I S S U E N O . 1 5
Week of October 20, 2026
From the Editor
There is a line from this spring's Christie's International Real Estate outlook that I have not been able to shake: mobility is the new currency. It sounds like a slogan until you watch how people with real choices are buying. Fewer of them are asking where to move. More of them are asking where to be, and for how many months of the year.
This issue is about that second question, the house you genuinely live in for part of the year rather than visit twice. Redfin has the first hard sign that the vacation-home loan is coming back. The caveat is the headline, though, so it goes up front: above seven percent, optionality belongs mostly to people who do not need a mortgage to buy it.
Damian Hall
CHIEF RELOCATION OFFICER, SOUTHERN ESCAPES
The Brief
The Optionality Premium
This spring Christie's International Real Estate published its 2026 luxury outlook, built on a survey of its affiliates worldwide, and one of its four themes was opportunity. Presenting it on The Academy Live, the network's program for its agents, in April, the firm's president, Gavin Swartzman, put the idea in five words: mobility is the new currency. Wealthy buyers want the flexibility to be in more than one kind of place, he said, and baby boomers in particular have grown braver about where they are willing to own. He also noted that the survey closed before the conflict in the Middle East began, which is worth holding in mind through everything below.
On the same program, Robert Greenwood, an owner of the Christie's International Real Estate affiliate in the Turks and Caicos Islands, described buyers who once treated the islands as a second or third vacation home and now treat them as a second primary residence. That phrase is the whole issue. A second primary is not a place you visit. Your books are there. You know where the pharmacy is. It is a life you run in two places on purpose.
Now the evidence that this is more than a mood. In July, Redfin reported that Americans took out 4.1 percent more second-home mortgages in 2025 than in 2024, the first annual increase since the pandemic boom. Mortgages for primary homes rose 1 percent over the same stretch. Eighty-five percent of the vacation-home loans went to high earners, whose median income was just under $300,000.
Before this turns into a trend piece, the caveats. Second homes were still only 2.7 percent of all mortgage originations, up from 2.6 percent the year before and well below their 2021 peak. Redfin itself noted that demand had fallen so low in 2024 that even a small pickup registered as an increase. Its head of economics research, Chen Zhao, called it a modest comeback in a very different market than it was during the pandemic. And the count is built from federal mortgage disclosure data, so it only sees people who borrowed. Cash buyers do not appear in it at all.
That last point matters most right now. On October 15, Freddie Mac's average 30-year fixed rate stood at 7.40 percent, up from 6.27 percent a year earlier. At that price, a second primary financed with debt is a heavy lift even for the high earners Redfin counted. Optionality above seven percent belongs mostly to cash buyers, and to people selling a long-held primary with room left in the gain. It is worth saying plainly, because the brochures will not.
What the Carolinas offer that buyer is access, and access is the real currency behind the slogan. A second primary only works if the trip between the two lives is easy. Charleston International handled a record 6,341,145 passengers in 2025. And on December 18, Breeze Airways begins nonstop service between Greenville-Spartanburg and West Palm Beach, on Mondays and Fridays. Read that schedule twice. Monday and Friday is not a vacation pattern. It is the rhythm of someone who keeps one life in Palm Beach and another in the Blue Ridge, and moves between them by the week.
Mind the gap between access and ownership, though. A new route tells you where an airline expects demand. It does not tell you who will buy, and airlines cut routes as readily as they add them.
So here is the practical version. If you are weighing a second primary, run it as two budgets, not one. Price the carry on both houses as if you lived in each full time, because in the months you are there, you do. Decide which state you will call home for tax purposes before you buy, not after, and put that question to your CPA. And if you would need a mortgage above seven percent to do it, ask whether renting the second life for a full season first would tell you what you need to know for a fraction of the cost.
Optionality is a real premium. Like every premium, somebody pays it. Know before you sign whether that somebody is you, your lender, or the gain on the house you are leaving.
This is general information, not tax or financial advice. Put your own numbers in front of your CPA before you act.
T H E S E C O N D - H O M E R E B O U N D
4.1%
The year-over-year rise in second-home mortgages in 2025, the first annual increase since the pandemic boom. Mortgages for primary homes rose 1 percent. Second homes were still just 2.7 percent of all originations.
Source: Redfin analysis of HMDA data, July 2026. Mortgages only; cash purchases are not counted.
Pass the Ledger
You know the one. The couple who texts you photos from somewhere warm every February and somewhere cool every July, and has never once asked whether one of those places should be home. Forward them this issue. Two budgets and one tax question will tell them more than another season of rentals, and you get to be the one who sent it first.
New here because a smart friend forwarded this? The Ledger lands every Tuesday at 7 AM.
The Pulse
What is actually happening in the places we cover. New on the site, and a standing section here every Tuesday.
No. 01 Lake Keowee · A $12.75 million lake house takes aim at the Upstate's record.
A six-bedroom, 6,920-square-foot house still under construction at The Cliffs at Keowee Springs, near Six Mile, has listed at $12.75 million. If it sells near ask, it would pass the Upstate's residential high mark of $10.099 million, set in Old Edwards Reserve in March 2025. The listing is with Scott Reid of Cliffs Realty. A clean lake behind a gate keeps testing a higher ceiling. The Post and Courier has the listing.
No. 02 Kiawah Island · A house called rare trades at $16 million.
On Kiawah, a home the listing described as rare sold for $16 million to an executive tied to Nexstar Media, according to The Post and Courier. It is the buyer the lead essay describes almost exactly: someone with the means to choose, choosing the Carolina coast. The Post and Courier reported the sale.
No. 03 Anderson · AnMed stakes 44 acres on where the Upstate is growing.
AnMed is planning a new health campus on 44 acres along Clemson Boulevard near Interstate 85, with around-the-clock emergency care slated to open in 2028, as the western Upstate's population keeps climbing. Hospitals build where the people are going, and lately they are going here. Local reporting has the plan.
No. 04 Greenville · The Falls Park conference district clears its first design hurdle.
On October 15, Greenville's Design Review Board approved the site plan, its size and shape, for the $500 million Falls Park Conference District downtown. The architecture and materials, and the district's first JW Marriott, still return for their own review, with the hotel deferred to November 19. A public gathering place is taking shape beside the falls, and the detail work is where it gets won. Our Field Note has the plan.
Destination Spotlight
Clemson, South Carolina
Saturday's Weekend Escape went to Clemson, the small college town that turns orange seven Saturdays this fall. It is the lead essay's question asked from the other end. Plenty of the people in those seats own or rent a house on Lake Keowee, about twenty minutes from the stadium, and plan the whole autumn around the home schedule. That is optionality measured in Saturdays rather than months, and next Saturday, October 24, is the one that tests it: Clemson hosts Virginia Tech at night while South Carolina hosts Tennessee in Columbia that afternoon.
Whether a house that comes alive seven Saturdays a year is a second life or a very expensive tailgate is a fair question, and we will run the numbers on it before rivalry week. For now, Saturday's letter walks the perfect home Saturday in Clemson, from the lots in the morning to the run down the Hill, with a respectful nod to the other side of the state.
Off-Market Signal
Some of the best houses in our network never reach a listing site. When a seller wants a quiet sale and a buyer on our list has told us exactly what they are waiting for, we make the call before anyone makes the brochure. It is not a property alert and it is not another newsletter. If that is useful to you, one tap puts you on it, your email is already filled in: sellingwithdhg.com/quiet
The Calendar
Through October 31 · The Preservation Society of Charleston's Fall Tours of Homes, History and Architecture run all month: private houses and gardens open for an afternoon.
Sundays, through November 8 · Aiken fall polo, Sunday afternoons on Whitney Field.
October 21 to November 1 · The National Horse Show is scheduled at Tryon International, its first year in the foothills after fifteen years at the Kentucky Horse Park. Saturday Night Lights returns on show weekends, 5 to 9 PM, admission complimentary.
October 24 · Both stadiums full: Clemson hosts Virginia Tech under the lights, and South Carolina hosts Tennessee in the afternoon.
October 30 to November 1 · The Hilton Head Island Concours d'Elegance and Motoring Festival, with the Concours itself on Sunday, November 1, on the fairways at Port Royal Golf Club.
November 3 · SE Versus in the Ledger: the Carolinas against Florida, category by category, no ties.
November 28 · Clemson hosts South Carolina, a rivalry that dates to 1896.
December 18 · Breeze Airways begins nonstop service between Greenville-Spartanburg and West Palm Beach, Mondays and Fridays.
The Insider
Most people shop for a second home as if it were a vacation. The ones who end up happy shop for it as if it were a life. If the place still works on a Tuesday in February, it is a second primary. If it only works in July, it is a very expensive hotel.
On owning the months, not the weekends
The Weekend Escape lands Saturday at 8 AM. Next Tuesday, the Ledger makes the case against the trophy address, and for the city that fits. And on November 3, SE Versus puts the Carolinas and Florida side by side, category by category, no ties.
If a number in this issue changed your model, reply and tell me which one. I read every reply.
Damian Hall
DAMIAN HALL GROUP / SOUTHERN ESCAPES
The intelligence layer between where you are and where you belong.
Southern Escapes is the market intelligence platform of Damian Hall Group, the principal-led luxury team operating under Blackstream | Christie's International Real Estate. This newsletter is for informational purposes. Nothing here constitutes tax, financial, or legal advice. Run your scenario with your advisor before you act on it.
Know someone who keeps renting the same second life every season? Forward this to them.