Mortgage Broker in Charleston, SC

The pandemic that seemed so wildly unpredictable at first has settled into a pattern. And this week’s 28% decrease in COVID cases in the Tri-county area appears to be part of it.

“There's this weird two-month thing that goes on. We all picked it up," said Michael Sweat, Ph.D., leader of the Medical University of South Carolina’s COVID-19 tracking team, referring to his fellow scientists. "I mean, it's like every time when you get a wave, it goes up, peaks and declines in about two months,”

You can see it in his team’s graph tracking the trajectory of COVID cases in the Charleston area. The first wave began in June 2020 and came down in August. The second significant wave started in November and began to fall in January.

Meanwhile, people started getting vaccinated. Case numbers plunged. Then, in July 2021, the Delta variant began its drive toward a new pandemic high. It peaked and declined within two months.

“There's a lot of questions in the epidemiology world around what's driving the two-month cycle. Is it something innate to the viral situation? I think it may be people changing behavior, and maybe it runs through the people most at risk at that point in time,” Sweat said.

Unfortunately, he predicts it could happen again this winter. “It just seems hard to believe we wouldn’t have another wave. The signals from other places aren’t very reassuring. In the U.K., approximately 93% of people have either been infected or vaccinated. And yet they're seeing these resurgences,” Sweat said. “I think we'll get to an endemic situation, but I just don't think we're there yet.”

But we are at a point where the percentage of people diagnosed with COVID who end up in the hospital is declining, Sweat said. “I’m surprised we’re not hearing more about this. It was around 25% in the first wave, then in the winter wave it was around 15% — maybe lower. And then in this current wave, we’re down here around 10%. It’s all suggesting that immunity is starting to have an effect.”

That could bode well for a potential winter wave. For now, Sweat is glad to see COVID case numbers falling. For the week of Oct. 5 through 11, there were about 1,400 COVID cases in Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties combined, compared with almost 2,000 the week before.

The COVID tracking team also lowered COVID’s estimated impact on the Charleston area from “severe” to “significant,” because the number of reported cases per day per 100,000 people fell to 25. That’s the lowest it’s been since late July.

But Sweat, a professor in the College of Medicine at MUSC who’s also affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, warned against what he called magical thinking. “When it gets better, you have this very optimistic bias saying, ‘Oh, it's going away.’ I just worry that people see these numbers come down and throw caution to the wind. It's dangerous because it's what frequently causes those surges.”

Anyone who thinks COVID doesn’t really affect kids needs to know what’s been happening in schools and hospitals, infectious disease pediatrician says.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – Real Estate experts say the hot housing market is starting to slow even with many still looking to buy and sell. Experts say the biggest reason for the drop-off is due to a lack of available houses to meet the need.

Some experts predict the drop-off may not last long.

Realtors say what was once one of the busiest summers for real estate across the country and area has since cooled off. The problem, having fewer houses available for people to buy. They say even though things have slowed some, local experts predict the market cool down won’t last long.

Maybe you’ve seen fewer “For Sale” signs around your neighborhood lately. Real Estate agents say you’re most likely right.

“The only thing holding the market back is a lack of inventory,” says Stan Huff, a local Real Estate Agent with AgentOwned Realty in Mount Pleasant. “We still have a lack of inventory.”

After months of a booming housing market, realtors say Charleston is left with a heightened demand but little supply to meet the need.

“Our normal market is five, six thousand units – right now we have nineteen hundred,” says Huff.

Huff has been a real estate agent since the early 2000s. He says some areas like Downtown Charleston have slowed more than others but places like Mount Pleasant and high-end property on the beaches remain in high demand.

“Every section of the neighborhood or not neighborhood but the area, we’re seeing a hot market,” says Huff.

A boosted real estate summer market in part fueled by COVID-19, more people transitioning to working from home, and an urge to make a change. Huff believes real estate would’ve had a strong year even before lockdowns lingered.

“I think the pandemic in the short run heightened and made it move faster absolutely yes,” says Huff. “Do I think that we would’ve had a great market anyway, absolutely, yes.”

As the real estate market is slowing, for now, Huff predicts it could be short-lived.

“There are people who want to move that are within the Charleston area,” says Huff. “We will see a little bit of an increase coming up I believe.”

Huff says buyers and sellers should check in with realtors often and have an idea of where they’d like to live if you plan to move to accelerate the process until a dream home hits the market.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The document guiding future development in Charleston for the next 10 years has now been approved by the city council. The Comprehensive Plan for the City of Charleston lays out what should be built and where. It’s a framework document the city is required to produce every 10 years.

Development is not required to follow the plan, but it’s usually a strong factor considered when the council approves a project. The planning manager for the City of Charleston Christopher Morgan says the last comprehensive plan played a major role in how things look today.

“I think it was pretty closely followed. It called for a lot of emphasis on infill and redevelopment in areas where we already have key transportation routes and infrastructure. Hence you see a lot of redevelopments in the downtown area where we already have a lot of key transportation routes and infrastructure,” Morgan said, arguing the plan called for and kept urban sprawl down and persevered rural, natural areas on James and Johns Islands.

Morgan, who helped develop both plans, says the plan from 2011 was good but had some pitfalls. Not every project fit within the plan’s framework. Morgan says the development of roads with accessibility to bikers and pedestrians has been difficult because many projects are done with state or federal assistance.

“We put a lot of emphasis on how roads are built and rebuilt, and we probably have not had as much success with that. There was a strong emphasis on multimodal streets and it’s very difficult to get our street entities to upgrade their standards,” Morgan said, mentioning they had hoped there would be more walking and biking lanes by now.

Other goals were practically left out of the 2011 plan altogether. Morgan says they didn’t really consider flooding when making the previous plan, but it is now one of the focal points for the new plan.

“We had not had the storm issues in that time period that we did in 2016, 2017, 2018 in that era that really brought home to a lot of folks the situation that we are in with sea level rise, with greater storms and climate change that is very much in the front of people’s minds,” Morgan said.

The new plan primarily meets with approval from groups like the Coastal Conservation League.

“A lot of what’s in the plan is really positive,” Betsy La Force with the Coastal Conservation League said. “There are steps forward based in science thinking about climate change, sea level rise, flooding – really important considerations – transportation.”

However, La Force says it’s not perfect. She points to two areas they disapprove of – the development plan for the Cainhoy area and the plan’s support for the Mark Clark 526 extension project.

Of course, the comprehensive plan is just a framework and building projects will still need approval by city council.

“As decisions come up and it’s time to make these decisions on different developments, this is what city planners and decision makers point to and say, ‘well the comprehensive plan is recommending XY and Z, therefore we should move forward with this project,” La Force said. “That’s why it’s so important to send a strong message in the city plan of exactly how we want the city to grow "

The city council approved the new comprehensive plan on Tuesday. You can see it here: https://www.charlestoncityplan.com/view

Copyright 2021 WCSC. All rights reserved.

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A new master-planned development with nearly 1,000 homes at buildout is opening in Hardeeville near Hilton Head in southern South Carolina.

Offered by homebuilder Toll Brothers, the gated Riverton Pointe community off of New River Parkway will feature 15 luxury single-story home designs on oversized lots.

The community’s new home collections range from about 1,680 square feet to 3,500 square feet.

Built on wooded, lake, golf course and estate-sized sites, home prices start in the mid-$300,000s.

Amenities include a pool, fitness center, tennis, pickleball, bocce ball, driving range and social events. Future amenities include an 18-hole Nicklaus Design golf course scheduled to open in the fall, pro golf shop, clubhouse, café expanded fitness center and additional racquet sports courts.

Riverton Pointe is near U.S. Highway 278 and sits 14 miles from Hilton Head and 26 miles from Savannah, Ga.

Johnson Development Associates bought the 300-unit Monty Apartments on Mall Drive that were built during the past two years where a movie theater once stood next to North Charleston City Hall.

3: Number of new restaurants coming to Charleston area where former restaurants operated.

2,900: Square footage of new Opie drive-thru grocery store opening Sept. 28 in Mount Pleasant.

2,338: Square footage of new Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen coming to St. George in western Dorchester County.

+ Food and brew hall: The former Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant on South Market Street has been transformed into a new food and brew hall venue called Port of Call and will feature five different eateries.

+ Tea Farm annexation: The town of Ravenel wants to annex a huge tract of about 3,000 acres off Old Jacksonboro Road with a small part of it set aside for a new 400-unit housing development, but environmentalists say not so fast.

+ Dip in sales: Home sales across South Carolina dropped slightly in August as vacation season ended and school started back, but the dip was mainly because residential sales in August 2020 were strong following the economic lockdown a few months earlier.

Uptown North Charleston will include Topgolf, hotels, apartments, retail and dining in a mixed-used development that will take shape over the next year or so on International Boulevard near Tanger Outlets.

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — Recent data released by the American Academy for Pediatrics show that South Carolina has the second highest rate of COVID-19 among children in the country.

For every 100,000 kids in the Palmetto State, 14,600 have contracted COVID throughout the pandemic as of last Thursday, the report said.

Pediatricians in the Lowcountry are seeing that first hand.

“In the last couple months, COVID and children has completely changed, we are seeing an unprecedented number of children admitted with COVID, admitted with severe COVID, requiring our highest level of care,” said Alison Eckerd, Division Director of MUSC Pediatric Infectious Disease Program.

That rate of COVID cases among children in S.C. is almost twice the national average of 7.6%.

MUSC has seen almost double the amount of pediatric COVID patients in the last two months compared to the entire pandemic.

“At one point half of our PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) had nothing but children with COVID. At one point, we had three children on lung bypass or ECMO. We have never seen numbers like that where three children were on ECMO for the same diagnosis.”

Other hospitals in the Lowcountry are seeing it too.

Douglas Holtzman, Medical Director for the Pediatric Division of Summerville Medical Center, has experienced an influx of patients in the past few weeks as well.

“It's taking no prisoners. We're seeing tons more kids and they're sick. I mean, we're putting adolescents in the ICU with respiratory difficulty needing oxygen,” Holtzman said. “I've been doing pediatric emergency medicine for 22 years now... I have never seen anything like this in my career.”

One of the kids who has gotten COVID over this time is Wednesday Lynch.

Lynch has been diagnosed with longform COVID after contracting the virus in September of 2020.

ABC News 4 caught up with Wednesday and her mother Melissa in May. But since then her symptoms have gotten extremely worse including numerous hospital trips, and week long stretches of fevers around 102 degrees.

“I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy,” Wednesday said. “To go watch an honor roll student bouncing off the walls and the trampoline and a cheerleader and go down to having to explain where to click define their assignment and not remember how to do it when you give the instructions 15 minutes before. It’s scary.”

Another one of the effects of COVID in kids beside longform COVID is MIS-C or Multi-Symptom Inflammatory Syndrome.

Lowcountry doctors said that they have seen a huge spike in MIS-C in the last month. In fact, MUSC has had its highest amount of diagnoses of MIS-C in the last month.

“We want people to understand that things are different now, children really are at a much higher risk of acquiring COVID,” Eckard said.

This all comes at a time when South Carolina schools have reportedly had to quarantine around 35,000 students since the beginning of the school year.

“I'm hoping that parents knowing now that kids get very sick from it, and knowing that most parents really will vaccinate their children even if they don't get vaccinated,” Holtzman said.

The one thing to note about this study is that South Carolina deems a child to be anyone under the age of 20.

Other states have lower cut off points for being consider a child such as 17 or 18.

But still children currently make up almost one quarter of the cases in South Carolina and doctors say vaccinations are still the key to stopping COVID.

“At this point with the numbers, it is probably a near 100% guarantee that most children in South Carolina are going to end up with COVID if they're not vaccinated,” Eckard said.

The vaccine is still not eligible for the 5 to 11-year-old age group, but Pfizer has submitted data to the FDA for approval.

For Lynch and her daughter Wednesday, these jarring numbers have been something the witnessed firsthand, and they have a cautionary message to other parents in the low country.

“Kids do get it. And the pandemic mitigations, masks, hygiene. They do work. It's scientifically proven.”