Hello from Charleston, South Carolina. I'm standing today in one of my new listings and I'm gonna share about it. It is a beautiful home in a 55 plus community here in the lakes of Cane Bay. But let me talk to you about the market for just a moment. We have picked up a little bit this last week.

We're getting into more of a historical norm for us here in the Charleston region. Two weeks ago, we were a bit slower, probably due to the weather conditions, the storm that we had, but we are getting back into some normalcy, just below 300 sales in our multiple listing service. 300 is kind of a threshold this time of the year tends to be a little bit lower in the 277, 280 range. Come spring and summer, we're about 325 to 340. So that kind of gives you a perspective.

We are historically normalcy for this time of the year. So I had the benefit of sitting through a Berkeley county economics development meeting this past week, and I love watching what the economics development teams around the area have to say because they're the instrument behind our growth. They're watching what the driver is and what is the forecast to come for our market. My business is highly dependent on the economics for this region, and we know that migration is continuing to happen in this area. And so I just wanted to share some insight from that Berkeley county economics development team with you so that you too could be informed about the area.

Here's a few things to note. Real estate is number two to manufacturing for the overall GDP of millions of dollars of growth in the area. When we look at the GDP for South Carolina, real estate comes in second only to manufacturing. And as we know for this area, we have big tire manufacturer, we have aerospace, we have car manufacturers. So all of that feeds into that manufacturing realm.

But real estate comes in second to manufacturing for the state of South Carolina. We have a lot of money produced for the state in form of building and just people moving here in real estate transactions. So I found that to be very interesting. So when we look at employment growth, the Charleston region continues to outpace the United States. When we look at that on a percentage basis, Charleston is at 29% and the United States is at 14%.

Again, that's employment growth over the last several years. Another thing to make mention of the foreign owned affiliates within the state of South Carolina, foreign owned companies, let's say 1200 different foreign countries, have interest in businesses in our state. That's a tremendous variety. And 700, a little over 700, are european owned businesses, companies that are here within the state of South Carolina. We have a lot of interest in South Carolina.

It continues to thrive. I just got a call from someone earlier this week. She has a government based position and she's moving to the area. That is a traditional week for me, is getting some phone call from somebody moving in to our area from currently outside the region. So we will continue to see that kind of growth as long as we have strong economic teams like that are in Berkeley county as well as in Dorchester County.

I know that Charleston county does a great job of that as well. So that's what I have as far as news for market updates, and I'm here to serve you whether buying or selling or investing in South Carolina, let me know how I can help.