05/06/2023
I was interviewed by the Post & Courier recently about Park Circle. I've been advocating for Park Circle for 15 years now, long before it was trendy and expensive.
Many of my clients who I introduced to the area are now sitting on a lot of home equity due to their house increasing in value.
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Park Circle: Something old, something new
By Barry Waldman Special to The Post and Courier
Apr 15, 2023
Attention funky young professionals: the hot new place to live in the Lowcountry – or maybe it’s not so new – is North Charleston’s Park Circle. It’s like living in downtown Charleston, with walkable access to restaurants, bars, parks and beautiful old houses, but without the added comma in the home price.
Here’s a bonus: it’s much more central to most of the Lowcountry, so that getting to many of the big employers and many of the area’s important locations and attractions beyond the Charleston peninsula, is so much easier. That includes the airport, Charlestowne Landing, Cypress Gardens, Middleton Plantation, Summerville’s Flowertown Festival and Lake Moultrie.
While North Charleston may have a bad rap, Park Circle is a lovely oasis, separate and distinct from the industrial areas. And while its provenance can’t match historic Charleston’s, it does boast a fascinating century-old history that reverberates even today.
In fact, the public TV show, This Old House, named Park Circle one of the South’s Best Old Neighborhoods a decade ago. Take that, Avondale and Mt. Pleasant’s Old Village!
Founded in 1912 by the North Charleston Lands Corp. and one of the South’s first landscape architecture firms, P.J. Berkmans Co. of Augusta, GA, Park Circle was a planned, self-contained community brd on the Garden City movement that highly valued the community-building value of parks. The original street grid encompassed the circular park that remains its keystone today, surrounded by homes. This area comprised the bulk of North Charleston when the city first incorporated in 1972 and was originally envisioned as a working-class neighborhood for employees of the Naval undefined and nearby industry.
While the Naval undefined closed in 1995, the four-block stretch of East Montague between Spruill and Virginia avenues experienced a Renaissance, sprouting cool restaurants, hipster coffee shops, brew pubs and retail businesses. With investment from the City of North Charleston, which tore down dilapidated buildings, repaired sidewalks, installed turn-of-the-century street lighting and added plantings, East Montague now serves as North Charleston’s historic district.
With the Naval undefined gone, a new kind of resident began moving in – the young, upwardly mobile professionals with enough money to upgrade and gentrify. They eschew the suburbs of Mt. Pleasant and the family-centered neighborhoods of West Ashley, and might not have sufficient savings to buy homes there anyway. They dig the nightlife at area bars, the trendy restaurants, the plethora of parks and the neighborhood feel. Unlike real urban core life though, owning in Park Circle means your possessions include an automobile. Part of the allure is the proximity to I-26, 526 and major streets like Spruill Ave., which becomes Meeting Street after it meanders down The Neck area into Charleston.
An automobile is also the solution to the biggest problem with life in Park Circle: the food desert. “Lack of a grocery store is an issue,” said Darragh Doran, a real estate agent with The Boulevard Company. “It’s one of first things I tell people. You’re probably going to end up grocery shopping on your commute because there are no big supermarkets there.” The closest supermarkets are a Bi-Lo and a Food Lion, generally not the preferred shopping experiences of Yuppies and D***s forking over half-a-million dollars for a house.
The housing market in Park Circle has reflected the rest of the scorching Charleston metro the last two years, but even hotter. Demand outstripped supply during Covid and in its immediate aftermath, prices skyrocketed, with the average momentarily peaking above $500,000 in Park Circle. As mortgage rates have leaped over the last year, demand has shrunk and the overall market is closer to balance between supply and demand. Prices have eased, with the median price in February down to $455,000 in Park Circle, though still 12.6% higher than the previous February.
Like the rest of the local real estate market, sellers are no longer juggling multiple offers above asking price. Redfin calculates that the average sale in Park Circle was worth a couple of percentage points below asking price in February.
Compared to the overall Charleston metro, Park Circle prices have grown twice as fast – to well-above market median. But compared to other desirable areas, Park Circle remains a bargain. Median home prices are $875,000 in Mt. Pleasant, $600,000 on James Island and $1.9 million on the Charleston peninsula. Yet Park Circle is slowly catching up. In March, there were just six active listings and the average list price was $640,000. The average time properties for sale remained on the market was under two weeks. That has pushed rents up too: the average rent in Park Circle runs about $2,500, according to NeighborhoodScout.com.
In other words, Park Circle is unaffordable for most Lowcountry residents, but less so than other coveted locations. According to a Zillow calculator, a median-priced Park Circle home requires an annual household income of $125,000 to afford, almost double the median household income in the region of $66,000, according to the Charleston Regional Development Alliance. That affordability income is brd on a 5% downpayment and maximum home expenditure of 30% of income.
Indeed, real estate agents are seeing a lot of activity from investors who are buying Park Circle homes, not for themselves, but as rental properties and equity builders. Charles McIntosh, an agent at The Cassina Group, recently sold a rented duplex with two-bedroom, one-bath units for rents of $1250 each at 4630 Oakwood St. Both the buyer and seller were investors, and interest was high, with 12-14 showings on the first day and five offers for the property, McIntosh said. It sold for $525,000.
He said the renovation of the park at Park Circle and the expansion of Riverfront Park are big draws for that neighborhood. The park around which Park Circle revolves is being upgraded by the city to include an inclusive playground, inclusive brball field, nature garden, walking trails, a farmers’ market and more. “The only other place you can walk to that many parks and restaurants and bars is downtown Charleston,” he said.
The attractions of Park Circle have not been a state secret. The hip vibe has smoldered in the vicinity for two decades, but it has burst into flames more recently. Darragh Doran says he had to pitch Park Circle to buyers until three or four years ago because it wasn’t on their radar at first. When he showed them the neighborhoods, they discovered what had been, to them, a hidden gem. But today, clients are coming to him asking about it. “If a professional couple looking to live somewhere near downtown Charleston came to me 10 years ago, they would have gone to Wagner Terrace or Hampton Park. Now they’re too expensive. Park Circle has gone from being charmingly shabby to having its own identity,” said Darragh Doran.
Jesse Vickers owns the interior design firm JLV Creative and was familiar with Park Circle when she approached Doran about buying a house there. “It was one of the few areas in Charleston with a lower barrier to entry from a financial standpoint for investment,” she said. She purchased a home on a marsh and prefers it to her former downtown digs.
“I love the sense of community and that there is more diversity than in some of the more homogeneous areas,” she said. “I feel very grateful for all of the access to green spaces, a community recreation center and a nearby downtown area of thriving businesses and restaurants.”
Vickers is typical of Park Circle residents, says Nia Swinton-Jenkins, an agent for Carolina One Real Estate. Young people who want that downtown feel see the area as an emerging hotspot. They love the walkability of the immediate area and the proximity of everything beyond with the interstate three minutes away by automobile. Many of her clients are relocating to the area and get jazzed when she introduces them to Park Circle. “They will start by describing an area like Park Circle and say they want to live in a place like this,” she said. Then she shows them the area and they are hooked.
Park Circle is not for everyone, of course. For many area residents, life inside 526 is more convenient. They work downtown or want the less urban environment of Mt. Pleasant, West Ashley or James Island. Or they prefer to be farther away from the hustle and bustle – on the island towns and beach communities, or father north where they can buy big houses with big yards for Park Circle prices. They want their kids going to nicer schools than North Charleston can offer.
But for those seeking that downtown feel, real estate agents say, Park Circle is a great option. Buy in … while you still can.
