out to me for any of your real estate needs if you're buying if you're selling if you're investing any of those things with regard to real estate please let me know cuz I'm your guy and just a reminder as always please subscribe to the show if you enjoy it please leave a short little rating short little review particular if you're on Apple podcast which the vast majority of you are I would appreciate if you could just hit that five star rating button leave a quick little review a few of you have recently and I appreciate that the more the merrier because we can get this show out to as many people as possible and and that helps Greenville that helps me that encourages me to continue going with the show so I appreciate if you guys do that we've been doing a little minseries I've been doing a little mini miniseries on overviewing different areas of Greenville and today we're going to overview Simpsonville so we started with Greenville proper we went to the city of Greer now we're doing the city of Simpsonville Greer and Simpsonville are just to diverse and too large of areas to combine together with any other areas however this will be the last individual City pod that we do next week our episode is going to kind of round out the upstate and then for anyone that's interested they can basically listen to four episodes worth of content that will give them a pretty good overview of of the the Greenville the greater Greenville area in general not going to hit on really too much with regard to the other counties Spartanburg Anderson Pickins aone I'm not really Cherokee County I'm not really going to get into those counties although they're worthwhile places there I've bought and sold and helped people buy and sell real estate in those counties as well but because this is a a podcast really focused on Greenville we're really focusing on Greenville County with regard to these overviews so let's jump right right into Simpsonville Simpsonville like Greer as I've already kind of alluded to really encompasses a large geographic area it goes all the way from Five Forks which is you know near Interstate 85 near Woodruff Road and and goes all the way to just north of Cedar Falls Park which is I mean I I didn't even check to see how many miles that was but it's a very very I mean if you drove from Five Forks all the way to Cedar Falls Park you're probably talking about a 45-minute drive and so that is what Simpsonville encompasses and and including Five Forks some people think of Five Forks as like its own thing no Five Forks really is Simpsonville when you're living in Five Forks you have a Simpsonville address now I've heard a lot of differing opinions about Simpsonville over the years in terms of just the the reputation that it has it's always interesting to hear what people relocating to Greenville from another area think about different areas or what they've heard about different areas and in Simpsonville I've heard the most I guess rumors about it from people moving here than I really have any other areas rumors that I would disagree with I had one client that was relocating here that had heard that Simpsonville was quote unquote busy which I thought was a really interesting opinion since most of Simpsonville to me is really rural I I would never the first thing that would come to mind for me when it comes to Simpsonville isn't that it's busy it's it's more that much of Simpsonville is rural I've heard other people say that it's not close to anything which is also an interesting opinion since a good chunk of Simpsonville including that Five Forks area is right by Woodruff Road and some of it is right by 385 and some of it is right by Highway 14 and a lot of these connect to some of the main shopping areas of Greenville so there's just there's a lot of rumors I guess out there going around about Simpsonville I don't know why that's that's the case but we we need to to cut to the chase here that Simpsonville is a big area so some of those things might be true are there busy areas of Simpsonville yes are there parts of Simpsonville that aren't close to anything yes but we need to figure out what those areas are by the way I just want to take an aside if you've notice a sound difference I have upgraded all of my sound equipment so I'm I'm hoping that this is translating over to you guys I'm very excited about some of the sound equipment that I purchased recently I felt like you guys deserved an an investment into the show and so I've I've invested some of my hard-earned money from this past year which you guys helped me to earn which I'm very grateful for in order to upgrade the sound equipment so I hope that that is is coming through as you you Avid listeners know my main microphone bit the dust a few weeks ago I was using kind of a temporary mic and then I was like you know what we need to take this to the next level so I'm hoping that that that's the case here all right so without me furthering bragging about my audio equipment here I would like to split up Simpsonville in four ways and as I've said before with the other area overviews you can split up the any area of the upstate into like a gazillion different areas but for the purposes of this podcast so it doesn't go on for hours and hours I'm splitting up Five Forks sorry Simpsonville in four ways Five Forks Adams Mill Road area downtown Simpsonville and lower Simpsonville I'm sorry this is not going to be satisfying for some of you that live in Simpsonville but this is just going to have to do the past year the median sales price if we look at every sale that had a Simpsonville address that the city was Simpsonville whether it was in city limits of Simpsonville or not the median sales price was 360,000 with a low of 45,000 and a high of 9 million which is a an eye popping number for for the greater Greenville area in last week's episode I I regretfully did not break down the prices for the different sub regions in Greer that was an oversight on my part I am going to do that for Simpsonville for this for this episode now as we' done with the other episodes in this miniseries I'm going to start with downtown simps Ville which I'm going to Define as the area south of where Highway 14 and 417 combine if you're looking at Google Maps and continuing South including the obvious Main Street area as well as the Heritage Park area and now again some of you might might be like wow that's way wider than downtown Simpsonville but again it those areas outside of like the main downtown Simpsonville drag where the CL where that big clock is and and where the railroad went through and whatnot I don't know you can't really call the areas the Heritage Park area and and whatnot around it suburbs in my opinion I feel like those are all kind of just part of the downtown area maybe you would call some of that Midtown but Simpsonville is not big enough to have a Midtown in my opinion so I'm just including all of that as kind of part of the greater downtown Simpsonville area so with that in mind the median price for this area was a reasonable 351,000 the past year as say reasonable because that's that's over the median for the greater Greenville area as a whole but for a downtown area that is a reasonable number and unlike the other downtowns we've talked about Greenville Greer you can still find houses actual houses not just apartments and condos near the main drag some of which are are small mail houses which is Common Place Greer has that Greer has some small Mill houses that are somewhat close to downtown Greer but there's also some fancy old and and even new houses that are within walking or biking distance of downtown Simpsonville itself which is unique downtown Simpsonville is much more residential than the other downtowns in the upstate we've talked about Greenville Greenville Downtown Greenville basically switched over almost all of the single family housing made them commercial tons of attorney offices that are working out of what would would have been old houses and Greer kind of copied that model and and basically turned downtown Greer into a miniature version of downtown Greenville in my opinion Simpsonville has not done that Simpsonville although it has converted some of its single family housing over to commercial you still have single family housing available and accessible to the actual main drag of downtown now of of course as with any area area in the upstate of South Carolina there are plenty of condos being built around downtown as well as several subdivisions with production build homes so I'm not saying that there aren't those things but there's a little bit more variety close to downtown Simpsonville than there are some of the other downtowns the low sale of the past year for this area I already said the medium was 351,000 the low sale was 115,000 and the high was 715,000 so not a lot of particularly expensive housing being sold in downtown Simpsonville the past year now Simpsonville has a cute Main Street area with several great restaurants bars several really good Parks including of course what I've already referenced nearby Heritage Park which has the Heritage Park Amphitheater which has some really great concerts during the summer months it's not enclosed it's an outdoor Amphitheater and and I've been to several concerts and events over the over there over the years and actually we went to a major concert recently in September One Republic was there if you don't know One Republic that's fine they did the hit song in the Top Gun sequel that came out this past week I ain't worried or something like that anyway we got to see them perform that live in Simpsonville so that was kind of cool I've also o been to downtown Simpsonville they have a little pinball arcade game place right in downtown that super cute you would never even know it's there and that was a really fun experience it was like $10 for entry and you can like come and go all day if you want at least that was when I went that was way earlier this year so there's a lot of stuff to do in downtown simsville I wouldn't say quite as much as in the other downtowns but there's still plenty to do and again heritage Park and the amphitheater really really rounds it out that makes it unique for the area Greer for instance doesn't have anything like that being said downtown Simpsonville I don't really consider it to be nearly as walkable or bikable as the other down towns in the area and getting around it on a busy night can sometimes take a while there's so many traffic lights everywhere so many busy intersections that it can just take forever to get through to to make a turn and and so for that reason downtown Simpsonville is really my least favorite downtown area to drive through it can just really be a pain and if you're going to the amphitheater for a major event like that One Republic concert Good Luck I mean it took us oh man it it took us a very long time to from the time we got into downtown Simpsonville until the time we got into the atheer I mean I think it was close to 30 40 minutes it just it just took a really long time so that Amphitheater where it's located you have to like drive through neighborhoods to get to it it's it's quite clunky in a lot of ways so even though it's cool that it's there it's also Just the Way Simpsonville is laid out it it just makes for a difficult time navigating now there's plenty of convenient shopping nearby particularly when you go down to Fair viiew Road that's one of the main shopping areas in Simpsonville just south of Interstate 385 Walmart and Target are both very close to this area but if you're looking for boutique shopping art galleries that kind of stuff Simpsonville doesn't quite have as much as you'll find in some of the other local downtowns like that's not the primary reason that people go to downtown Simpsonville you can find that type of stuff it's just not as prevalent now just outside of the Main Street part of Simpsonville but still within this area we have the nicest movie theater in the upstate a Regal Theater which also includes IMAX if you're wanting to go to the movies and you're wanting the best experience that we have in Greenville County Simpsonville is where you go and it's the only place where you can see IMAX that I'm aware of in the upstate now in between Five Forks and downtown sonville is what I will call the Adams Mill Road area which is a very very loose description but it is what it is this is what I'm this is what I'm stuck with here okay it doesn't have a name because it was just like all farmland for for so long but I've heard some people that have lived in this area say they live in the Five Forks area some say they live in Greenville some say they live in Malden etc etc but for my purposes I'm going to call it the Adams Mill Road area of Simpsonville but it's clearly distinct from downtown Simpsonville and Five Forks so I I don't feel like it's fair to lump in with Five Forks like some people do CU once you get outside of I mean if you're looking at Google Maps Five Forks is clearly defined within Google Maps right they they have it kind of grayed out I would probably say that's a little too specific for Five Forks proper for instance I would consider Orchard Orchard Farm sorry not Orchard Farms Heritage Lakes which we're going to I I'll probably reference this later but Heritage Lakes is not inside that grade out area but I would still consider Heritage Lakes to roughly speaking be Five Forks I think most people would but that being said we've got this area this area in between that grade out area and downtown Simpsonville that I think has really its own identity u and so that area had a median price of past year of 385,000 with a low sale of 70,000 and a high of 9 million this is I've referenced 9 million earlier this is the area that had that $9 million sale all of Simpsonville besides downtown was very rural up until the past probably 20 or 30 years so in this area you know as you find in a lot of areas that were very rural up until recently you find a tremendous mix of housing ranging from large custom homes with acreage to 40-Year-Old brick ranches to production built neighborhoods really a huge variety and and you if you drive through depending on what road you are that will kind of determine what you're seeing whether you're driving past a bunch of production built neighborhoods or whether you're driving past a bunch of custom homes and that home that sold for $9 million that was really an incredible estate on over 40 acres and it ended up being the most expensive home sold the past year in all of Greenville County at least in terms of what I was looking at in the MLS there may have been something off Market that sold for more expensive I don't know but that home which was 455 mckin Road if I remember correctly that was the most expensive home sold the past year in the greater Greenville area and that ended up being in this Adams Mill Road area of Simpsonville if you're wanting to shop the part of this area that you want to be in is the part that's closer to i38 5 and Highway 14 those two highways really bring some great convenience to this area allowing you to get to downtown malen 5 Forks Woodruff Road Etc it in really quick order and between those areas you can find pretty much any sort of store that you might need but the Eastern edge of this area is extremely Rural and not close to shopping besides Five Forks which we'll discuss momentarily again and that's a a plus for some right some people want to be in a more rural area but this is also part of why I can't just say oh Simpsonville is busy yeah downtown is very busy but in some of these parts of this Adams Mill Road area you get out there and and oh it's not busy at all it's I mean you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere and it's going to take you a second to get to a grocery store or to get to Woodruff Road or to Fairview Road or to any other sort of shopping that you could come up with as far as like Parks go there are a few parks and holly tree is a nice golf course that's right in this area but because there are several homes with land which we discussed I believe last week along with major residential developments that have gone up in recent decades there isn't a ton of Green Space devoted to the public immediately within this area you have to go to downtown Simpsonville Heritage Park maybe cross over towards malen go to Lake kesty areas like that that aren't very far from there but aren't within this immediate region now one thing that's nice about this area is it's an opportunity and for some people this is as I already said a major appeal it's an opportunity for you to live in a rural area without being super far from anything I mean there are some rural areas of Greenville that it would just take you a really really long time to get anywhere even if you're on that Eastern edge of of this area you're you're still going to be less than probably 30 minutes away from from any sort of shopping now for some people that would feel like an eternity my wife couldn't handle that she wouldn't want to be in an area that rural but but for some people that's nice they want to kind of be more out in the country and they don't do shopping every single day and so to be able to get to most shopping within 30 minutes that's totally acceptable to them to be able to have to drive 2020 minutes to a grocery store no problem we'll just stock up when we go So Different Strokes for different folks it's neither a plus nor a negative that that there are some rural areas there it's just if you don't want that you have to be more on the Western Edge I think I might have said Eastern Edge before if if I did I meant the the western edge of this where it butts up against I 385 and Highway 14 that's the the part of this area that gives you that offers you the most flexibility now Five Forks which I get a lot of questions about Five Forks Five Forks is one of the most controversial areas in the entire Upstate on the one hand you have a lot of recently Built Homes the vast majority of which are less than 20 years old and you have great shopping options within Five Forks itself as well as great restaurant and shopping options just a few minutes away on Woodruff Road but you ALS o have a tremendous amount of traffic and this would be an area that generally speaking I would consider to be a busy area mainly because one of your main connecting roads is Woodruff Road and anyone that lives around here knows that Woodruff Road for all of the great things about you know the various shopping options that you have there navigating it getting to and from it that's not one of the things that we like about it I love to go to Costco I go to Costco all the time which is on the far end of wooder Road this time of year I hate going to Costco because even though it's I mean it's not even in the middle of wood road so in theory it should be easy to get in and out of no it's not and maybe I'm whining a little bit here some of you were probably listening and being like oh come on it's not that bad it it depends on your perspective for me no thank you I try to avoid major heavy traffic at all times I don't want to be driving around the Costco parking lot for 20 minutes looking for a parking space this time of year so I'm just going to take a little Costco time out until the holiday season is past us but speaking of the holiday season if you're trying to go from Five Forks all the way to let's say you're going from Five Forks to Costco oh man brutal it's it's only a few miles but it's it's just going to take you so long to go all the way down there it's going to take you several minutes to get to Interstate 385 inter State 85 it's just that's just one of the downsides of Five Forks it is close to things but at the same time just the way it was built was not conducive to all of this traffic and this is why people you'll hear people complain about infrastructure in Greenville County that that's one of the reasons is that there were a lot of developments that were built without in areas like Five Forks without really putting enough concern into the infrastructure that they should have and and so this is what we have as a result Five Forks is also controversial because it's one of the areas as I've already said that has been developed heavily so it's a lot of production Built Homes on small lots and that's not for everybody and if it's not for you then you just go south to the Adams Mill part of Simpsonville and then you get a lot larger Lots that are very close to Five Forks but for some people they like those those production built neighborhoods those subdivisions that you know some of them have pools in the subdivision some nice amenities for some people that is a major draw and if you're moving to Five Forks that's probably a major draw for you the median price point in Five Forks for the past year was 365,000 with a low of 120,000 and a high of 3 million so higher a good about 50 ,000 higher than the Greenville median the the greater Greenville area median but in terms of a price per square foot basis you're probably looking at around $150 per square foot which is reasonable you know a $200,000 sorry a 2,000t house for $300,000 that's for by Greenville standards that's pretty good right now now there aren't a lot of parks around here although there is a massive soccer comp Lex called Mesa I've never done anything out at at Mesa but for those of you that are into soccer perhaps there's some interesting things to go on there as far as schools I haven't really talked about schools in this episode much and I always have to be careful with that but there are some award-winning schools in and around Five Forks as I've said before the shopping there is great you do have Woodruff Road very close by which if you're willing to battle that traffic obviously super convenient but just within Five Forks itself there are several restaurants fast mostly fast food and chain types of places but you could argue that the best grocery stores really in all of the upstate are right there in Five Forks there's a Lowe's Foods which is a which is a kind of Boutique but large it's not like Trader Joe's size it's still a large grocery store but I would consider it more of a boutique grocery store for instance you can they have like a brewery and a a barbecue place in there you can like get something to drink or something to eat and be like eating it while you're shopping kind of thing one of them is right there in Simpsonville there's a Sprouts grocery store which is the only of its kind right there in Five Forks and the Publix and Five Forks I've had to go into a few times and Publix is a major grocery chain here probably the the largest grocery chain that we have here in the upstate and that Publix in 5 Forks has to be the nicest one in all of the upstate it's really really nice so you've got some great grocery store options right there that will only take you a few minutes to get to long story short most people who move to Five Forks will do so because it offers some affordable neighborhoods with nice houses in it for instance Orchard Farms is one of the most popular neighborhoods subdivisions in the upstate it's right there in in Five Forks but traffic and infrastructure are concerns that aren't going away anytime soon and neighborhoods just west of Five Forks proper such as Heritage lakes that I already referenced they almost never have homes go for sale so that's just kind of the the way it is lots of homes go for sale in Five Forks proper that that shaded area in Google Maps but again it comes down to do you want to be in a production built home are you fine with that are you fine with that location with it maybe taking a while to get to downtown Greenville it's taking a while to get through Woodruff Road and what is it that you're willing to give up to be in a subdivision that is really nice that's really kept up with that offers housing at often times more affordable pricing than the rest of Greenville County that is kind of the push and pull of Five Forks now last but not least we have what I'm just going to call lower Simpsonville I don't know if anyone has a better name for it than that but I'm just going to call it lower Simpsonville and think of it as a section of Simpsonville South of both Interstate 185 and Interstate 385 which they're kind of the same thing right 185 just Loops right into 385 the only difference is 185 is a toll road 385 isn't now this is a massive area and I hate to lump it all into one but I couldn't really think of a better way to do this this is about 11 miles from the northern tip of it to the southern tip of it nuts so unsurprisingly it had a lot of homes sold the past year the median price for this area was 340,000 with a low of 45,000 and a high of $1.3 million now this area is almost exclusively rural some parts of it are really in the middle of nowhere most of the time people moving here only do so if they really want to live in the country or if they've just been priced out of the quote unquote suburbs now if you're close to West Georgia Road or Fairview Road you'll be fine for shopping otherwise you'll need to drive a bit to find a grocery store or other shop restaurants there there's not really any unless you're going towards Fairview Road outside of Fair viiew Road there's just not a whole lot of restaurant options in this area as I said it's a very rural area generally speaking there aren't a ton of parks but the REI River does cut through this area REI River if you're not familiar with the upstate is the river that cuts straight through downtown Greenville and where the waterfall comes off of it's also the river that the Swamp Rabbit Trail popular bike trail in Greenville County it's the river that that Trail follows so anyway REI River cuts through this area ultimately ending up at Cedar Falls Park which is just outside of Simpsonville I believe technically it's peler if I'm not mistaken but Cedar Falls Park is probably the the closest thing to a good Park that this area has even though it's just outside of it but it's close enough to make sense and what's what's nice about Cedar Falls Park is that it's a really nice natural park that because it's in a more rural area it doesn't get a lot of traffic I've actually gone there several times it's it's really a Hidden Gem for this area in general I wouldn't say that there is a ton to do I think there is a playground whatnot but it's just a nice little area to to see some flowing water if you've got kids that want to Splash around or a dog that wants to splash splash around in water walk on some rocks it's just it's it's a nice park that that you can kind of get away from the craziness of downtown Greenville and some of these other areas that have water features but still be fairly convenient to all of that kind of stuff now in general if you're interested in going into downtown Greenville as I've already as I just referenced with any regularity I don't recommend this part of Simpsonville I mean it's just going to take you a while to get there and really any of the areas that I've referred to as rural in this podcast if you want to get to downtown Greenville it's it's going to take you probably a good 30 minutes to go from the rural areas of Simpsonville to get into downtown Greenville if if you're down near Ceder Falls Park it's going to take you even longer so you just need to be prepared for that now I'll be hon I know a lot of people that live here that never go to downtown Greenville so that that's crazy to me I love Downtown Greenville I well sometimes if I have like a meeting down there I will just kind of take an hour to just walk around you know sometimes we'll go do some things with the kids downtown etc etc m so I'm not one of those people but I know a lot of people that live in this area that literally never go to downtown Greenville so if you think that that's a possibility for you then perhaps being in one of these more rural areas of Simpsonville Isn't So outrageous and if you're wanting to live in the country these are some some really great areas the more rural areas T to have cheaper housing in general because you end up paying a premium when you're closer to shopping closer to parks and all of those types of things but that's it that's all I have to say about Simpsonville in general really a huge variety of areas and as I said a very controversial area of the upstate but at the end of the day I've had a lot of clients that have moved to Simpsonville and they love it they love you know variety of housing that I've helped sell in that area over the years but I've never heard anyone that moved to Simpsonville say they regretted it I've only heard positive things and that is the feeling that I get every time I'm in the area with the exception of the traffic that I've run into particularly downtown and around that Amphitheater otherwise I'm a big fan of Simpsonville I love what they're doing and and I think the the future is bright for that area that's it for today's episode I appreciate you guys listening as always all my contact information is in the show notes please subscribe to the the show if you enjoy it please leave a rating or review if you're listening in Google podcast or Spotify and we'll talk again to round up this minseries next week [Music]