I am a licensed South Carolina real estate agent with Keller Williams Realty Spartanburg, working in Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson, Pickens, Oconee, Laurens, Cherokee and Union counties.
Most of the sales I help with start with something else changing first. A death in the family. A start date in another city. A house that has become more than anyone needs. They come with a deadline somebody else set, more than one person deciding, and a house that has to be emptied before anyone can walk through it.
Someone has died, and the house belongs to several people now
One of them lives nearby and has the key. The others are in Charlotte, or Ohio, or further, working from photographs and a group text. Before any of that matters, the court has to establish who can sign a deed.
Being named executor does not, by itself, let you sell the house
In South Carolina, title to real property passes to the heirs at the moment of death. It does not pass to the estate. The authority to sell has to come from somewhere: either the will contains an express power of sale, or the court has to authorise it. If neither is true yet, the house cannot close, however good the offer is.
That is the estate attorney’s work rather than mine. It is the first thing I check before taking a listing, because it is the thing that stops closings, and I would rather find it in week one than in week nine.
The start date belongs to your new employer, not to the market
So the questions are whether to sell before you go or after, what the house needs first, and how showings and paperwork happen once you are no longer in town to handle either.
The house a family spent decades in
There is a next place that has to line up with this one, and rooms full of things nobody has had the heart to go through. Most of the work is sequencing: what to keep, what to fix, and when to list, so the move and the closing land in the right order.
Buying your first one
Leaving college, or starting a job here. I will walk you through how a purchase works in South Carolina, and answer the questions people are sometimes embarrassed to ask.
What I put in writing before you decide anything
A written update every Friday, whether or not there is news. Most of what makes a seller anxious is silence. If nothing happened this week, the note says nothing happened this week, and why.
A four-hour callback window. You call or text during a working day and you hear back within four hours. Not “soon.”
A written scope before anything starts. What I am doing, what it costs, and who pays for it. Nothing gets ordered off a phone call.
And one more, which is not a contract term but a commitment from me: if you ever want out, ask and I will release you. I would rather you leave early than stay with someone you have stopped trusting.
The work before the listing
Emptying, cleaning, repairs and yard work go to local crews that I line up and manage, so a family four states away is not calling contractors between meetings. They are paid directly, at their price. I do not mark their invoices up and I take nothing from them.
Estate Watch is separate, and it stays that way
I also built Estate Watch, free software for families settling an estate in South Carolina. It does not recommend real estate agents, including me, and it earns nothing from the sale of a house. A family can use it until the estate closes and never learn I sell houses.
If the house is somewhere I do not work
Tell me anyway. I would rather hand you to someone good in that market than have you start from a search engine.