Roofing Contractor inNexton, SC.

If it seems like parts of Berkeley County are being invaded by new out-of-state residents, you’re only halfway wrong — or correct.

Almost half of new home buyers in Nexton and Carnes Crossroads — two of the most flocked-to master-planned communities in the Charleston region — are coming from places beyond South Carolina’s borders.

In 2021, this group represented 47 percent of purchasers in Nexton and Carnes Crossroads. The other 53 percent came from within the Palmetto State, with 70 percent of those originating from inside the Charleston area, according to data provided by the developers.

“It’s been that way from the beginning,” said Nexton spokeswoman Cassie Cataline. “Since we’ve opened, the percentage has been about the same – 50-to-60 percent of the buyers have come from South Carolina and the rest from out-of-state. I don’t know if it’s a price-point thing or what.”

The 5,000-acre Nexton property is expected to put about 7,000 homes on the ground with a population of about 17,500 at full buildout over the next decade. Over roughly the same period, the nearby 2,300-acre Carnes Crossroads development could have about 4,500 homes with more than 11,000 residents.

A common misconception among Lowcountry residents is that the majority of buyers are moving from either the Northeast corridor or Ohio.

“No, we are not being invaded by people from Ohio,” Cataline said with a chuckle.

Last year, the largest percentage of out-of-state buyers in Nexton moved in from North Carolina and Georgia, specifically from the Charlotte and Atlanta metropolitan areas.

The other top referring states were New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania as those buyers were made up primarily of retirees.

“It’s not just the home itself anymore that’s important,” said Roni Haskell, a realtor with Keller Williams, who has sold more than two dozen homes in the two mixed-use mega-developments. “Yes, the home and affordability are huge factors, but it’s also the neighborhoods now. More and more buyers are looking for the master-planned communities — what I’d call macro-communities — like Nexton and Carnes Crossroads.

“They don’t want to feel isolated; they want to feel like they are in the heart of things, but they don’t want have to go too far to get that lifestyle,” she added. “They want a community feel.”

Nearly 85 percent of buyers in Nexton were made up of either baby boomers or millennials, although there was a smaller percentage of younger buyers as well.

• 49 percent are boomers.

• 36 percent are millennials.

• 15 percent are gen-Xers.

Caroline Ayres, 29, grew up in the Hilton Head Island area and had been living in an apartment in Summerville with husband, Lee, since 2018. The couple wanted more space and went in search of a home in early 2020, finally settling on a property in Nexton’s Brighton Park.

“Everything is super convenient and anything we need is about 10 minutes away,” she said. “Summerville is close by, and we can hop on the interstate and get to downtown Charleston pretty quickly. There’s a lot to do, some great restaurants, some great walking trails, there’s green space, we have a dog park near our house, so everything we need is right here. Those factors were huge for us when we were making our decision on where to buy.”

Tucker Martinelli, 61, was stationed at the Navy base in the early 1980s and was familiar with the area. When his wife, Elizabeth, retired as a school teacher in the summer of 2020, the Charlotte coupled moved to Carnes Crossroads.

“South Carolina is a retirement-friendly state with some of its tax policies,” Martinelli said. “I knew the Summerville-Goose Creek area pretty well. We looked at some homes in the Del Webb section of Nexton, but we fell in love with Carnes Crossroads. We’re still pretty active, so we like to get out and do things. That’s very important for us.”

Ayers said the mix of families in her Brighton Park neighborhood offers a unique generational blend.

“We have young families with kids and without kids and also some retired folks,” Ayers said. “I think it’s an interesting mix because most neighborhoods are normally either young families or an older crowd. Nexton offers a little bit of everything to every generation and that gives it a real community feel.”

Nexton sold 576 homes during 2021, giving the community a total of 2,000 sales. At the end of 2021, Nexton had 1,675 occupied homes and another 250 sold and under construction, with 1,258 completed apartments and 602 under development, Cataline said.

Carnes Crossroads had 480 completed homes in 2021 with 57 under construction, 42 in the planning and approval stage and 823 apartments on the ground, said spokeswoman Julie Dombrowski of DI Development Co., the development manager for the project.

Cane Bay, another large housing development in that area of Berkeley County, did not respond to a request for comment.

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The runaway home market during the pandemic couldn’t last forever, and in January sales plummeted to their lowest level in 8 years across the four counties in the Lowcountry market.

Residential transactions fell below 1,000 for the first time since January 2019 and dipped to a level not seen since January 2015.

January is usually a slower month for home sales???????, but inflation, the higher cost of borrowing and a paucity of available housing stock contributed to the plunge in the Charleston-area housing market.

The developer trimmed an entire floor off a proposed apartment project??????? on the Charleston peninsula in a fourth attempt to win approval of the design, but the effort failed to sway the city’s Board of Architectural Review, who voted 4-1 Feb. 8 to defer a decision on conceptual approval and called for more modifications.

2: Number of new bagel shops coming to the Charleston-area from a Philadelphia-based company.

3: Number of Charleston-based sushi and sports pub locations in the Lowcountry after a new one opens on James Island by the spring.

681.5: Millions of dollars sought by Charleston and Greenville airports??????? from South Carolina lawmakers over the next four years to pay for expansions.

+ Under renovation: A new co-working site is in the works for downtown Charleston as a three-story building south of Market Street soon will be redeveloped as part of a larger project expected to start in a few months.

+ More multifamily: A 337-unit apartment development is coming to West Ashley after a $5.6 million land sale.

+ Setting a limit: Folly Beach votes to cap short-term rentals at 800 in closely watched election.

Charleston-based Perry Hospitality Group now owns Irish pub St. James Gate on the island that’s called “The Edge of America.” A new restaurant that’s familiar to many beachgoers is coming to the corner site about a block or so from the sand and surf of the Atlantic Ocean.

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State Rep. Jordan Pace says he, like so many others, felt the frustration when his internet and cable went out nearly two weeks ago. (WCIV)

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. (WCIV) — There is a question of should there be some sort of oversight on internet providers if and when there's an extended outage.

State Rep. Jordan Pace says he, like so many others, felt the frustration when his internet and cable went out nearly two weeks ago.

Read more: Several Home Telecom customers still experiencing internet issues 6 days later

"About 5 or 6, I think once the load on the network started expanding and people started coming home from work, started experiencing outages and inconsistencies," he said. "That kind of thing for several days in a row."

Pace knows for many of his neighbors, Home Telecom is their only option because big name companies don't offer services.

"In the bulk of my statehouse district Nexton, Carnes Crossroads and Cane Bay - those other options haven't expanded out that way yet," he said.

Pace says free broadband initiatives presented by President Joe Biden's administration and by politicians like Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina help out people living in rural areas, but they don't guarantee people in his district more options. He says the issue is too much involvement from the government.

State Rep. Jordan Pace says he, like so many others, felt the frustration when his internet and cable went out nearly two weeks ago. (WCIV)

"It makes it very inherently expensive for competitors to come in and operate because of the overregulation," Pace said.

Pace says South Carolina has a lot of expensive hurdles for smaller companies that may want to come in and create internet access.

"If they're out of state, they're going to pay 13.5% on all the equipment they own, all of the assets they have that isn't real property every year forever, unless they're big enough to have lobbyists to get them special deals," he said.

Read more: Home Telecom responds to recent internet outage

Pace says he's filed a bill to eliminate the state income tax to make it easier for businesses to move into the area.

"What we can do on the state level is make it as business friendly as possible," Pace said. "Lower that corporate income tax, personal business property tax. Lower the state income tax."

"Allowing entrepreneurs to bring about different alternatives (is) the solution," he continued. "Not more involvement or more scrutiny from the government."

Other internet providers were asked if they have any plans to expand services to portions of Berkeley and Dorchester counties. Xfinity says its working to do that now with its 10G network and finished an expansion to Moncks Corner.

The financial impact of the South Carolina tourism industry hit a new high in 2022, climbing more than 11 percent to $29 billion as the hospitality business continued to benefit from pent-up demand among pandemic-weary travelers.

The newly released figure broke the previous high of $26 billion set in 2021 and the pre-Covid-19 peak of $24 billion two years earlier.

Lodging revenue came in at $6.6 billion for 2022, also a new high, according to the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.

A deeper dive into the data is on its way, with a report expected in the spring. For now, state tourism chief Duane Parrish said that “South Carolina is on the right track.”

“The most amazing part is how quickly the industry statewide recovered from Covid,” Parrish said. “Partly because of the power of what I call cabin fever, but generally it was a time when many prioritized or rediscovered travel. Similar to the resurgence of golf and other outdoor recreational activities, travel and tourism just took off.”

The early numbers were released at last week’s annual visitor industry conference held on Kiawah Island. They’re based on credit-card spending on air travel, hotels and other hospitality services.

Three years ago, tourism’s economic impact posted a rare decline, falling to $18.5 billion as health-related restrictions and lockdowns for most of 2020 kept many travelers at home. At the time, Parrish said it was expected that 2024 would be the earliest the state would get back to its 2019 levels.

Instead, they snapped back within a year.

Parrish attributed the rebound in part to the fact that roughly 80 percent of South Carolina visitors come by automobile, not airplanes.

Also, the state doubled down on efforts to market itself in new ways starting in 2020 by leaning into the image of a place with no shortage of outdoor recreational opportunities, from golf courses to beaches. South Carolina got an extra boost of publicity from the 2021 PGA Championship held at Kiawah and a state tourism campaign featuring country singer and Charleston native Darius Rucker.

“Many of the events that returned in 2021 and 2022 came back twice the size with double the impact compared to their 2019 event,” Parrish said. “Festivals and events, big and small, across the state each contributed to that success.”

When 2022 rolled around, the Palmetto State was front and center again as it welcomed two televised PGA Tour events and was featured in several new films and streaming series. including HBO’s “Righteous Gemstones” and Netflix’s “Outer Banks.”

At last week’s conference on travel and tourism, Gov. Henry McMaster said his advice to industry leaders was simple: “Think big, be bold.”

“There’s there’s nothing that we cannot do with the assets and talent that we have,” he said. “When Darius says (in the ad campaign) ‘Come see why I love this place’ it resonates because there’s not another place quite like this. Other states have a lot of beautiful things, but they don’t have the combination of things that we have.”

Parrish said he expects another successful year in 2023, maybe another record-setter.

“We will continue to target those that have discovered South Carolina, and we want to bring them back,” he said.

Other experts have also shared optimism about what’s ahead. By most accounts, tourism is already off to a strong start based on the huge crowds that flocked to Charleston last weekend for the annual Southeastern Wildlife Expo, the traditional kick-off event each year for the industry.

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SUMMERVILLE — After years of traffic concerns, the town is getting started on a $21 million road project to improve Maple Street.

The road runs from West Richardson Avenue downtown to Nexton Parkway. The project includes widening Maple Street from two to four lanes just east of Shamrock Drive to West Richardson Avenue; adding turn lanes at all approaches to U.S. Highway 78; installing a traffic signal at West Richardson Avenue; and adding a new alignment from West Richardson to Parsons Road, where it will transition from three lanes to two lanes at the Parsons Road connection.

Even mid-morning traffic on Maple Street is notable; it becomes easily congested due to it being a two-way street. If one car needs to turn left, several cars will be held up waiting for the vehicle to turn.

The Maple Street extension has been in the works since 2015 and is one of many road projects the Dorchester County 1 percent sales tax will fund. The tax, which voters elected to continue last year, began in 2004 and has paid for improvements to several roads such as Bacons Bridge Road, S.C. Highway 27 and Patriots Boulevard.

The town of Summerville and Dorchester County are partnering on the project.

Officials said the project will help alleviate congestion in a town beset by traffic concerns as its population has exploded in recent years.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the town’s population has jumped from 27,752 in 2000 to 50,915 in 2020. The Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments projects the 2030 population to exceed 97,000.

“The Maple Street Extension Project will help alleviate traffic congestion and improve safety,” Mayor Ricky Waring said. “I am grateful for the support from our agency partners and the Dorchester County voters who supported the transportation sales tax referendum that helped fund this project.”

Up to $11 million of the project — including construction and engineering/inspection — will be funded by the town’s midtown tax increment finance district funds. Dorchester County sales tax referendum funds will cover the rest, totaling the construction costs to just under $21 million and engineering costs around $1.2 million.

“This project will be one of the first opportunities the county has to utilize funds made available to us through the continuation of the Transportation Sales Tax,” Dorchester County Council Chairman Todd Friddle said. “The Maple Street Extension Project is a great example of what can be accomplished when we collaborate to improve our community, and we look forward to working together again on future projects.”

Construction will start in April or May, with the goal of completion by spring 2025.

The company that’s building out a master-planned community in Berkeley County that’s as large as the Charleston peninsula is set to come under new ownership.

California-based Brookfield Residential announced this week that it is acquiring Newland, the developer of the 5,000-acre mixed-use Nexton neighborhood between Interstate 26 and U.S. Highway 176 near Summerville.

The sale of San Diego-based Newland, which is involved in 20 large master-planned projects around the country, is expected to be finalized June 1.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

A Nexton spokeswoman declined to comment on the pending sale.

“No major, significant operational changes are expected,” said Brookfield spokeswoman Krista Ellingson.

She said the company’s specialty is supplying homes and lots in constrained real estate markets such as Charleston, where a scarcity of homes on the market has dropped to less than a one-month supply, triggering bidding wars and pushing up prices.

“We just aren’t a homebuilder, we invest in land to build homes and sell to homebuilders,” Ellingson said. “We want to show our partners that we are in it with them.”

Bob McLeod, Newland’s executive chairman, said the Brookfield deal “will provide more opportunities for the continued development of additional mixed-use masterplans well into the future as well as give us significant additional vertical development opportunities.”

As of this week, Nexton has 1,266 occupied single-family homes in four subdivisions — Brighton Park, Del Webb, Midtown and North Creek. About 200 more are under development within the neighborhoods.

Nexton also has about 900 finished apartments in three complexes, with another 600 rental units on the way.

When build-out is completed in about 10 years, Nexton will have about 7,000 residences with about 17,500 residents. That will make it roughly equal to the current populations of Moncks Corner and Georgetown combined.

Brookfield Residential currently has no real estate operations in the Palmetto State. The Newland acquisition will expand its footprint to eight new markets, including Charleston, Raleigh-Durham and Wilmington in the Carolinas, and five other areas where both companies have projects in the works.

Last year, Brookfield’s revenue from home and land sales was $1.74 billion, about $200 million less than in 2019, mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the company’s annual report.

During the first three months of 2021, total revenue topped $444 million, about 30 percent more than the first quarter last year, when the coronavirus began to spread throughout the overall economy.

Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Brookfield Residential is part of Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management, which oversees investment totaling $600 billion and is headquartered in Toronto.

Newland oversees the development of the Nexton tract for North America Sekisui House LLC. NASH, a subsidiary of Japan’s largest homebuilder, bought the property in 2017 from paper maker WestRock Co.’s former real estate division for $90 million.