SC is open for business, but the COVID confirmed case numbers have risen dramatically in the last 2 weeks. This has resulted in the City of Charleston requiring mask-wearing. Several restaurants that had opened have temporarily closed again due to the increased number of confirmed COVID cases. During June, the SC average of daily confirmed cases has risen from 194 to 326. The last week has seen 5 days over 1000. For you statisticians out there, the standard deviation of daily confirmed cases in SC is now at 287. The daily number of deaths has stayed very steady so far though. It’s been 7.4 with a standard deviation of 4.5 for a long time. One would expect those numbers to rise, but not so far. The percent of tests that have a positive(have a virus) result has gone from 7% to 17% over the month of June. Charleston County’s infection rate is currently 639 people per 100K. But there have only been 22 COVID deaths in Charleston County. Berkeley County has an infection rate of 570 per 100K. There have been 21 COVID deaths in Berkeley County. Dorchester County has an infection rate of only 297 people per 100K and has only had 3 deaths. On the real estate front though, we’ve been setting crazy records in terms of buying activity. Before May, the most any week ever saw in terms of properties going under contract was 458 back in 2018. 400-425 was a fairly easy number to anticipate in the spring over the past 3-4 years. We’ve exceeded that 458 records from 2018 for each of the last 7 weeks. And we’ve gone over 500 for the last 3 weeks! We’re seeing many homes go under contract without the buyer ever seeing the home in person. Visual tours have become very important. And inventory is very low. Since 2015, we’ve had about 5000-5500 active residential listings at any moment. It’s been extremely consistent in that range. In late 2019, we dipped under 5000 and we are now down to under 4200 active listings. New listings and new construction just can’t keep up with demand. One of the most amazing stats concerns the number of homes for over $1M. Usually, each week we expect to see about 15 single-family homes go under contract in the Charleston tri-county area. Over the past 3 weeks, we’ve had 112 go under contract for over $1M! Stay safe out there.