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 Greenville you can find all of my contact info in the show notes if you need to reach out to me for any of your real estate needs just a reminder as always please like rate review subscribe make sure you don't miss future episodes make sure you support the show right hitting that little like button goes a long way if you leave me a comment on YouTube I will respond to it assuming it's a thoughtful comment and not a link tree sort of a link or something like that so don't do that but I appreciate any engagement that I get from you all from the show today I'm not sure when I'm gonna be releasing this podcast because I am going on a trip I am well next week well I'm sorry again I don't know when I'm recording this or I can't talk today I don't know when I am going to release this podcast it could be on February let's see here it might be on February 11th it might be on February 18th it depends on a few things but February 11th is my 40th birthday and for my 40th birthday I'm going on a hiking trip with my friend Seth who has been on the show before we had a funny episode that was just a light hearted episode that we did I believe it was last year if not the year before and so that's gonna be fun going out west for a little hiking trip gonna end in Vegas and that should that should go really well so I will still be available if you need to reach me for whatever I'm not going phoneless on a trip like this however I don't plan to record any podcast while I'm out there I don't think and so I'm working ahead and we'll just see exactly when this gets released but we do need to talk about all of that aside some recent development no pun intended that have happened in the world of Greenville development and I want to just tell you guys this housing in Greenville is going to continue to get more expensive I've been beating this drum for a long time for a variety of reasons but we just keep getting more information that just keeps pointing that way and right now we have things happening on the local level state level and national level that all lead me to believe we are going to see continued affordability issues in Greenville we're going to continue to see the cost of living the cost of housing in Greenville continue to go up unless someone does something and we've talked about things that can be done in the past on the show I'm not gonna get into that I'm going to get into why I think specific things that have happened the past few weeks confirm that housing is going to get more expensive we're gonna start with this we've talked about impact fees on the show a good bit Greenville County is really obsessed with impact fees right now impact fees are basically taxes that are imposed on a developer on every single lot that they develop so if they have a subdivision of 200 homes a 5 thousand dollar impact fee they is something that they would have to pay directly to the county 5 thousand dollars for every single lot that they developed right so you get you take 200 * 5,000 that's the amount that they would have to pay for that subdivision that amount after everything is done studies have shown over and over again that that amount gets tripled and then passed along to the consumer to the and the consumer is a buyer right a home buyer and so if you have a 5 thousand dollar impact fee you're now looking at a minimum 15 thousand dollar increase on the cost of a home to a first time home buyer and or to any home buyer and $15,000 in the in the general scheme of things like when you're talking about you know the average cost of a house in Greenville is over 300,000 might not sound like that much but I can't tell you how many times I've had clients that that wanted a house that was just outside the reach right it was like 10 if it could come down $10,000 they could afford it but where it's at they can't and so $15,000 can make or break things for some people and so Greenville County has been for several years now has been imposing impact fees doing all sorts of stuff with regard to impact fees talking them up talking about how so we had a vote on a penny sales tax not too long ago in order to fix our roads and there were a variety of reasons why the penny sales tax failed but one of them was that Greenville County Council several County Council people said we don't need to do this we can raise this money other ways and one of the ways that they said was through impact fees well the Planning Commission in Greenville County contracted and actually I'm just gonna read this straight from the post and Courier okay post and Courier did a a great article about this a week or so ago couple weeks ago well again depending on when I release this it might be several weeks ago alright here's what the post and Courier said the Planning Commission contracted the Greenville County Planning Commission contracted Idaho based consulting firm Tischler Bice to conduct a study over the past several months Carson Bice of Tischler Bice I hope I'm pronouncing that right said the lack of a penny tax or similar revenue stream makes impact fees a bad idea for Greenville County at a January 13th joint meeting of County Council and the Planning Commission vice said state law places strict limitations on how impact fees can be spent geographic requirements spending timelines and use specifications all hem in how the county can use the money and while funds collected from the fees can offset local road projects they will not pay for them entirely not even close listen it's not even close that means that the county has to find the remainder from other sources the county is legally obligated to spend any revenue from impact fees within three years and if it can't afford the project a serious possibility given the rate of growth coupled with limited funding problems could arise quote the county would have to come up with quite a bit of money and they don't have a dedicated revenue source by said so it's much easier to implement a road impact fee when you've got that sales tax the fact that a large portion of roads inventory in Greenville County is owned by the state and that the county would be addressing deficiencies on existing road rather than building new ones could also create legal and logistical hurdles still blunt bent Benton Blunt the chair of Greenville County Council who campaigned against the penny tax in 2024 said he still sees potential in implementing the fees the impact fees in June the county reallocated money from business tax break agreements siphoning future revenue growth from jurisdictions including the local school district and fire departments to more than double annual spending on roads that increase funding remains far short of what county staff says is needed to meet infrastructure needs but blunt said it could change the math when it comes to impact fees even if a road impact fee proves to be not feasible blunt said exploring the option fully is necessary to build constituent trust that's all I'm gonna read from that long story short impact fees on new development is increases the cost of housing it's not going to put a dent into fixing the roads around here but Greenville County Council is still obsessed with them and is still going to keep pushing for them and going to be imposing them as much as possible because it really isn't about roads okay there's a reason why if it sounded obtuse what some of the some of those quotes in there it's because it's not about roads Greenville County Council the these county council people were elected with a mandate they were put into office with a mandate to stop development right cause we've got a bunch of Nimbys the not in your backyard people in Greenville I mean they're everywhere but they're really big in Greenville and these people don't want any more homes no more homes well when you stop building homes which is what Greenville County Council is trying to accomplish when you stop building homes the cost of housing goes up right the only reason we haven't seen the cost of housing skyrocket the past few years it's not directly because of mortgage rates mortgage rates are having an impact but it's really because of new construction because new construction is cheaper to buy right now than on average than existing home sales so people are going to new construction well if that new construction wasn't there that would be really really hard right that would make it housing so much less affordable for people so on the local level that's what we're experiencing on the state level here is what Governor McMaster just said recently in his state of the state address now Governor McMaster is in his final term there will be a new governor election this year and it's gonna be very interesting to see how they approach this but I'm gonna read you a direct quote from his state of the state he said last year the U Haul rental company ranked South Carolina as the No. 1 destination for their moving trucks and vans I believe it left unaddressed we will face future problems with water and sewer access traffic congestion road and bridge repair demand for electric power generation public safety school overcrowding and healthcare availability therefore I submit to you that the time has come and reality requires that we assess whether our state's infrastructure and government services will be able to catch up if this unrestrained out of state my emphasis unrestrained out of state population growth continues Who that's a shot across the bow right there the governor of South Carolina is saying we are growing too much too fast when have you ever heard a governor say that South Carolina is such a unicorn in the United States of America but the reason is our taxes are pretty low so that brings people in but then because the taxes are low there we can't afford all these to upgrade all these infrastructure things to the extent that they that they need to be upgraded and of course South Carolina is a humongous now a humongous vacation destination right and not it used to just be Myrtle Beach now it's also Charleston now it's all the all the islands down south of Charleston it's Greenville right Greenville is now a huge tourist destination Columbia gets a lot of a not tourists but a lot of people from out of state visiting for political stuff so the entire state of South Carolina is having people visit and it's having people move here and the governor for the governor to stand up there I'm telling you I was so shocked when he said this to say it's too much growth we can't handle the growth now the very next sentence he said that that we need to reduce taxes in our state and I think that that's really the reason why he's concerned about the growth is that he sees the tax revenue simply isn't enough and he wants to you know he has pledged to reduce taxes there has been a little bit of that that's done during the governor's two terms but not tremendously right it hasn't it hasn't had a huge impact relatively speaking so he's been all about lowering taxes but the problem is that South Carolina is not in a good place to lower taxes because we have so many different needs now how would we stop this unrestrained out of state population growth as the governor described I have no idea like what does that mean how do you how do you stop that from happening and if you do stop that from happening then what and so long story short what the governor is explaining here is that we have a tremendous amount of people moving to the state that's only going to continue that's gonna continue to drive up the cost of housing I don't see any solution for that except probably increased taxes right that would be the one thing and I'm not I'm certainly not cheering for increased taxes I'm pretty anti tax for the most part unless it's absolutely necessary but we've got in the absence of that people are going to continue to move here they like the climate they like our tax structure they like everything about South Carolina and so it was already ranked No. 1 on for U Haul for people moving here I think that's going to continue and it's gonna be super fascinating as we have the governor election this year what tone that they all have they're all gonna have to figure out the right tone to strike between being anti growth versus you know taking a different approach that's pro growth but also well how do we keep up with the infrastructure right it could end up being an anti growth versus anti infrastructure sort of environment and I really don't know where that's gonna go so it's gonna be fascinating so that was on a state level then on the national level we had President Trump recently said that he's going to do whatever he can to make sure homes continue to go up in value and that homeowners stay wealthy well what does that mean not super clear again he's just saying it doesn't mean he's gonna do anything about it and it could just be something he's saying excuse me because homeowners vote more than renters excuse me and he actually wants to start seeing how people respond to these messages in order to get his midterm messaging right some Trump will do that he's known for that he'll put something out there and then see how people react to it and then tweak his messaging or another possibility maybe he is actually hearing concern about home prices and he wants to do something to prop them up in my opinion that would be a bad thing right that sounds like quantitative easing which tends to juice our economy in ways that we don't want it to happen and it and creates housing bubbles among other things I don't I don't want that so I hope that that's not what he's talking about or maybe and this is the theory that I like the most theory that I came up with by the way maybe other people too but perhaps Trump is seeing that there isn't much that he can do to make housing more affordable since that is more of a local slash state level issue cause that was something he talked about last year that he wanted to make housing more affordable well it turns out there's not much a president can do in order to do that and so maybe he just kind of came to that reality so now he's flipping the message to the opposite message which is that we're going to make housing more expensive right which is the other way of saying we're going to make sure that it stays valuable we're going to keep it expensive and this is actually something the federal government can in fact influence although I don't again think it should because the free market should be determining the cost of housing so perhaps that's what's happening he he's basically like well I'm not able to make housing more affordable so all of those people that that message would appeal to there's no point me even going with that message but we got all of these other people that want housing to remain expensive so they can keep building wealth well I'm gonna speak to them and tell them hey your housing afford your housing and the home that you own the real estate that you own it's going to continue to go up in value I'm going to champion your home value your property value perhaps that's what he's doing but regardless that is a hard pivot from what Trump has been talking about now for several years he's been talking about making housing more affordable and now he completely flip flopped to the opposite message and so now we have again local state and federal level basically everyone is saying we don't care about housing affordability anymore we are concerned about other things right on the county level they're concerned about stopping development on the state level they're concerned about infrastructure and on the federal level they're concerned about the collapse of home prices what all of these things mean ultimately the most likely outcome is the cost of housing just continuing to go up in Greenville and I'm not trying to be a you know a doomsday prophet here I'm just trying to tell you guys what's true right because you hear a lot of people out there that think housing is going to get cheaper for one reason or another and every time I look at data every time I hear these things from local state national politicians everything I hear points in the opposite direction things are going to continue to get more expensive now we could have an economic crash that could cause prices to come down sickly that's likely to happen at some point in the next 10 years but right now it doesn't appear to be happening and so what do we do with that I think that we just have to live in this reality we just have to be realistic about the state of the market the market is unaffordable right now that's going to continue unless you know that really the only thing right now in the absence of building more homes which again we're getting tons of pushback right now and that that's one thing I think that that perhaps the governor was implying in his state of the state speech was that we need to stop building houses he didn't say that but that would be about the only thing that you could do to to try to stop the unrestrained out of state population growth that he's referring to not give them places to live there's not a whole lot else that you can do and so we've got I don't even remember where I was going with that we've got all of these different things converging and it means that oh yes I was gonna say in the absence of building more houses we will only see affordability improve if mortgage rates come down well I just talked recently about the Kevin Warsh about Kevin Warsh being the Fed chair that that's probably not a good thing for mortgage rates and we might not see mortgage rates go into the fives all year even though many people predicted that they would and so here we go we've got a a an interesting dynamic and this is going to be continuing to be a problem right I've been I've been preaching about housing affordability for some time but here we got in very short succession local state and federal level statements and things happening that all point to one thing and that's nobody is concerned nobody in power is concerned about housing affordability right now and when that happens that means that housing becomes less affordable right because nobody is pushing towards housing affordability and so obviously we will keep tracking the market stats and seeing exactly what direction they go in Greenville over the year and over these next several years but right now if you're hoping that housing is gonna get more affordable really what you need is for mortgage rates to come down that's your that's your most likely situation in order to get that dynamic that's all I have for today's episode so thank you guys so much for listening hopefully I survived my trip when you're listening to this or you might I might be on the trip while you're listening to this so say a prayer that I don't fall off of the Angels Landing Trail in Zion National Park or something like that but I appreciate all you guys my listeners thank you so much for listening please like rate review subscribe please if you have a friend tell a friend about the show I never asked you guys to do that tell a friend about the show I'd appreciate that and if you need a realtor my contact info is in the show notes thank you so much we will talk again next time!