Blog
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How to Apply for South Carolina’s 4% Legal Residence Property Tax Rate
The 4% vs. 6% property tax gap in South Carolina isn’t automatic, you have to apply for it, and the paperwork trips people up. Here’s exactly how to qualify, apply, verify it worked, and fix it if it didn’t.
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Moving to Columbia, SC: What Does It Actually Cost to Live Here in 2026?
Every online calculator gives you a different number for Columbia’s cost of living. Here’s what housing, income tax, property tax, insurance, and utilities actually run, using real local data instead of a generic index.
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Relocating to South Carolina While You Still Own a Home Elsewhere: How to Plan the Timeline
Relocating to South Carolina while you still own a home somewhere else is a different problem than a local move-up: two markets, a job start date, and a family crossing state lines. Here’s how to build a timeline that can survive a delay instead of blowing up the whole move.
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What Earnest Money Actually Protects (and What It Doesn’t)
Earnest money isn’t a random fee, and it isn’t automatically gone if a deal falls apart. Here’s what it actually protects, how it differs from South Carolina’s due diligence termination fee, and why the fine print matters more than the deposit amount.
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The Longer a Home Sits on the Market, the More Leverage a Buyer May Have. Here’s How to Actually Read Days on Market.
A home that’s been sitting longer than its competition may give you more room to negotiate. It also may not. Here’s what days on market actually tells you, what it doesn’t, and what you can negotiate besides price.
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Aiken, SC or Columbia County, GA? What Actually Changes When You Buy Across the Savannah River
The two sides of the river run on different rulebooks. South Carolina and Georgia differ on closing taxes, property tax math, and who your closing attorney actually works for, and those differences are big enough to change both your cash-to-close and your monthly payment. If you’re house hunting anywhere in the Augusta area, from Aiken…
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Closing Costs in South Carolina: What Buyers and Sellers Actually Pay
In South Carolina, buyers should generally plan on roughly 2 to 5 percent of the purchase price in closing costs on top of the down payment, and sellers should expect their largest line to be whatever compensation they’ve agreed to in writing, with a handful of smaller fees behind it. Those are planning ranges, not…
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Scout Motors, Blythewood Growth, and the Housing Market: What We Actually Know
Scout Motors is back in the South Carolina news this week, but if you only caught the headline about another $150 million tied to the Blythewood project, you could pretty easily walk away with the wrong impression. So, let’s separate what actually happened from what it means for Scout Motors, Blythewood, and the housing market…
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Most Midlands Buyers Have No Idea These Homebuyer Assistance Programs Exist
There are 2,746 homeownership assistance programs in the United States right now. That is not a typo. Down Payment Resource’s Q2 2026 Homeownership Program Index counted 67 more programs than just one quarter earlier. Of those, 1,696 are available to first-time buyers, grant programs increased to 234, and 77% of the programs tracked were active…
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How to Research School Districts Before You Move
Zoned schools are determined by your exact address, not your zip code, not the neighborhood’s reputation, and definitely not whatever the listing description says in passing. If school district matters to your move, the only way to know for sure is to run the actual address through the district’s own attendance zone tool before you…
Savannah Hill, REALTOR® | SC License #134931 (Office #19968) — Jeff Cook Real Estate | LPT Realty