The Most Uncertain Market Since COVID

Greenville’s housing market hasn’t felt this unpredictable since the earliest weeks of 2020. Rates are rising, inflation is pinching budgets, headlines disagree with each other, and yet certain homes still vanish in days. That strange mix—fewer buyers in the ring but just as much intensity around the best listings—has agents and consumers recalibrating in real time.

Below is a boots-on-the-ground read of what’s actually happening right now in the Upstate, drawn entirely from recent field experience and MLS pulls.

Why Greenville Faces the Most Uncertain Housing Market Since COVID

Call it what it is: the most uncertain housing market since COVID. Not because prices are collapsing (they aren’t), but because the old rules stopped working all at once. The Fed has signaled more rate hikes, inflation is rising in every cost, and the caution ripple is showing up in how sellers price, how builders negotiate, and how buyers compete.

Here’s how that uncertainty is playing out in the day-to-day.

Price reductions everywhere—without a “price crash”

One of the loudest signals right now is the surge in price reductions. That’s not the same as prices falling across the board. What’s happening is simpler—and a bit more human:

• For the past year, appreciation has been remarkable. Sellers and pros alike have had “~20% year-over-year” lodged in their brains.

• As the market shifts, that level of appreciation isn’t guaranteed. A home that owners mentally “marked up” by 20% may really support a 10% increase today.

• When a listing goes out at last quarter’s pace, the market pushes it back to reality—hence the cut.

Who’s trimming prices the most? Two familiar iBuyers—Opendoor and Offerpad—keep showing up in the reduction column. Their model the past two years was to buy near market value, do quick cosmetics (paint/carpet), then count on a few months of appreciation to fatten the margin. In a rebalancing market, that margin compresses fast. Expect more visible adjustments from them in the months ahead.

Builders blink: lower prices and agent incentives return

It’s been a while since local inboxes lit up with builder price drops and realtor bonuses. That’s happening again. In a runaway seller’s market, some builders shaved commissions and skipped incentives because demand did the work for them. As conditions shift, they’re dusting off the playbook from saner times: sharpen prices, sweeten terms, and make it easier to say yes. The result is welcome—more negotiation, more professionalism, and fewer “take it or leave it” experiences.

Multiple offers aren’t gone—they’re just different

Yes, Greenville is still seeing multiple offers across price points—especially under $300,000 when the home is truly move-in ready. The key change is quantity and concentration:

• Instead of 15–20 offers on a magnet listing, think five or six—but those five or six are battle-hardened buyers who have lost repeatedly and now swing big.

• That dynamic creates a second effect: homes that would have attracted three or four offers a few months ago might now draw one solid offer and call it a day.

A real-world pattern is popping up: several similar homes hit together; all the traffic swarms one of them; the others sit briefly in the blind spot. For sharp buyers, that’s the opening—skip the frenzy and secure the comparable without a bidding war.

What actually closed in May: cash vs. loans (and why it matters)

A quick MLS pull (residential only—single-family, condo, mobile, and similar; no multi-family sorting) showed 1,562 May closings in the Greater Greenville area. Here’s how those deals were financed:

• Cash: 26%

• Conventional loans: 55.5%

• FHA: 10.3%

• VA: 6.1%

• USDA (rural): 1.28%

Two takeaways:

1. Cash is everywhere. If a listing gets four offers, odds are good that at least one is cash. In April, the cash share was even higher (27.6%), and during that month, FHA/VA/USDA shares fell—a sign that cash often competes directly with (and beats) first-time buyer financing.

2. Conventional remains king. For financed offers, conventional still carries the most weight with sellers and accounts for the majority of closed loans.

Where cash buyers are focusing (hint: the same place you are)

Cash isn’t just at the top of the market—it’s thick in the workhorse price bands:

• Under $100K: 7.14% of cash deals (tiny pool of listings)

• $100,001–$200,000: 8.23% of cash deals

• $200,001–$300,000: 25.37% of cash deals (the largest share)

• $300,001–$400,000: together with the bracket above, these two bands made up about 46.5% of all cash transactions

• $400,001–$500,000: 12.81% of cash deals

• $500,000+: 15.27% of cash deals

Translation: if you’re shopping for $200K–$400K, expect regular head-to-heads with cash.

The narrative tug-of-war (and why expectations need a reset)

Even national outlets can’t agree right now. Within a short span, two different Fortune pieces drew opposite conclusions about the Southeast’s risk of near-term price declines. That’s the environment: high-quality analysts, the same data, and wildly different calls.

So what’s the most grounded local read?

• Expect appreciation to slow sharply from the 15–20% pace many saw over the past year.

• Don’t confuse “slowing” with “reversing.” Without a major shock, widespread depreciation (i.e., this October’s prices lower than last October’s) looks unlikely in the near term.

• Why? Pent-up demand is still filtering through, foreclosures are at record lows, and many recent buyers used cash or large down payments, giving them equity cushions that make distressed sales less likely.

In plain English: Greenville is walking toward something that looks more like 2019—still a seller-tilted market, with appreciation in the 3–7% range instead of double digits—but it has to pass through today’s fog to get there.

What would it take to flip this into a true buyer’s market?

It’s possible—but it’s a high bar in the next 18–24 months. It would likely require a major recession or significant war escalation that materially impacts jobs and household incomes, driving foreclosure activity higher. Even then, there’s a lag: it commonly takes about a year from the start of distress for foreclosures to reach the market in volume. Right now, that pipeline is quiet.

Practical playbooks for today

If you’re buying:

• Move quickly on the best homes under $300K and well-priced homes up to $400K.

• Expect fewer bidders but stronger ones. Shape terms (timelines, certainty, reserves) to compete with cash.

• Scout for “overshadowed” listings when three or four similar homes launch at once.

If you’re selling:

• Price to today’s comps—not last quarter’s. Aiming at yesterday’s 20% appreciation is how listings end up with reductions.

• Good homes still draw multiple offers; great pricing is what gets you there.

• Builders are negotiating again; resale sellers need to look competitive in photos, prep, and terms.

If you’re investing:

• Expect tighter spreads on quick cosmetics. The easy iBuyer-style flip is getting squeezed.

• Cash yields the most leverage in the $200K–$400K lanes, where nearly half of cash deals occurred in May.

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Bottom Line

Greenville is navigating the most uncertain housing market since COVID—not a collapse, but a recalibration. Price reductions are about correcting over-optimistic list prices, not signaling a market-wide drop. Builders are trimming and offering incentives, multiple offers persist (especially under $300K), and cash is a quarter of all closings, concentrated in the same bands most buyers want. Expect appreciation to slow meaningfully before it ever goes negative—and plan your pricing, offers, and timelines around that reality.

Ien Araneta

Journal & Podcast Editor | Selling Greenville