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 South Carolina and you can find all of my contact information in the show notes if you need a Realtor in the Greenville area or elsewhere remember I don't just work in Greenville County we've got a lot of local counties around here a county Pickens Spartanburg Anderson Greenwood I work in all of those counties and so if you need help in any of those please let me know you can find all my contact information in the show notes if you need a realtor for outside of the area as well I can help you with that too now if you don't need a realtor maybe you are a realtor please just hit the hit the like button and if you do need a realtor hit the like button as well please subscribe to the show make sure you don't miss future episodes if you can leave a rating or a review if you're using for instance Apple Podcast or Spotify you should be able to do that so I would greatly greatly appreciate if you guys could do that today we are going to be doing a 10 point guide to buying a home in Greenville South Carolina in the greater Greenville area in 2026 and I don't know in the what six years that I've been doing this yeah basically exactly six years I've been doing this podcast I don't know that I've ever done a home buying guide specifically for the year that we're in I've done various different similar things but I was thinking about it and I was like you know this is actually kind of useful information a lot of people just wanna know what it what is it like buying or selling a home in Greenville in 2026 and I have the inside scoop cause I do this for a living and so I have a 10 point guide here that I want to go through and I might make this a an annual feature on the show and I'm hoping to do a home selling guide as well maybe next week we'll see you know I cover you know different current events that happen and so sometimes something will pop up that's like okay we need to do the episode on that specific event or weird things happen with mortgage rates which by the way are currently per Mortgage News Daily at 5.99 so we went back down into the into the fives again it's gonna take a lot more for to you know it's gonna take like the economy to really weaken for that to get pushed down much further than that in my opinion but that's great news right we really you know in the ideal scenario we wouldn't have them go much higher than the low sixes and so to have them sitting at 5 9 9 that is really really helpful if you're a buyer right now but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself and we're gonna talk a little bit about rates in this show so let's just get right into my 10 point guide to buying a home in the greater Greenville market in 2026 my first point that I want you guys to understand is that we are in a soft seller's market OK a soft seller's market what does that mean well let me start by saying this I have been repeating for a couple of years now that we are in a nobody market right not a buyer's market not a seller's market a nobody market and there's a reason for that it's because everyone's upset right usually if it's a buyer's market buyers are happy to a certain extent right often times buyers markets happen when the economy kind of is in the tank so that's not always a good thing but generally speaking you know buyers they have in a buyers market have tons of options they have tons of leverage they're happier in a seller's market sellers are happy they can get whatever they want they can sell a home sight unseen very quickly all of that over list price bidding wars all of those things sellers love for the most part all of those things well because we haven't had either of those dynamics going on it's been awful for buyers haven't had any options that they've liked it's taking a long time and sellers haven't been seeing the kind of appreciation that they wanted all of these different things have resulted and it just feeling like a nobody market everyone's upset every everybody feels like they're either not getting enough for the home that they're trying to sell or they're overpaying for the home they're trying to buy and I feel like that is shifting ever so slightly in the more in the direction of sellers but I'm calling it a soft sellers market because we're still not seeing we're still not seeing anything insane right we're not seeing a ton of crazy things happening and I don't again I don't wanna get up ahead of myself a little bit cause I'm gonna cover this later but we're not seeing you know tons of different bidding wars we're not seeing you know insane appreciation we're not seeing you know people buying home site unseen for the most part it but it is not a buyer's market buyers don't have as much leverage and it's definitely picked up and that's gonna be my next point as well it's definitely picked up and that that picking up benefit sellers right in terms of activity level in fact when I was if you guys didn't listen to last week's episode I had a little vacation a little 40th birthday hiking trip I did and I immediately knew as soon as I left I was like okay the market's picking up because my phone started you can just sense it right there there's just this little this little sense kind of like when you're watching a sport a sporting event you can feel the momentum shift and you know how do you how do you track that what even is momentum but there is definitely steam that you can sense in kind of the same way what is it how do you track it some of that we can track that's why I go over the market stats every month and because I don't want just what I feel to be my read on the market right cause that could be wrong I might have a good year when everyone else is having a bad year and the stats will parse that out for us but I'm hearing this from other people as well there has been a pickup in the month of February and that's what we're experiencing right now and that's resulting in it kind of going turning the needle a little bit from a from a nobody market a little bit more towards it being a soft seller's market people always ask me that is it a buyer's market is a seller's market what kind of market is it so there you go soft seller's market No. 2 here as I've already alluded to the market really has picked up tremendously in recent weeks but we could have a similar dynamic I don't wanna assume that this is going to be the entire year of 2026 right the hot season in in real estate is really it's really February like usually the middle of February through like Memorial Day it's kind of like the traditional like really really hot season and then obviously the prime season continues on until Labor Day and then that's really when we start to see it really start to tail off for the remainder of the year so that's kind of normal seasonality right we have that happen a lot last year we had something interesting where the spring season was really busy really hot and I thought oh man this is gonna be a crazy year and then it just died in the summer like around July the fourth Independence Day and July can be a weird month right it we see if I if I pulled up the market stats right now and shows you every July you would see that July does some wonky things a lot of people taking those end of summer vacations and all of that but that was a very unusual just a a huge steep decline in in activity in general that happened in the summer last year so that could happen again I'm not gonna say that just because the market has picked up a lot right now that that's going to continue on for the rest of 2026 however I will say this it's more likely to happen this year than last year because of where mortgage rates are right now right they're hovering like I said at 5.99% per Mortgage News Daily let me just look at you guys won't be able to see this if you're watching on YouTube I am just going to pull this up on my end and see what they were around this time last year around this time last year on February 20 so I'm recording this on February 24th 26 February 24th 25 per Mortgage News Daily they were at 6.87 so they were 88 basis points higher last year and they are right now that's meaningful that is very meaningful and that could be the difference between whether people are active this year or not and whether the activity level that we're currently having in what appears like is going to be a busy spring season if that continues for the rest of the year by the way if I do continue doing these 10 point guides as an annual thing I think that this will be around the time that I do them because this is when I can start to get a read for what's the market doing right if we don't have a big pickup in mid February or at least by late February that's a problem that that means that the market is gonna be really slow that's almost a guarantee that the entire year is gonna be slow the fact that it's busy right now is not a guarantee that it's gonna be busy for the rest of the year but if you guys continue to watch the show or listen to the show you will be on the front lines you will know what is happening number three everyone wants to do home sale contingencies right this is this is a this is a thing that we're running into a lot of buyers you know they don't have enough money or they don't feel comfortable buying their next home without it being tied to the sale of the home that they that they currently own currently own so it just feels like everyone wants to do home sale contingencies except for one party and that's sellers right sellers don't want to be doing home sale contingencies and that's not unusual right it's pretty normal but that tells you alone at least for me that this is more of a soft sellers market rather than it being a soft buyers market because if it were a soft buyers market sellers would have basically no choice they would have to be accepting home sale contingencies and I'm not saying it's impossible to get them to accept them I've had multiple clients that have successfully negotiated a where I've successfully negotiated a home sale contingency but you have to understand that sellers have to be sold on the contingency and that the contingency is going to be safe because that's a huge risk to take on if you're a seller right now you have to you have one more thing that can go wrong you have no control over that listing where that the that your potential buyer is selling you have no control of that if they overprice it you can't tell them that they need to lower the price literally the only leverage you have is baked into whatever contract and agenda that you have and you might and there are ways as a seller to protect yourself within the contractual language and agenda but a lot of sellers just they just don't wanna mess with any of that right understandably I don't as a realtor I don't wanna mess with any of that there's just a whole lot that can go wrong and so as a buyer you need to understand if you if you want to make a competitive offer on a home the best way to do that is with no home sale contingency and then if you really must do a home sale contingency and there are ways to avoid that by the way there you there are sometimes bridge loans and things like that that you can do in order to avoid a home sale contingency I'm not gonna get into all of that in this podcast that that could be like a whole show in it of itself but there are degrees of contingencies right if you're if you're making a home sale if you're making an offer contingent on a home sale that hasn't even been listed yet right the home has not been listed yet that's a very different home sale contingency than you're making an offer and you've got your home listed and it's already under contract and then you know you can go even further we've got the appraisal in we're through due diligence we're through all these different things like the more you've gotten through the further down the road you've gotten the closer you've gotten to the closing of the home that you're selling the stronger your home sale contingency is in fact I think you know a good agent would consider you know if I have a home sale contingency on a home that's already under contract and we're kind of through all the contingencies on that home appraisal due diligence all of that a good agent will see that and be like you know that's still a home sale contingency right that's still a big wild card but it's a pretty safe one and that's one I think that most agents would be comfortable with and for the most part I would as well I would explain to my clients pros and cons but that's a lot different than okay we don't even have this home on the market and that's what I'm running into a lot personally is people wanting to try to make offers on homes continue on the sale of their home they don't even have their home on the market yet and we've got to have a you know a heart to heart conversation about how to approach that because that it it's just it's a hard sell it is a hard sell there's only so much magic that I could do as a realtor in those situations because there's another knowledgeable realtor theoretically on the other side that is assessing all of this and saying you know I can't even assess your home sale contingency I don't know anything about that home I don't know what it looks like I haven't seen pictures of it what are you gonna list it for how many how many buyers are out there looking for a home like that like there's so many questions and so you just have to keep that in mind as a buyer number four and some this if you're in this market right if you're from Greenville you're gonna be like well yeah that's obvious but if you're outside of Greenville you might not realize this but the Greenville market is extremely sensitive to mortgage rates and this is kind of what I alluded to before where you know the fact that rates were a year ago 6.87 and now they're 5 9 9 like that could be the difference between us having a really good year in terms of general home sales and a really bad year and that is just because Greenville is an affordable market right people move to Greenville from outside of Greenville and they stay in Greenville because it is an affordable market affordable in terms of housing affordable in terms of taxes affordable from the standpoint that we have a strong economy all of that listen if Greenville was an affordable market if Greenville you know had home prices like San Francisco this would nobody would be moving here nobody would be moving here the affordability is a key piece of the draw for people when they move to Greenville and if you don't realize that you need to start to realize that you need to start to understand that that's why I talk about affordability so much in this show and so the mortgage rates really hurt our market now we haven't seen depreciation for the most part obviously specific neighborhoods some specific neighborhoods have but market wide we've not seen depreciation in our market even when rates went up to 8% at one point but did it slow things down oh yeah it slowed things down quite a bit you know near recession level activity in in some instances I had my first listing I couldn't sell early sorry late 2024 I it's been years since I've had a listing I couldn't sell and you know sometimes these sorts of things happen and again super duper sensitive to mortgage rates and so if we see more downward pressure on rates like if we start to see rates go down to you know five and a half I don't know at what point exactly that and I you know talked a little bit about this on the show where the different points would be definitely seems like around 5% is like a huge tipping point but at what point would we really start to see the momentum start to build is it 5 7 5 is it 5 5 or is it just that 5% number do we need to come down an entire 99 basis points down to 5% in order to really see the market kind of take off again and go from a soft sellers market to just a pure sellers market maybe we don't know but I do know that that the further rates go down the more activity we are going to see and so you need to be following that okay if you're if you're interested in where the markets going it's there's a really simple way to do that go to Mortgage News Daily and just look at what it says the aggregate rate is if it says you know if it says basically anything below 6.25 then the market is going to be you know basically in that soft sellers market unless it really starts to go into the mid to low fives then I think you can start to expect it to be just a pure standard sellers market No.5 here production built keywords production built not custom production built new construction is still cheaper than existing homes in aggregate if you're new to the show I've talked about this a lot this has been one of the biggest trends in Greenville real estate and that is it is cheaper to buy a new home than it is to buy a pre existing home that has already been lived in an insane development we've never had that happen before in all of the history that that we can look at least that we have data on in Greenville it's never happened until basically the past year and that's not even factoring in all of the incentives that builders are offering which are tremendous right a ton of incentives flex cash rate buy downs all you know upgrades all sorts of things that's not even factored in like even if they didn't have those things the price again on average would still be cheaper than the price on average for existing home sales insane and it it's continued I just looked it up right before I started recording I looked it up and it has held it con it has continued to hold for the past several months and that's something you need to be aware of now I've been critical of production built homes on this show because you know you go to one of these mega home builders and it's a volume game for them right they don't you know I don't want to say they don't care about their customers whatever I get in trouble for saying that but they're but they're very numbers oriented right and they should be they've got shareholders to speak to a lot of these are public companies they need to be concerned about the bottom line quite and if they're a public company they need to be concerned about that really first and foremost now providing great customer service building a great home what not is the best way to do that but it doesn't always play out that way and that's where I have concerns you know when it comes to my clients buying new construction so I will often times express those concerns to them not to talk them out of it I don't have any reason to talk them out of it in fact a lot of these builders are offering incredible incentives to Realtors now as well right they love Realtors again we had that stretch from 2020 through to 2022 where they didn't like us they love us again right because they need to move their inventory and they're willing to even pay us you know above market average in some instances now what's market average I'm not gonna get into that I'm not allowed to and there's really not a way to track it except anecdotally talking to other agents not to try to price fix or anything but just to hear what is going on we find out you know we have a listing we have a bunch of agents come through and ask you know hey are you offering this amount because this is what my buyer is under contract to pay me if the if the seller doesn't pay this amount so we find out things about you know commissions and compensation through various forms and builders are often times willing to pay more than that right now the way the market currently is and they should because it cost or it takes actually more time if you're if you have a good realtor it takes more time out of out of their schedule to help you with a with new constructions more meetings you have to go over paperwork you're not familiar with and I do that when I get those builder contracts sometimes they're really long I read every line and I'm not an attorney I always have to recommend to my clients that they have an attorney look over that as well but I can pick up on some things that as a realtor I'm familiar with that are either not standard practice or okay here's something that I want to flag for you things of that nature so there there's more there's more that goes into it and potentially more pay as well it just kind of depends not every builder is that way but long story short there are some concerns that I have when it comes to new construction when it's production built by one of these big you know national home builders need to be aware of that not too many of my clients are coming to me with the initial thought that they want to build for the most part they're coming to me saying I wanna buy an existing home something that's already built something that's on the market that I can look at that I can touch that I can smell that I can see and then at some point in that process they realize you know it's cheaper to just buy a new home why wouldn't I do that and again it makes a ton of sense except you've got to be aware of the pitfalls a home that was built 30 years ago mostly was built better than a home that's built in 2026 that's just the reality of the situation and it's not always the case 100 times out of 100 but it is it like 95 out of 100 yeah probably something like that and so that's something that you just need to be aware of number six property taxes have gone up I got reassessed last year but they are still relatively low to other areas of the country unless you are buying a an investment property or second home very expensive property taxes for second homes and investment properties basically the people that own those second homes and investment properties are taxed as if they are owning commercial property and they essentially subsidize all of the owner occupants the owner occupants don't pay nearly as much and so they have gone up but it's still when I'm talking to people at in other markets I'm hearing them telling me your property taxes are really cheap compared to what we're compared to what we're used to and they're currently in the process of working to give people 65 and older additional reductions off their taxes there already is one baked in and they're about to get even more discounts on their taxes you wanna know why they do that because it's an election year and you know who votes older people older people love to vote you know who they love to vote for people that give them tax breaks yes OK we're you're following here alright so that's what's happening and by the way if you're if you're not familiar with how property taxes in this area work we have reassessments every five years unless a sale happens and that triggers an automatic reassessment typically happens the year later so if you buy a house in 26 you'll probably get reassessed in 27 our taxes are paid in arrears so the property taxes for 26 haven't been paid yet and the reassessment you know if even if you bought an early 26 in my experience that reassessment typically doesn't happen until the next year so you wouldn't actually see for the most part again assuming they continue with the way they've been doing it you wouldn't actually see your property taxes increase until the end of 2027 if you buy in 2026 what that looks like let's say you buy a house for 500,000 usually the reassessments come in a hair below that they probably do that just so the people don't get angry at them so you know you buy for 500,000 it'll get reassessed at like 4 85 something like that more often than not so in case you didn't know now you do that's how our local property taxes for the most part work homeowners insurance goes hand in hand with property taxes right the two escrow items two items that are most typically paid for by the mortgage company in addition to the mortgage itself homeowners insurance is a problem okay I've talked about this before it's continued to be a problem we've had insurers leave the South Carolina market you know we haven't had any like major storms since Hurricane Helene came through here but and that was you know a year and a half ago at this point but we're still seeing insurers just really tighten things up not very sure what the solution is but I will tell you this if you're buying a home that has an old roof you need to talk to your homeowners insurance representative like immediately talk to your agent and see what their requirements are if they're going to have any issues with the roof because that's what we're running into more often than not some insurance companies are even saying if the roof is over 10 years we are not insuring it which is insane right a lot of these roofs are built to last for 25 to 30 years so to say if it's over 10 we're not gonna insure it that that's just a crazy response in my opinion and I'm I almost wish that the government would intervene and say they couldn't do that but I know what would happen if the government did that those insurers would just completely pull out and we would have even fewer insurance companies to go to so that's not an appropriate solution so unfortunately this is where we're at homeowners insurance is a problem you need to talk to an insurance agent pretty early in the process of buying a home to make sure that that you're good to go when it comes to that No.8 everything is overpriced right now and there is a good reason for this right most sellers are not motivated they don't need to be they're not in a situation where they're forced to sell their home a lot of them have really cushy mortgage rates two and a half 3% three and a half percent and so if they don't get top dollar for their home what I keep hearing is you know what I'm just gonna run it out or I'm not gonna move I'm just kind of stuck here golden handcuffs as some people call it golden because of how low their mortgage rate is and how probably how cheaply they bought their home for although in some instances I'm seeing people that that bought a home you know in a new construction neighborhood and then wanted to sell a year later and the builder lowered the prices on them after they bought and so just immediately diminished the value of their home and now their home is worth either less than when they bought it or barely worth what it was when they bought it and then you factor in all those closing costs and they'd have to come out of pocket they can't do that et cetera et cetera et cetera everything is overpriced and that is just the reality of the situation sellers are holding out for their numbers for the most part and it's a shame if you're a buyer that you're having to deal with this this is what one of the big trends that resulted in you know me calling it a nobody market before and it's still you know now a soft seller's market and but sellers still can't they shouldn't overprice their homes but they are they are that's just the reality of the situation they're trying to squeeze every dime and nickel out of every transaction and a lot of this is just because they expected a certain rate of appreciation they got used to a certain rate of appreciation for like three years and then that rate of appreciation stopped and it just caught people by surprise you know when you have I don't know exactly how many years it takes in real estate for like a trend to like solidify in people's minds but we had crazy race of appreciation for roughly three years and I can tell you for a fact that solidified in people's minds people got used to that and it came as a big shock a big system shock when that just the bottom fell out of that overnight and so that's why everything is currently overpriced No. 9 sellers are acting impulsively and irrationally and you know one thing I keep seeing over and over again is that you know you've heard the phrase bird in hand is worth two in a bush sellers are focusing on the two in the bush right they are they they're like and they think they can get both of them in the bush right get off that that shotgun and get the bird shot in there and take your best shot and hope that somehow you get two birds not with one stone but with one with one round or one shell of bird shot and that's frustrating right that's frustrating for me when I'm representing the buyer that's frustrating when I'm representing the seller because you know this is not the kind of market where you know if you you're not guaranteed if you turn down an offer that's kind of close you're not guaranteed or kind of close to what you're looking for as a seller you have you're not guaranteed at all to get a better offer honestly your odds are that you're gonna get a worse offer but this isn't a seller show this is a buyer show and so the reason why I mentioned this here is that buyers need to be prepared you can't expect a logical negotiation or and I've run into this a bunch of times for sellers to follow through on something that they haven't put in writing I've constantly talking to agents you know listing agents that are saying well here's what here's what my seller is saying here's what here's what they think here's what they feel and then it ends up you get you start negotiating in writing and everything that they said is different everything they want to put in writing is different than what they had told you and that can be very very frustrating and you just have to be prepared that sellers are impulsive and irrational right now they're just again they're trying to figure out what is the market like and why am I why is my home not worth as much as I thought it was gonna be worth and so this is what we keep having over and over and over again and as a buyer you need to be prepared for that and part of the value of having a buyer's agent I'm very pro buyer agent obviously I operate as a buyer agent but you know even on my listings if I have someone you know come to an open house that's not represented by a buyer agent I'm like what are you doing and maybe they're not like actively looking just yet but seriously get some get someone on your side you need someone on your side you want a new construction possibly buy new construction you think that you're gonna go toe to toe with the builder and get the builder to listen to you no you need to have a a an agent on your side the entire time the entire time especially when you're working with a builder that's a mega corporation you're gonna negotiate with a mega corporation okay good luck good luck and so kind of getting ahead of myself here or going off on a rabbit trail but long story short the way to protect yourself and to be able to get through all of this irrationality and impulsivity or I don't even know if that's a word but the way to help yourself is to have a good buyer's agent that knows how to handle that that knows how to gently push back explain maybe not gently maybe sometimes firmly but help to have help to explain to the listing agent hey this is irrational and here's why and here's why my client's offer that they're you know pushing back on actually makes a ton of sense for them and so that's something keep in mind there No. 10 I already alluded to this but bidding wars aren't as common as they have been at other times obviously they've not been very common the past few years at all but they do still happen in fact they were happening between 2008 and 2,012 and we had the worst housing crash of a generation multiple generations they we were still having bidding wars in Greenville not on everything only on a select few same thing as now it's not happening very often but when it happens they're often extremely aggressive you've got people really really fighting over you know it's a unique house and there's something unique about it it's more affordable it's got this feature it's got that feature whatever the case when it happens it's aggressive and what I keep seeing over and over again is in these multiple offer situations buyers think they can just get by with like a a full price offer and decent terms like yeah we're giving them what they're asking for right no in in in a in an intense aggressive multiple offer situation you need to be intense and aggressive and ask your agent what they recommend if and if they don't recommend being intense and aggressive you need to fire that agent okay like let's just be real here you're not gonna get that home I had a multiple offer situation a few months ago on one of my listings and that was great and yeah some of the offers were just like what you wasted your time don't waste don't waste your time don't waste my time you know I'm required to present every offer to my sellers I don't wanna present them here are two really really good ones and then five that are just like all the same just like at list price and you know they should have known to be more aggressive it it's just frustrating and it again it's just a waste of time for everyone so understand if you find yourself in a bidding war situation now if it's just one other person if you can figure out okay they just got one other offer okay that's different but if you're in a bidding war and the listing agent is saying they've got multiple offers coming through and there's a lot of showings happening at the house you know it's gonna be competitive you know it's gonna be aggressive you need to come through with a competitive and aggressive offer and there are a lot of different ways to do that obviously it's something I can help with I always do part of the advantages of working with a buyer agent that also helps sell our clients I see it from both sides so I can take a holistic perspective as opposed to some that are just buyer specialists that that never see it from the other side so those are 10 points to help you buy a home in the greater Greenville area in 2026 I hope that that was helpful for you guys thank you so much for watching and listening my contact information is in the show notes please like rate review subscribe to the show we will talk to you guys again next time!