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 to reach out to me for any of your local real estate needs and just a reminder as always there's only really one thing I ask that you guys do if you're a listener of the show or a watcher of the show on YouTube is that you just hit that little like button right YouTube has it very easy to hit it's a thumbs up button if you're on Spotify Apple Podcast or some other platforms you can leave a review leave a rating and all of those things I would appreciate if you leave a comment too I would try to monitor those and I will respond that's mainly on YouTube so please do that and I would really appreciate it so excuse me sorry about that we have a lot going on in state and state of South Carolina and US federal politics that are both influencing real estate and also have the potential to influence real estate so we're gonna be talking about the war in Iran and the impact of that is already having excuse me I'm sorry but first I want to talk about state level politics so I was in Colombia last week there is a Realtor conference what we call Realtor legislative meetings we have a similar conference in DC that happens in June but we had one on the state level in South Carolina just this past week here in March and great conference South Carolina Association of Realtors really did a good job with it but there's one thing in particular that I want to highlight from this conference that I think you guys will find interesting particularly if you or someone invested in our local political scene and that is we had a gubernatorial forum where we had four candidates running for governor that that were interviewed for about 15 minutes each and then there was a fifth Nancy Mace who couldn't make it but she sent in a a video which I did not watch because I had to use the restroom during that time but I heard that there really wasn't a whole lot substantial that came out of that video but regardless I want to discuss the four people that I did get to hear and just kind of give you from the standpoint of Greenville real estate and all of the show even though we're going to be talking about some bigger bigger topics than just Greenville real estate everything about this you need to think about it through a Greenville real estate lens because that's the lens that I'm coming at it from but we heard from the lieutenant governor Pamela E Evette I believe is how you pronounce her last name from Jermaine Johnson who's currently I believe in our state house if I'm not mistaken Ralph Norman who is a US Congressman currently in the state of South Carolina and Alan Wilson who is the Attorney General in South Carolina currently so it's a good group three Republicans and one Democrat Germaine Johnson being the only Democrat and I'll just lead with this Germaine Johnson is not going to win right we are not it's the state of South Carolina regardless of whether it should I'm not here to choose winners and losers South Carolina is very red right now politically and there is simply not a chance in the world that a Democrat gets elected as governor given the current state of the state but that being said it's helpful to hear from people on the other side of the aisle right even though you know we know that the election is gonna be decided at the Republican primary stage it's still good to hear what talking points Democrats are using and ultimately you know there there's a reason why I always want to see people running against even a shoe in favorite and that's because a we don't want shoe ins in any of our elections including County Council City Council we want these to all be competitive to bring out the best in people we don't want anyone to cakewalk into office particularly not for governor right and so even though I'm very confident that that Jermaine Johnson is not going to win come I guess November is when the election is the general election I still think it's important that we know you know some of his talking points and then that will hopefully improve the talking points from whoever it is that wins the Republican primary right assuming that that Mr. Johnson does win the Democrat primary which I'm not certain he's going to but anyway without much ado I'm just gonna go ahead and jump in here cause I'm kind of rambling Miss Evette Lieutenant Governor Evette I believe is probably she was the first one that came out I believe that she's probably the favorite and to me she is whatever a a change candidate is she is the opposite of that she is the candidate in my opinion that you elect if you kind of want a continuation of Governor McMaster's you know current policies right as it is she has served as his lieutenant governor I believe the entire time that he's been in office I'd have to go back and check that but as far as I know she has and not surprisingly she did not offer a ton of changes from the current administration in Colombia she and I think if you're looking for a change candidate she would not be the one like if you're not happy with the state of South Carolina right now I don't think that she's the one that you want to talk to or that you want to vote for that being said everyone I talked to seems to really like her and for most people she was either their first option or second option I talked spoke to several people after having after this forum was done just out of curiosity like who did you like who were you impressed with most people said she was their No. 1 or number two and so she talked about a few things we all these candidates talked about housing affordability infrastructure impact fees and insurance reform and with regard to Miss Evette what she said is that with regard to housing affordability she's focused on cutting permitting times and regulations she's focused on educating children to stay out of debt so that they can afford something when they graduate and I think that this is important she wants to keep growing the state of South Carolina and I say that that's important because that's actually a controversial talking point now in in in theory it's not controversial right everyone says oh yes we need to keep growing as a state but when the rubber meets the road of what growing the state actually means which means building more housing and having more of a population more wear and tear on the roads that's when people start to say well no we need to we need to keep people out of the state you know and then you know you'll hear people play both sides when it comes to growth she specifically said we need to keep growing the state I wrote that down as a quote and so I find that interesting with regard to infrastructure the department of transportation right was a big talking point right we've got all these issues with our roads she believes that that we can fix this with bring more technology to the dot I'm not sure I agree with her on that but she said that she also said we need a state master plan that we don't currently have I I fully agree with her on that we definitely need that other than that didn't hear a whole lot of specifics with regard to how she would reform the dot which was a little bit disappointing for me we talked about impact fees impact fees are fees that that a a state or local government will impose on a developer when you know they are subdividing out you know for a new subdivision and it's something that you it's a fee that you pay on each lot it's basically a tax and the Realtor associations against impact fees because those fees get passed down to the end buyer ultimately and they're much more expensive you know if it's a 5,000 dollar impact fee from the government to the builder by the time it gets passed down to the end buyer the home purchaser that fee has been marked up by multiple agencies now to the point where it's like 15 to 20 thousand dollars that makes a big difference you know if you're not a realtor you might not realize that a lot of people are like right on the cusp of being able to afford the home that they want and sometimes that extra 15 to 20 thousand dollars is the difference between whether they can or can't afford you know the home that they really need and so with regard to impact fees she really didn't answer exactly how she would handle them but she did express that she understood that those impact fees do get ultimately passed along to the to the end buyer so she understands which is important that's an important part of it a lot of people just are in denial particularly on our on our local you know and county level there's a bit of denial that impact fees do get pass down to the end buyer she understands that she understands the builders have a lot of cost too what she'll do about that she left a lot to be desired for that with regard to insurance she didn't have a whole lot of ideas there she just said that she would have the power to appoint the insurance commissioner which is one of the most powerful things the South Carolina governor has beyond that not really sure alright moving on to Germaine Johnson he I I really appreciated a lot of what he said and I think this is important why we have a bipartisan government because we need checks and balances ultimately and ultimately if you know if you're not familiar with the state of South Carolina most of the Democrats in the state are not progressive most of them are pretty moderate and that's just the result of how conservative the state of South Carolina is as a whole we don't have much room politically for super duper progressive politicians so most of them once they get to the stage where they're potential governor are pretty moderate and most of the talking points from Mr. Johnson were pretty moderate one so one thing I really appreciate is that he felt like the state of South Carolina and I fully agree with him right now is focused on a bunch of a boogeyman that don't exist and instead there needs to be a focus on crime mental health and infrastructure I think I think he hit the nail on the head there's a lot of boogeyman out there that are being focused in in the state house but also you look at county and local levels as well with regard to infrastructure he wants to offload roads from the department of transportation to municipalities and counties that are more familiar with those roads that are more capable of handling them etcetera I think that that's a fantastic idea personally now we have to obviously make sure that the counties and municipalities can afford to be able to fix these roads themselves so that's obviously a consideration but it's clear the dot is overwhelmed and you know they're backed out about a decade they would say less time than that but it's gonna end up being a decade from most things and so this is where you know we had that penny sales tax that failed in in Greenville County and one of the things that people didn't like about that penny sales tax was that it did this very thing it basically had the county taking control of roads that the department of transportation is technically responsible for and the reason for that is the department of transportation is probably never gonna get to those roads and so he simply was willing to say the quiet part out loud and just say yeah we need to actually do that how in terms of them being able to afford that the counties and cities and unincorporated areas gave no specifics on that permitting he said he wants to create an advisory council to try to find inefficiencies and fix permitting issues again not a lot of specifics hard to say whether that would actually go anywhere but that's his idea there with regard to insurance he sits on our state insurance committee and he is of the belief that that the government is going to have to force insurance companies to bring the rates down now that is an interesting proposal right basically take it away from the free market but he believes that insurance companies are extorting both homeowners and car owners and maybe he's right I haven't done a ton of research into that but I have been saying for a while that I thought and I've said multiple times in the show that perhaps the state of South Carolina at some point will feel the need to step in and create basically a public option for insurance particularly on auto and homeowners insurance and that is exactly what his proposal was so I you know I anticipated this becoming a talking point now it's currently a Democrat talking point it interesting to see if this would ever become a Republican talking point cause obviously public options when it comes to insurance tend to not be something that Republicans want but that was his solution for bringing down insurance costs is generally speaking again the fact that I said that that the state might start exploring this doesn't mean that I'm in favor of it but it's interesting to hear that now that's becoming a a mainstream talking point he talked a lot about the property tax crisis and he wants to eliminate what's called Act 3 88 look that up but that was basically something that happened two governors ago that essentially shifted the property tax code where more of the burden of property taxes were placed on landlords versus owner occupants and then the sales tax in our state was increased this was the only bipartisan agreement that we had in this forum basically everyone the lieutenant governor didn't mention Act 3 88 from what I remember but basically everyone else said that they are against it and for different reasons with regard to affordability he doesn't have a lot of ideas with regard to that he mentioned giving counties assistance to help homeowners with down payments etcetera I'm not really sure how you do that we talked he talked about short term rentals he wants the counties to have as much control of that as possible but to limit institutional investors which is interestingly a Trump talking point right now and so I like the idea of giving counties as much power for the most part however we do need to solve the issue of like if one county bans short term rentals that's a private property issue and then if you've got multiple counties where that have all sorts of different restrictions it's very not intuitive to most people when they're crossing from one county to the next and that arbitrary line when you're crossing from one county to the next might be the difference between whether you can have an Airbnb or not and so I you know I have mixed feelings on that he talked about data centers I thought this was interesting he wants there to be a state moratorium on data centers and he believes that data centers they need to figure out how to produce their own electricity how to build their own infrastructure etcetera I think that's a populist kind of talking point again I'm not sure that any of that would ever happen but as a populist talking point people are gonna hear that and like it moving on to No. 3 Ralph Norman current US congressman he had some of the most he and Germaine Johnson had some of the most specifics of everyone here and not surprising they're both you know experienced politicians and they can both run as change candidates unlike lieutenant governor Evette so Rob Norman he immediately started with rattling off he wants a he wants to correct waste fraud and abuse stop and stop growing the government he talked about having a department of Government Efficiency commission not very sure that that Doge abbreviated not sure that that's something that that people are gonna wanna hear about again after you know all the Doge stuff last year but nonetheless that's one of his talking points big on term limits he wants there to be a term limit Bill in our state I believe that we should do that as well talked a lot about tort reform and this is one of the issues that we have with you know insurance and specifically he said that currently trial lawyer trial lawyers in our state are picking the judges in our state and he believes that that's a conflict of interest I would agree with him on that regarding roads and bridges he says we're gonna fix them not a whole lot of specifics there educational standards is something he wants to focus on and basically that was that was how he started now with regard to housing affordability and inventory shortages he wants to put people on the Planning Commission who have common sense and don't just regulate developers into oblivion without actually seeing the big picture he wanted to talk to like actually get builders and developers into his office if you were governor and actually talk to them directly and figure out okay what are the regulations that are just fluff what things do we need to just make go away with regard to infrastructure he was mostly focused on finding the waste fraud and abuse in the budget and redirecting that towards roads and bridges not sure that that's gonna get it done but that was his talking point insurance he again talked about the appointment of judges he's focused heavily on the fact that that insurance companies are simply having to settle frivolous lawsuits because it's too expensive to fight it and then that ends up because they're essentially when you settle a lawsuit if it's a frivolous lawsuit you're losing if it's a lawsuit you should have won but you you're not even gonna fight it because it's too expensive to fight it you lost it and then that increases the cost of insurance so he rightly identifies that that's something that we need to fix that and he mentioned that South Carolina is one of only two states to let trial lawyers pick judges that's really bad yeah we need to we definitely need to stop that he talked about repealing Act 3 88 specifically he wants income and property taxes to come down and make sure that that we do a forensic accounting of our state government to make sure that we you know where all of our money is accounted for since that's been an issue recently with regard to short term rentals he didn't have a lot of specifics he said he wants people to have private property rights but also he's in the hotel business which is interesting so he said he wants to make sure quality and standards are high so that Airbnb's are not a drag on neighborhoods but he didn't really elaborate further on that so that's a little bit you know again it's a little bit of a populist talking point like yeah you know people talk about short term rentals being a drag on their neighborhood but what does that even mean and how do you easily fix that it's not easy to fix something like that you're gonna have inspections mandated you know government inspections done on Airbnb's I don't really like that you know he didn't suggest that but I'd like to know exactly how that would happen what specifics he would do all right moving on to number four Attorney General Alan Wilson he focused heavily on the fact that the government doesn't create prosperity and we shouldn't try to utilize the government in that method and or for that he said the government creates conditions for prosperity but it's private markets that do that similar to how you know refs don't play the game but refs create the environment for a game to be played referees and that's what the private sector is the private sector are the teams actually playing the games and so in his opinion when something is wrong in our economy that's a government problem not a free market problem which some people will disagree with him on that but that's what he said on permitting he simply said we're antiquated in our government systems we need to come up to speed on permitting with regard to insurance he focused heavily and of course he's the attorney general so he knows a bit about lawsuits he said that construction defect lawsuits need reform this is an interesting point that a lot of them are just frivolous lawsuits that people you know when a when a home is built and then you know later it's perceived that there are issues they just go after the builder they go after everyone and he's said he's seen a lot of frivolous lawsuits and that's just causing the cost of insurance for developers to go up which then gets passed along to the end buyer so that's a great point he was the only one that made that point he said these lawsuits have gone from 65 a year loosely speaking in our state to 400 a year in more recent years so that's a huge uptick and of course we need to keep developers accountable but if lawsuits are truly frivolous those need to go away talked about liquor liability as well we've talked about that on the show he didn't really have any obvious solutions for that but is aware that that's an issue he also wants to repeal Act 3 88 and replace it with something more fair and equitable didn't go into a lot of discussions on that with regard to affordability he correctly identified that the demand is there but the supply isn't and he believes that we need to focus on counties and building in counties that don't have as much housing in them so he said 90% of South Carolina citizens live in 50% of South Carolina counties and that we need to create more opportunity in in those other in those other counties but again not a whole lot of specifics I'm not really sure how he would go about doing that and of course those other 50% of counties most of the people in those counties want to keep them undeveloped and so that could be an unpopular proposal even if it makes sense on the surface with regard to short term rentals he said the state has a role but not really anything beyond that he didn't really go into specifics what that role looks like or how that would work with counties and with regard to with regard to growth he wants to bring Opportunity Zone opportunity zones on the state level that's a federal program he wants to make that a state level program too and wants to ensure that we don't lose the character of our communities which of course with regard to growth nobody wants us to lose the character of our communities but at the same time you know that argument can mean a lot of different things people were against Falls Park in Greenville they were against the bridge you know going across the park and look at what that is now like nobody would say I'd rather have that that big old road that went through Falls Park and covered over the falls I'd rather have that then this awesome single hung suspension bridge that pedestrian suspension bridge that allows you to walk over and look at these beautiful falls nobody says that anymore but people 25 to 30 years ago were saying that they were saying we would rather have just a road cut through there that we drive on it's a people literally said it's a good bridge why would you get rid of it and so that's where the character argument does go both ways I yeah that that's all I'm gonna say about that alright so we'll cover this more at some point in the future most likely but for now that's a quick little if you're curious about what's going on and if you want kind of a jump start on the on the primaries for South Carolina governor it's a big one right we've not had a true governor primary in quite some time and so it was nice to get an inside scoop and see some of these people in person in Columbia last week now let's pivot to federal I've got no notes I'm just doing this off hand off the top of my head right now but we have obviously a a huge thing going on right now where there is a the war with Iran or whatever you want to call it conflict to me it's a war I I don't see how you can not call it a war even though Congress has not declared war yet we're functionally using war powers and this is what I'm just gonna cut to the chase this is not good for real estate there's nothing positive about this for real estate immediately in the aftermath of you know this war happening bond yields which we talk about quite a bit on the show because that impacts directly mortgage rates bond yields initially went down but then what happened is oil prices started to go way up and then inflation and job data came in and that was all just kind of like pointing towards the fact that probably more rate cuts are not coming in the future and perhaps even rate increases might be coming in the future nobody wants to hear that and so then we saw Treasury yields shoot back up not in a crazy way to be honest it was actually I have been kind of surprised even as I'm recording this on today on March 9th we've now had a few days where treasure yields have come down a little bit from their peak they kind of peaked out around 4.15 at least end of day on the 5th that's where they were at and then they have come down you know as I'm recording this they're 4.125 and you know the real estate market that's can withstand if those treasure yields don't go up tremendously higher than that the real estate market can withstand that cause what that's done with regard to mortgage rates is that's caused the 30 year fixed rate mortgage to go from you know I told you guys it was down around 5.99 it's now gone back up in the past a week or so to currently sitting at 6.17 per Mortgage News Daily and so that's not great from the standpoint of the housing market but it's also not terrible now if we saw rates go over I think probably like 6.3 that could be bad right that's we I really want to see these rates below 6.3 otherwise we could really start to see the market contract in a way that would be negative for both buyers and sellers so we don't want that but we've got unemployment ticked up 4.4% not great inflation is picking up and projected to pick up even more because now the cost of oil and gasoline is going to go up that's gonna cause inflation to go up as well is it quote unquote transitory inflation maybe but maybe not as well we've Learned that transitory it is not exactly what you know it doesn't mean exactly what people have said it's going to mean and really the main concern here is how long is this conflict going to drag on because again if this was just you know gonna be a week or two really I wouldn't even be talking about this but there's a lot of projections out there and even the president himself has said it Israel has said similar things that this is gonna be a multi month conflict potentially and we don't know exactly what that's going to do but if we see the cost of gasoline just really skyrocket and it's gone up quite a bit the past few days but it still hasn't reached the level that it did when Russia invaded Ukraine but in theory this should actually have much more impact on the flow of oil and gasoline than the Ukrainian conflict and so I'm not sure if it's being priced in as much as it should and so that's what I am concerned about if traders are just kind of assuming that all is gonna be OK but all is not gonna be OK we could very quickly see treasure yields go way up we could see mortgage rates go way up we could see mortgage rates go up because of not just because of Treasury yields or Federal Reserve decisions causing it to go up we could see you know the spread between the 10 year yield and the 30 year fixed rate mortgage widen it has shrunk in recent months we've talked extensively about that that's been the main reason why mortgage rates have come down if our if the spread between the 10 year Treasury and the 30 year fixed rate mortgage was what it was just a few years ago rates would be in the mid sevens right now as it is they're in the low sixes and so we're all very grateful for that we don't need the low the mid sevens that would be awful for real estate around here in particular but long story short there's just a lot of global uncertainty right now and that is not good for real estate anywhere in the country but in particular in Greenville where affordability is so much of a part of this market that you know if rates start to go up that's going to really be a drag on the spring and summer selling and even buying season right cause you know even from a buyer standpoint if sellers decide they're not gonna list their home because they don't like you know the environment for whatever reason they're concerned about the economy they're concerned about the global unrest all of that then that means less supply for buyers to potentially be able to purchase so there's a lot to consider with regard to all of that and I'm certainly no expert on any of this but I am watching all the markets and seeing what all happens and right now there's not a lot of optimism let me say it that way you look at people that that that study the economy that focus on real estate in general not a ton of optimism with regard to how this war is going to affect things and so really what we all hope for ultimately here is that that war gets wrapped up very quickly mostly most importantly in order to save lives but then secondarily so that we can obviously not have disruption in every aspect of our lives here in the US from the standpoint of how this disrupts the economy so a lot to a lot to cover there and I hope that that conflict ends quickly that we get a nice ceasefire and that we have peace in that area would be really nice cause it's chaos right now I had no idea as a complete side note it shocked me that Iran has been attacking Persian Gulf countries that I like I understand the play on their part they're trying to turn the Persian Gulf against Israel and the US but it's very it's very interesting there's a lot of interesting things apparently back door deals between Saudi Arabia and Israel I never would have anticipated that so it's crazy times right now crazy times and nobody knows what is next but I'm hoping again the one thing that I'm hoping is because it's a midterm year I that you know Republicans are going to want all of these things to be wrapped up this year like this is the worst thing if you're a Republican running for office this year this is the worst thing for you because it's unpopular with both parties neither party wants a new war in terms of voters and it it's like it's causing inflation to go up it's causing you know and listen the price of gas is known as a single issue that swings elections and it's a crazy thing but people know when they go to the pump a lot of people measure how the economy is doing by how much it costs to fill up their tank is that a simple way of assessing it by those people yeah obviously that's a very simplistic way of doing it but that's the way people think and so you've got gas prices taking off Republicans are not going to be happy about that Democrats are going to use this all day every day for as long as they can if this bleeds into the midterms so that's my that's the one thing that I'm hoping is that there's some checks and balances built in on the basis of that this is a midterm year but not a clear off ramp from what I can see from you know ending this conflict at the moment but I'm just a realtor so who knows I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to global conflicts I just have a platform and I just pontificate on here so hope you guys appreciated that let me know if you have any questions or concerns we'll certainly be covering not so much the Warren around I'm not gonna be covering that unless you know there's some trickle down effects with regard to real estate but with regard to what's happening in our state that will certainly have a direct impact on our local real estate and the governor's race and all of that definitely impacts us so stay tuned I hope to provide for you guys more content cause I track this stuff very closely and there will be a lot more here in the future although it'll probably be quiet for a bit right cause the midterms I think are in June and so this isn't something I'm be covering every week or every month or anything like that but just as the need arises I will so thank you guys so much for listening please like rate review subscribe and go to the show notes if you need a realtor in the Greenville area and we will talk again next time!