Simpsonville South Carolina is a great town. It's got many of the amenities of a large city, but it has a small town atmosphere. For instance, you can go down to Barefoot Annie's coffee shop on SE Main Street and enjoy a laid-back session with a local musician, or you can go walking on Main Street and look at the shops. Near the interstate, there's several major department stores, and everything in-between.

There are several nice parks in Simpsonville, including many sports fields (including the one I play ball at). Simpsonville Public Works does a great job of maintaining them, keeping them in top shape for everyone to enjoy.

Many great subdivisions lie in and around Simpsonville, with price ranges starting under 100,000 to a million. Just about anyone can find what they're looking for if they come to Simpsonville,

If you haven't experienced it for youself, try out the Big Little Town of Simpsonville, You'll enjoy it, and you may just decide to stick around a bit longer!

The International Center for Automotive Research (ICAR) is doing great things for the Greenville, South Carolina economy. As this project unfurls, it is bringing more and more engineering jobs, management jobs, and other high paying work to the Upstate. Estimates have stated as many as 20,000 new jobs were going to come from the ICAR project.

What will that do for our market, and our property values. For one thing, the properties near ICAR will probably see an increase in value in general. People tend to want to live near their work, or a reasonable drive from work, so the areas within a thirty minute drive of ICAR will see more influx of these jobs, and therefore, these relocations.

I don't personally think that it will cause any property values to skyrocket, but it certainly will help. Our local market has had slow and steady appreciation (overall) for the last several years. ICAR will simply help certain areas to increase more than others.

I just got back from the Greenville Little Theatre production of "There Goes The Bride!" It's HILARIOUS.

I've never laughed so hard at a GLT production before, and I've gone to them all for the last six or seven years (well, either attended or performed *Grin*).

The cast is made up of some of the best local comedy talent that Greenville has to offer. Liz Floto plays the bride - she did backstage work when I was in Into The Woods - and she's a great actress. Ryan Bradburn is a HIT. He's one of the best physical comedians to grace the GLT stage, and he plays the bride-to-be's Dad. Finally, at least of those I'm going to note tonight, Shane Willimon plays the bride's Grandfather. He steals the show! I got the pleasure of performing with Shane in an AEIOU murder mystery dinner theatre event (Actors, Entertainers and Improv of the Upstate). The laughs literally took nearly a minute to die down at some points, which is a long time for a performance!

I don't know if tonight or tomorrow is the last performance, but if you can't see it at GLT, I highly recommend that you see this comedy somewhere. I needed a good laugh!

Perhaps I'm biased. No, scratch that, I'm definitely biased... but if you're looking for a great place to live, then you may want to check out the Simpsonville SC Real Estate Market! Our town of Simpsonville (Simple-ville to residents) has grown by leaps and bounds, and yet has not lost it's laid-back, true Southern feel.

Simpsonville is now home to many retailers, such as Target, Wal-mart, Lowes, and many others. You can find just about any kind of restaurant within the city, including some awesome pizza joints. New subdivisions go up like crazy, and the houses are selling!

There are several parks in Simpsonville, which contain several great sports fields (I play baseball on one of them!), an ampitheatre that can hold 16,000 people, as well as great places to play. There are other recreational opportunities in and around the city, including some fabulous golf courses.

Minutes from Greenville, Simpsonville is located 2 1/2 hours from Atlanta or 1 1/2 hours from Charlotte.

What more could you ask for? Check us out!

Many of you know that I am a pilot, and I follow aviation news pretty thoroughly. I was excited to find out that Allegiant Air started its first service to Las Vegas from Greenville-Spartanburg airport (GSP) today about seven in the morning.

Allegiant is a low cost carrier, and they currently fly to two other destinations from GSP, both in Florida. The Vegas route will be a boom to their business, if you ask me. I'm sure there are plenty of Upstate South Carolina residents who would like to try their luck in Vegas. :-)

GSP is also in talks with Frontier airline to provide a low cost flight to Denver, as well as other more Western cities. This would be great with me, having all my family in the Denver area!

GSP is a great asset to Upstate South Carolina. In my opinion, it is one of the greatest airports in the South East. Service is good, and it is very convenient to many major cities. It also helps our real estate values, by providing air travel for many business travelers and executives in the area, thereby making it more commercial real estate friendly.

Time to get back to lead generation. Enjoy your day.

Bill

On Monday August 27th the Greenville Little Theatre will be holding auditions for the upcoming play "Dracula". I dropped by the theatre today (well, technically yesterday since it's quite early in the morning) to chat with my friends at the box office, and I picked up a script for the show.

It's hard for me to decide what I want to audition for in this show. There are several good parts, although the parts of Dracula and Van Helsing are pre-cast (the excellent talents of Will Ragland and Allen McCalla respectively). There is a part for an insane guy... hmm, that could be interesting!

For those of you who don't know, I am a theatre enthusiast and a part time actor. I've been in three shows at the Greenville Little Theatre: Guys and Dolls, Ah, Wilderness, and Into the Woods. Two musicals and a comedy - not too bad for someone who made their first on-stage appearance EVER at the age of 31!

I'm still trying to make my final decision on whether to audition or not. The biggest decision maker is my schedule. If that works out ok, and I"ll have the time for the rehearsals, then I'm going to put on my best British accent and audition! The worse case scenario is that I don't end up auditioning, and get to watch it from the theatre, which will be very enjoyable in itself.

Come and see the show (regardless of whether I'm in!). The Upstate is lucky to have such a fine institution as the Greenville Little Theatre, and I think that everyone should check it out.

You can see a schedule of this years season at http://www.greenvillelittletheatre.com

Until next time,

Bill

No matter where you are, you can't escape the news of a record number of foreclosures hitting the United States. Fortunately for South Carolina, we are not doing as bad as the national averages. Our housing market has slowed, it's true, but overall our market is doing fairly well.

According to RealtyTrac, the state's foreclosure rate in July, with 412 foreclosure activities, was 4.04 percent higher than a year ago, but down 6.15 percent from the same month two years ago. That works out to be about one foreclosure activity per 4,679 households in the state.

RealtyTrac, which follows foreclosure proceedings, published a total of 179,599 foreclosure filings nationwide in July, which includes everything from notice of default to actual sales. That pushed the foreclosure rate 9 percent higher than the month before and 93 percent higher than a year ago. The United States posts one foreclosure per every 693 households.

Things are definitely slower in South Carolina, but everyone needs to remember that we've also had year after year of record sales. Things had to end, or at least slow, at some point. If consumers start giving into a misplaced fear of the market place, driven by local and national news agencies, prices keep declining and people have difficulty selling their homes, then it could be a much more significant problem, but a lot of that is going to depend on how many knee-jerk reactions occur by the consumers and by the government.

In South Carolina, home prices hadn't risen as quickly as in other states, and our market did not have to take the same type of corrective action that many markets across the country did. South Carolina seems to still be experiencing job growth and income growth, which is good for a stable housing market. As a whole, you must remember that real estate is a local market issue, and comparing statistics nationally is hardly fair for many areas. In this case, because of what's going on in many other states, people in South Carolina feel that we are having a crisis. I would argue that this simply isn't true.

Nevada, Georgia and Michigan topped the 50 states and the District of Columbia in foreclosure rates, according to RealtyTrac, while California, Florida and Michigan had the largest number of foreclosure procedures.

Five states accounted for more than half of the foreclosure filings. Five out of fifty skew the data nationally.

South Carolina has seen slow but steady appreciation over the past five years, which not only made our market attractive in the so called "hot" years of 2004 and 2005, but appeals to people now.

Just remember this caveat - buying real estate is very much an emotional decision. Don't let the news agencies scare you into thinking that the entire real estate market is going into the toilet. Our local market in Greenville, and most of South Carolina, continues to be steady. Let's not give into misplaced fear, because that is probably the worst enemy of our market.