It’s December—and with it comes the holiday season!🎄🎅🏼⭐️
Be sure to check out the 32nd Annual Festival of Lights on James Island—it’s always a must. ⭐️ Of course, a few miles up the road at Brookgreen Gardens is the fantastic Night of a Thousand Candles. (Fortunately, it’s more than just one night. But be sure to get your tickets early. 🎟)
Two other holiday events worth mentioning are the Holiday Lights Driving Tour in Moncks Corner and the Festival of Trees at the Visitors Center in downtown Charleston. 🎄🎄🎄
And keeping to true Southern tradition, don’t forget to have your collards and hoppin’ john on New Years Day. 😎🥂🍾🎊
Here is your December calendar of events:
1: An Evening with Chevy Chase, N Chas PAC
2: Tree Lighting in Marion Square
3: Hanahan Tree Lighting
3: Town of Moncks Corner 28th Annual Tree Lighting
4: Town of Moncks Corner Nighttime Christmas Parade
4: Cirque Dreams Holidaze, N Chas PAC
4: Holiday Swing, Charleston Music Hall
4: Ranky Tanky Outdoor Concert, Visitor’s Center Bus Shed
5: George Thorogood, Charleston Music Hall
5: City of Charleston Holiday Parade
5: Under the Streetlamp, Gaillard
7: The Hip Hop Nutcracker, Gaillard
11: 30th Reindeer Run
11-12: Hairspray Musical, N Chas PAC
11: 4th Annual Ugly Sweater 5k Dash, Summerville
11: Charlton Singleton’s Holiday Spectacular, Chas Music Hall
11: 31st Annual Folly Beach Christmas Parade
11: Holiday Parade of Boats
12: Summerville Christmas in the Pines Parade
12: 26th Annual Christmas Light Parade and Festivities, Patriots Point
16-22: The Charleston Christmas Special, Chas Music Hall
17: Charleston Opera Theatre’s Holiday Spirits Concert, Firefly Spirits
18-19: Shen Yun, N Chas PAC
19: Candlelight Orchestra Christmas Concert, SC Society Hall
20: Christmas Classical Kids Concert, CofC Sottile Theatre
22: A Drag Queen Christmas, N Chas PAC
22-23: CSO Holiday Pops, Gaillard
29: Blue Dogs, Chas Music Hall
31: New Year’s Family Celebration at Kiawah
31: Flip Flop Drop, Folly Beach
As always, if we missed any events or you have an event you’d like added to the calendar, please let us know!
RECAP: The Charleston Real Estate Market
A healthy housing market is driven by economic growth and development—and the Holy City has a lot of it going on. Here’s some excellent examples:
Charleston has been recognized as the 5th fastest growing city for entrepreneurs in the US—Linkedin News noted a 34% growth.
Mount Pleasant landed the #22 spot in the Top 50 Best Small Cities for Retirement by SmartAsset, a financial information website.
The South Carolina Film Commission looked statewide and selected 3 indie filmmakers for the Indie Grants Program, including North Charleston local writer and director, Craig Tow.
Beginning on April 7, 2022, Sun Country Airlines will begin flights Thursday and Sunday from the Charleston International Airport.
Blackbaud, a locally based cloud software company, has made a 6-figure investment in local students by providing paid summer internships to Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Lowcountry.
The Boeing Company and Charleston County Schools recently announced a $1million investment in the MUSC Boeing Center for Children’s Wellness to include resources geared towards addressing children’s mental health.
Six internships for the Teen Science Ambassador Program for MUSC have been made possible through a grant. Open to students in underrepresented STEM fields, it will run from February to April and provide dinner, travel assistance, and compensation. These internships might become a valuable asset when Barzan Aeronautical, an aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems company, opens shop at the John’s Island Airport, where they will engineer and manufacture unmanned aircrafts. Operations begin in late 2022.
The Charleston real estate market is still doing terrific. Supply issues continue to plague the real estate industry as there are more buyers than available homes. As expected, this continues to drive prices upward.
While the median sales price in Charleston at the end of 2020 was fantastic—around $306K—it now stands around $350K. This is a big increase in real estate for one year (14%). And while we set record sales in 2020 with almost 21K residential units sold, it’s becoming likely we will surpass 22K in 2021. These numbers are true of most real estate markets across the country.
Charleston ended October with a 13% gain in transactions year-to-date, versus the same period in 2020. It’s likely there would have been even more sales if we had the housing inventory to meet the demand. Overall, the second half of 2021 has not kept up with the second half of 2020 due to this lack of inventory. While we still had around 3,500 active listings during the 2nd half of 2020, we now have less than 1,700—which is incredibly low.
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