I S S U E  N O .  1 3

Week of October 6, 2026

The Split

Charleston Takes Four. Savannah Takes the Clubs.

On the map they look interchangeable, two walkable coastal grids under live oaks about two hours apart, and a weekend answers which one photographs better. We get asked which one to live in for the next twenty years, so we scored them. Seven categories, a verdict in each, no ties allowed. One rule before the scorecard: both cities sit on the hurricane coast, and where a number is storm or water shaped we say so and set it aside. There is a section at the end for the ones we set aside, because they are the diligence, not the decoration.

Charleston took the table, and it is not an argument, it is a map. When MICHELIN published its first American South selection on November 3, 2025, Charleston landed three One Star restaurants, Vern's, Malagón and Wild Common, inside a Charleston-area group of fifteen entries in all. Savannah landed none, and the reason matters more than the count. The American South guide covers Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, and MICHELIN's only Georgia guide is metro Atlanta, so no Savannah kitchen has been eligible to date. That is a coverage line, not a verdict on the cooking. But if the question is whether an inspector with a red book has already been to your new city, the answer is yes in Charleston and not yet in Savannah.

Charleston took the runway. Charleston International moved 6,341,145 passengers in 2025, a record, and its own route map lists eleven airlines and nonstop service to more than fifty airports, Cancún on Breeze among the newest since January. Savannah/Hilton Head International moved 4,234,531 in the same year, up 2.4 percent and a genuinely good year for it, but on a materially smaller network. Savannah is a lovely airport to arrive at. Charleston is the better one to leave from, which is the one that matters once you live there.

Charleston took the tax bill, and it is the category no one puts in a relocation brochure. You will hear about Georgia's new homestead cap, House Bill 581, which limits how fast a homesteaded assessment can rise to the rate of inflation. Two things get left out. The base resets when you buy, so the cap shelters the owner who was already there, not you. And the City of Savannah and the Savannah-Chatham school board both voted to opt out of it in February 2025.

South Carolina has its own trap. Act 388 caps reassessment at fifteen percent over five years, then resets the house to full market value the day it changes hands, so the neighbor who has held for twenty years is protected and you are not. But for a primary residence South Carolina assesses at four percent of value and exempts the home from school operating taxes entirely, and that swamps everything else. On a one million dollar primary home, using the 2025 millage each county publishes, the annual bill comes to roughly 4,700 dollars inside the City of Charleston and roughly 16,200 inside the City of Savannah. More than three times as much, every year, for the same price of house. Georgia's flat 4.99 percent income tax for 2026 sits just under South Carolina's 5.21 percent top rate, which narrows that gap far less than it sounds.

Two conditions, and they are not small print. The four percent rate and the school exemption apply only to your legal residence, and only after you file for them with the county assessor, so the tax line on a Charleston listing often shows the seller's six percent bill, not yours. And buy the same house as a second home and the advantage disappears: at six percent with no school exemption, the City of Charleston bill lands in the same range as Savannah's.

One fair point for Georgia: if you are retired, its income tax exclusion, up to 65,000 dollars a person at 65 for pensions, IRA withdrawals and investment income, is far richer than South Carolina's, and for a couple living on their portfolio it claws back a few thousand dollars a year. It narrows the gap. It does not close it.

Charleston took the water, and it is not close. Sullivan's Island, Folly Beach and Isle of Palms all sit within about twenty-five minutes of downtown, each on its own road, with Kiawah a little farther out. Savannah has one ocean beach, Tybee Island, about thirty minutes away on US 80, which the Georgia DOT describes as the only connection between the island and the mainland, and which seasonal high tides have closed. On a boat it is the same story. Charleston Harbor opens straight off the peninsula, and Charleston Race Week, billed by its organizers as the largest keelboat regatta in the Western Hemisphere, marked its thirtieth year in April. Savannah's downtown river is a working shipping channel, so its boating lives out east in the creeks and marsh around Thunderbolt, Isle of Hope and Wassaw Sound. That is lovely water for a small boat and a fishing rod. It is not an open harbor.

Then Savannah took the other three, and they are the three a household feels first.

Savannah took what your money buys, and by a wide margin. Over the three months ending in August, homes in downtown Charleston sold for about 943 dollars a square foot by Redfin's count, against about 505 in downtown Savannah. Put a million dollars on the table and that is roughly 1,060 square feet on the Charleston side and roughly 1,980 among the Savannah squares. Nearly twice the house, in a historic district every bit as walkable. Treat the exact figures loosely, because both neighborhoods trade only a few dozen homes a quarter and Redfin draws its own boundaries, but the gap is wide and it has held.

Savannah took the ordinary Wednesday. The everyday cost of living runs lower. MIT's living wage calculator puts a single adult's required hourly wage at 24.97 dollars in Chatham County against 26.14 in Charleston County. Underneath it sits a working economy that does not live on tourists alone: the Port of Savannah moved about 5.7 million container units in its 2025 fiscal year, more than double Charleston's 2.6 million. The flip side is pay. In the first quarter of 2026 the average weekly wage ran 1,492 dollars in Charleston County against 1,255 in Chatham, about nineteen percent higher. If your income arrives with you, Savannah's cheaper Wednesday is pure gain. If you have to earn it on the ground, Charleston pays more.

Savannah took the clubs, and the reason is access, not prestige. Charleston's best rooms are mostly closed to a newcomer. Bulls Bay says on its own site that membership is full and it is no longer taking applications. The Country Club of Charleston and Yeamans Hall come by nomination or invitation, with waits in years, and the Kiawah Island Club requires you to buy inside the gates first. Savannah's door is open. The Landings on Skidaway Island puts six courses on one membership and has been accepting a limited number of members who do not own property there, at 80,000 dollars to join and about 13,400 a year, per the club's statement in June. South of the city in Richmond Hill, the Ford Field and River Club publishes a 50,000 dollar National Membership with 10,000 in annual dues. Charleston has the prestige. Savannah has the open door. The full numbers for the clubs we track arrive November 17 in the Carolinas Club Ledger.

So: Charleston is the better table, the better runway, the better water and, for a primary home, the much lighter tax bill. Savannah is nearly twice the house for the money, the cheaper everyday life and the club that will actually let you in. Four to three, Charleston.

Now the honest part, because the point of the franchise is to name both cities' problems. Not one of those seven verdicts touches the water, and the water is where both of these cities keep their real risk. That is the next section, and it is the most useful part of the issue.

The Numbers We Set Aside

Two things are water shaped, and we are not scoring them, but you should see them before you sign anything.

First, insurance. The Coalition for an Insurable Future's 2026 projections, built on FEMA's National Risk Index, put South Carolina second in the nation for homeowners insurance increases by 2035, a range of 60 percent up to 203 percent, behind only Louisiana. We did not find a Georgia figure in the same work to set beside it, so we hold it as a South Carolina caution rather than a Savannah win. Second, the seawall. Charleston is designing a roughly 1.3 billion dollar perimeter defense with the Army Corps of Engineers, because the historic peninsula floods on sunny days at high tide. Design contracts went out this summer, early construction is penciled in for 2027 to 2031, and none of it is authorized yet. That schedule and that cost sit under every peninsula listing. Savannah's water risk is real too, tidal and upriver, and less publicly priced, which is its own kind of problem.

The point is not which city floods. It is that neither verdict above should be read without the map underneath it. Anyone under contract on the coast right now is buying against an insurance and flood picture that is being redrawn in real time, and that is a diligence item, not a scorecard item.

The Split runs monthly. Next up: SE Versus, the Carolinas against Florida, November 3.

The Pulse

What is actually happening in the places we cover beyond this week's two cities. A standing section here every Tuesday.

No. 01 Asheville · The PGA Tour's first Asheville stop went to Bridgeman at 26-under.
The inaugural Biltmore Championship Asheville was played at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove in September, and Jacob Bridgeman won it at 26-under after a closing 61, taking 900,000 dollars of a 5 million dollar purse. A Tour week puts a private club community in front of a national television audience, the kind of exposure a market cannot buy. The PGA Tour has the payouts.

No. 02 Greenville · First detailed plans for the $500 million Falls Park Conference District.
The city has shown plans for a conference center, a luxury hotel, apartments, two office buildings, retail, green space and a garage with more than 1,200 spaces along Falls Street and East Camperdown Way. Demolition starts later this year, groundbreaking is planned for 2027, and the city projects 35 million dollars a year in economic impact. FOX Carolina has the plans.

No. 03 Greenville · August brought softer prices and more choice.
The Greater Greenville Association of REALTORS put the August median at 320,000 dollars, down 1.5 percent on the year, with 6,512 homes for sale, up 8.5 percent, about 4.2 months of supply. Days on market rose to 56 from 49. Buyers have more room to negotiate than they have had in years. The August report is here.

No. 04 Tryon · The National Horse Show opens October 21.
The 143rd National Horse Show, the country's oldest continuously running indoor show, moves from the Kentucky Horse Park to Tryon International in Mill Spring for October 21 to November 1. The foothills just took a fixture of the national equestrian calendar. The show has the details.

No. 05 Hilton Head · The oceanfront Westin closes November 2 to renovate.
KSL Capital Partners, which bought the 420-room Westin Hilton Head Island Resort and Spa in September 2025 for 199.8 million dollars, will close it for a renovation of at least five months. The scope and the reopening date have not been announced. The Post and Courier has the story.

Destination Spotlight

The Market Under the Postcard: Charleston

Charleston won this round, so here is what sits under the travel photos. The tri-county median was 431,500 dollars in August, up 1.8 percent on the year, on 1,614 closed sales and 5,593 active listings, about 51 days on market and 3.6 months of supply, per the Charleston Trident Association of REALTORS. The figure to watch is pending sales, up 11.8 percent on last August: buyers are signing again even as the median eases back from July. The peninsula and the beach islands trade at their own multiples well above that median, and the four percent assessment from the scorecard applies to every primary residence among them. If you have been waiting for a price break, the data says you are getting a negotiating window rather than a discount.

Charleston in the Field Guide

Off-Market Signal

The Calendar

• Through October 31 · The Preservation Society of Charleston's Fall Tours, in their 50th year: private houses and gardens open for an afternoon.

• Thursdays through October 29 · The Fall Bluegrass and Harvest Market, Trailblazer Park, Travelers Rest, 5:30 to 8 PM.

• October 9 to 11 · The Cashiers Valley Leaf Festival on the Village Green, admission complimentary.

• October 15 to 17 · Major League Show Jumping at Tryon International, Mill Spring.

• October 21 to November 1 · The National Horse Show, its first year at Tryon International.

• October 24 to 31 · The SCAD Savannah Film Festival, its 29th year.

• November 13 to 15 · The Food & Wine Classic in Charleston.

The Insider

The Weekend Escape lands Saturday at 8 AM, at Lake Keowee. Next Tuesday, the Ledger takes up what a haven costs to keep. 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 CPA before you act on it.

Know a couple torn between the famous one and the quiet one? Forward this to them.