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Greenville News:
Greenville makes list of Top 20 housing market>>
The Greenville-Mauldin-Easley metropolitan
area is expected to be one of the nation’s “front-runners” in
the housing recovery this year. Builder magazine’s
online version ranked the Greenville-Mauldin-Easley metropolitan
statistical area 19 in its listing of top 20 healthiest
markets in the nation for 2010. Greenville was cited for,
among other things, affordable housing, strong population
growth and its position on Interstate 85 between Atlanta
and Charlotte. Nick Sabatine, chief executive officer
of the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors, said
the article states what people in Greenville have already
known but what other areas are now finding out. “This
is a healthy housing market,” Sabatine said. “We
didn’t have the tremendous declines that other markets
had, so we’ve been pretty healthy all along. We just
remind everyone that it’s going to be a slow, steady
recovery, but it’s going to recover.” Micheal
Dey, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association
of Greenville, said he would like the region to be in the
top 10, but the ranking at 19 “tells me we still
have some challenges we’re being faced with in the
Greenville market, compared to some of the other markets
in the Carolinas.” Dey said the report also
shows that Greenville didn’t have runaway value appreciation
and has been a relatively stable marketplace. “We
certainly built more houses than the market was demanding
for a while, but compared to some of the other markets
in the country, we were very conservative here,” he
said. “The marketplace has absorbed the product here
relatively quickly, which is good news.”
Building permits from the fourth quarter
of 2009 were one of the factors the magazine used for its
ranking. Greenville had a 13 percent increase in total
building permit activity in the fourth quarter of 2009, the
article said. The Greenville-Mauldin-Easley area had
1,591 building permits in 2009, the article said. It is forecast
to grow to 1,918 this year. Bob Mihalic, spokesman
for Greenville County, said while there has been some improvement
in county building permits during the first two months of
this year, “it usually takes a couple more months of
growth to truly indicate that there’s some positive
news out there.” The Greenville-Mauldin-Easley
area was one of seven “relatively hot markets” in
the Carolinas that accounted for seven of the magazine’s
top 20 listings. The Myrtle Beach-North Myrtle Beach-Conway
area ranked 15 on the list, while the Charleston-North Charleston-Summerville
area came in at fifth. Mark Nix, executive officer
of the Home Builders of South Carolina, said Charleston has
done a very good job at bringing jobs to the market, especially
with the new Boeing plant and its ripple effects. Nix
said Myrtle Beach, a “mecca” for tourism, is
continuing to attract a lot of new residents from other parts
of the country. He said getting people happy and thriving
in South Carolina is tied to jobs, quality of life and affordable
housing. Builder magazine’s market research arm,
Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, expects employment in Greenville
to show a 1.1% gain in total employment this year.
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