Naval housing has new name after buyout

Grace Beahm
The Post and Courier

Sunshine Benson takes her son for a walk through Charleston Naval Weapons Station housing last year. The housing complex is under new ownership.

Dozens of neighborhoods on military bases nationwide, including South Carolina, switched ownership April 30 after a sale of GMH Military Housing to United Kingdom-based conglomerate Balfour Beatty for $350.5 million.

GMH Military Housing was a division of publicly traded GMH Communities Trust. Its holdings included the Charleston Naval Weapons Station housing. The new base properties are now managed under the name Balfour Beatty Communities. According to the company, the entire executive management team, as well as existing corporate and project level military housing employees, will remain part of the new company.

Balfour Beatty Communities, based in Newton Square, Pa., now has interests, primarily through joint ventures with the Department of Defense, in a dozen military housing projects on 37 bases representing 25,700 housing units with a development value at $3 billion.

"We are extremely excited to become part of the Balfour Beatty family of companies," says Bruce Robinson, president and chief executive of Balfour Beatty Communities.

South Battery subdivide

A large house south of Broad Street has been converted to two separate high-end dwellings. The Peninsula Co. is listing the property at 50 S. Battery. One of the units has two bay windows upstairs with views of Charleston Harbor, old hardwood floors, and two classic bathrooms. People can walk out on a glass arcade front porch and stone foundation with stone columns.

The listing price is $1.1 million. For more information, go to www.thepeninsulaco.com.

Market movements

A North Carolina researcher's quarterly report on Charleston area housing stock lends more credence to what many real estate sellers, buyers and agents already know. The market is in a slump.

Sales in the Charleston area fell more than 30 percent to 2,866 in the first quarter from 4,145 a year ago. At the same time, prices slid 0.6 percent to $307,791 from $309,851 and the median price dipped to $202,000 as of March 31 from $211,100 a year ago. The findings came from Market Opportunity Research Enterprises of Rocky Mount, N.C.

Interestingly, average prices of condominiums shot up in the quarter to $429,960 from $300,936 in the same period of 2007.

By county, first quarter sales sunk to 1,477 from 2,277 a year ago in Charleston County while the median price fell slightly to $247,500 from $251,920. Dorchester County reported a sales slide to 745 in first quarter 2008 from 1,141 a year before. Yet the median price went to $194,000 from $187,000. In Berkeley County, year-to-year sales skidded to 935 from 1,215. The first quarter 2008 median price, though, shot up to $183,660 from $170,180 a year ago.

Separately, real estate tracker Brad Rundbaken tagged four of five housing indicators for the first quarter as "unfavorable." They were existing residential sales, new building permits, foreclosures and monthly inventory. The one exception: low interest rates.