Is Charleston SC one of the hottest real estate markets in the US?

Joe Porter is a Roofstock Certified Agent and the founder of Lighthouse Real Estate LLC in Charleston SC. Joe is focused on helping clients buy and sell homes, while offering his considerable experience in construction and the large network of tradesmen he gained during his acquisition years. In this episode, Joe shares his knowledge of the Charleston market; economic factors, demographics, neighborhood scores, geographic considerations and the current environment on the ground Episode Links: [email protected]  http://lighthousecharleston.com/ https://learn.roofstock.com/blog/charleston-real-estate-market --- Transcript   Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me, we have our certified agent Joe Porter for the Charleston, South Carolina Market. He's going to be talking to us today about all the things we need to know as investors before getting involved in that space. So let's get into it.   Joe Porter, what's going on, man? Thanks for taking the time to hang out with me today.   Joe: Hello, you're welcome. Thanks for having me.   Michael: My pleasure. I am super excited to talk to everybody with you about Charleston, South Carolina.   Tell us a little bit Joe, first off who you are, where you come from? How long have you been an agent? And are you an investor personally, quickfire questions to get started…   Joe: Absolutely, ready to go. So I moved to Charleston to attend the College of Charleston about 22 years ago. And like many other people, never left. I came from the Washington DC area and visited the region one time and never looked back. So shortly after graduating from the College of Charleston, I was one of the many residual recipients of ninja loans, okay, so, you know, I knew a ton of people who needed rooms for rent, and I got the bright idea, let's buy a house. And I was working at a bartender out on Folly Beach at the time, and was making tips and Wells Fargo decided to give me $200,000, which I bought my first house with that sort of kicked off my real estate career.   Once I found that house, I kind of got the bug and never stopped looking. So I went in from there and got my real estate license. I'm not a very sales oriented person. So I knew from there, I wanted to embark on sort of the investing side of things. So I signed on as a buyer for: the we buy ugly houses franchise home investor.   Michael: Okay.   Joe: So that sort of gave me the framework of looking how to, you know, analyze a deal, the repairs, and how to present an offer to the seller. And right about that time, I established a brokerage to sort of dovetail my, you know, investing, dealings and offers to then list retail, I experienced some success there. And then the bottom of the market fell off and I just had a bunch of listings and no buyers. At that point, I guess this was around, you know, 2000/ 7, 8, 9 I came up with a bright idea to start buying houses. So I put together a little mean, machine of a crew with the idea to have the acquisitions improvement and management all under one umbrella. And we started buying houses, okay.   So the first house I bought was in North Charleston, it was a single family detached home for $12,000.   Michael: What?   Joe: It pulled… Yeah, oh yeah. Someone had yanked all the copper plumbing out of it, all the copper wires. It had been, you know, sitting vacant as a foreclosure, you know, owned by, you know, the Bank of New York and so that