Kiawah's $16.15M Sale, and How Little Else Is for Sale

On September 17, 9 Nicklaus Lane on Kiawah Island closed at $16.15 million, according to county records reported by The Post and Courier. The buyers are Perry Sook, chairman and chief executive of Nexstar Media Group, based in Irving, Texas, and his wife, Sandra. The house went fully furnished, down to the dishes and the linens.

2.1%. Share of Kiawah Island's 4,828 properties listed for sale at the end of the first quarter of 2026. A year earlier the island had 119 listings; this time it had 99.

It is easy to see what the money bought. Built in 2015, the house runs past 8,000 square feet with seven bedrooms and sits on the 14th green of Turtle Point, the Jack Nicklaus course, with the beach right beside it. Doug Lee of Kiawah Island Real Estate, who listed it, named the rare part: "This is the only place I know of where you have direct beach access, which is right beside it, and then you look at the fairway."

Aerial view of a red-cedar-shingled house on Kiawah Island from the rear, with a pool, covered porches and palmettos — 9 Nicklaus Lane from the rear: cedar shingle, Old Savannah brick, and the pool deck between two covered porches.

$16.15 million is the headline. 2.1 percent is the story. At the end of the first quarter, Kiawah Island Real Estate counted 99 active listings across the island's 4,828 properties. That is 2.1 percent of the island for sale, against 119 listings a year earlier.

It has only gotten thinner. By the firm's own count, as reported by The Post and Courier, 79 resale properties were on the market on September 1: 13 lots, 29 villas and 37 single-family homes. At the end of June there had been 48 houses. On an island of nearly five thousand properties, 37 houses was the whole menu.

A living room under a coffered ceiling, open to a kitchen with a stone backsplash — The main living room, open to the kitchen. The house sold furnished.

Buyers did not wait for more choice. Kiawah Island Real Estate reports 79 closings in the first quarter, up 27 percent from a year earlier, and $232 million in volume, up 59 percent. The single-family median rose 20 percent to $3.78 million. Three properties sold above $10 million in the quarter. A year earlier, none did.

The scarcity is not uniform, and that is the useful part. In the same quarter the homesite median fell to $725,000 from $1.3 million. A median on ten lot sales moves with the mix, so read that as a contrast, not a crash: the pressure sits on finished houses with something nobody can add more of. Ocean on one side and a Nicklaus green on the other is about as clean an example as the island has.

A covered porch beside a pool and spa, looking across palmettos to a golf green and the ocean — The pool and porch, with the green and the Atlantic beyond the palmettos.

One caution before anyone runs the appreciation math. County deeds show the sellers paid $2.845 million for the property in 2012, and the house went up in 2015, so those two prices do not describe the same asset. The gap between them includes building the house.

For a buyer, the read is plain. On Kiawah you are rarely choosing between listings. You are waiting for the right one, and you need to be ready the week it appears. For a seller with a genuinely rare house, the market has seldom offered a buyer less to compare it to.

Photos courtesy of Kiawah Island Real Estate.

If Kiawah or another thin-inventory Lowcountry address is on your list, the advisory conversation is complimentary, and it starts with what is actually for sale this week.

All Field Notes

The math on Tuesday. The life on Saturday.