Last month, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that South Carolina grew faster in population than any other state last year.
“Fueled by a sizeable net domestic migration increase of 66,622, South Carolina’s population grew by 79,958 between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025,” the bureau reported. “The increase of 1.5% was the highest of any state and was down somewhat from its 1.8% increase in 2024.”
But even as new construction is adding more affordable options to the state’s overall inventory, the pace of growth isn’t the same everywhere.
And even with all that growth -- even, in fact, as supply has increased -- buying and renting in South Carolina is becoming less affordable -- if you take broad trends at face value.
Supply
In December, the South Carolina Association of Realtors reported that, statewide, the supply of homes on the market was 3.6 months – up from 3.2 months compared to December of 2024. A healthy market supply is typically considered to be four to six months, so South Carolina is close to having a generally accepted healthy amount of inventory.
This mirrors the national picture for 2025. According to Census numbers reported by The Urban Institute, inventory for existing homes nationally sat at 3.8 months in 2025. That has climbed back to 2020 levels; inventory hit a nadir in 2022 and has been steadily increasing as U.S. supply grows.
Meanwhile, through October, the latest numbers available at the time of print, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported 39,355 new private construction residential permits in South Carolina in 2025 – which puts the state among the highest producers of new permits per capita in the country.
Data compiled by Apartment List show that, with some fluctuations in local markets, apartment vacancy rates in the state largely held steady around 7% last year. At the same time, rents, averaged out statewide, dropped in the fall and have fallen, slightly, every month since.
Development
As the state continues to see more housing built, cities and counties around South Carolina are trying to figure out how to manage rapid growth.
In 2025, a trend among local governing bodies was to impose temporary moratoria on new residential construction. These pauses happened in small (but sharply growing) towns, like Fort Mill, in large (and also sharply growing) metros, like Greenville, and in entire counties, like Jasper (which extended an existing moratorium from 2024 last year).
So far in 2026 – which is only 6 weeks old – moratoria have been nonexistent, but it has been common for local governing bodies to vote down specific development projects.
This week alone, the Gaffney City Council voted down a 566-acre senior development project following immense public outcry; and the Carolina Shores Board of Commissioners denied a request to rezone a property in Myrtle Beach that would have built 119 homes on a redeveloped golf course.
That doesn’t mean new residential construction is not happening. Per capita, growth is occurring in Florence at a greater rate than pretty much anywhere else in the state. A Post & Courier report counts 677 townhome units alone are “in various stages of development” as of this week.
But local governments are mostly struggling to manage how fast growth is happening and how new growth is to actually look.
Some cities, like Laurens, have come up with novel solutions to these larger questions. In September, the City Council adopted the state’s first “pattern book,” which is, essentially, a catalogue of pre-approved home designs from which developers could pick to build in town.
But reining in growth has also become a major talking point among state legislators.
The state office of Revenue and Fiscal Affairs projects that South Carolina will have 6.2 million residents – about 600,000 more than we have right now – by 2035. State Sen Tom Davis (R, Beaufort) this week has been championing S-227, a bill that looks to set a framework for local governments that want to use “concurrency” when weighing development decisions.
Essentially, concurrency means that municipalities and counties could require developers to prove that any projects have adequate infrastructure in place before a shovel goes into the ground.
A companion bill exists in the South Carolina House, H-4050, and is sponsored by Rep. Spencer Wetmore (D, Charleston).
While these bills seek to build guidelines for local officials, concurrency measures exist in several areas of the state already – and are not just about infrastructure.
In January, the Lexington County Council voted to advance a plan to tailor a school concurrency measure that would allow officials to deny new housing projects if school capacity doesn’t jibe with what developers want to do.
The Planning Board will now review school capacity data from developers in Lexington County.
Affordability
As the state’s housing supply grows alongside its population, the question at the heart of it all is, is South Carolina an affordable place to live?
The nuanced answer is: Yes. Mostly.
A study on affordable growth by Rent Café, released this week, shows that affordable construction in South Carolina is moving at different speeds.
Between 2020 and 2024, Columbia added 1,898 fully affordable apartments out of 5,394 total completions — meaning roughly 35% of all new apartments built in the city were income-restricted, according to the report.
Greenville also grew its new-construction affordable housing portfolio, by 11.3%. Charleston, meanwhile, added 496 fully affordable apartments out of 29,452 total completions. That represents 1.7% of new construction, and affordable housing’s share of development declined compared with the pre-pandemic level of 2.1% in Charleston.
Both Greenville’s and Charleston’s numbers are lower than the U.S. average of 12.6% new affordable units per total completions.
It’s also worth noting that South Carolina has fallen out of the Top 10 most affordable states for homebuyers. Redfin listed South Carolina the 26th most affordable state in a 2025 roundup based on median home prices.
And even where homes might have been affordable in the state, numbers released this week by ATTOM Data Solutions show that South Carolina still sits among states with the highest foreclosure rates (one filing for every 2,351 housing units in January) and saw one of the biggest drops in equity-rich homes (meaning more underwater mortgages) in the fourth quarter of 2025.
For renters, Census and Apartment List data show that South Caolina’s median rent of more than $1,200 per month is on the high end in the country, in a state among those on the lower end of the median income scale.
That said, the National Association of Realtors gave only one state an A grade in its fall report on affordability by state -- South Carolina. But the majority of the state’s high ranking came because of increasing supply -- which developers and real estate professionals champion as the main way to attain affordability -- rather than the state’s actual affordability components.
