July 24, 2026The Points Guy
The Points Guy names Greenville and Charleston among the ten US cities built for a 48-hour weekend.
The travel-loyalty publication's roundup of American cities worth flying in for a single weekend includes both Carolina cities, citing Greenville's Falls Park on the Reedy and the Swamp Rabbit Trail and Charleston's King Street, the Battery, and harbor. It lands weeks after Travel + Leisure's readers ranked the same two cities in their World's Best top ten. One outlet is a mention. Two outlets, two audiences, the same two cities, is a pattern, and the travelers who keep booking the weekend are the ones who eventually ask what a second home costs.
July 18, 2026Post and Courier
Travel + Leisure's readers rank Charleston the No. 2 city in America. Greenville lands at No. 10.
The 2026 World's Best Awards, drawn from more than 661,000 reader submissions, put Charleston second among US cities after a 12-year run at No. 1, with Santa Fe repeating on top. Greenville takes No. 10, and The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island leads the state's resort rankings. One ranked city is a tourism award. Two from the same state is a relocation pattern.
July 18, 2026Hyatt Newsroom
The Lowline opens at 560 King Street: 197 rooms, a rooftop taproom, and Hyatt's JdV flag arrives in South Carolina.
The hotel opened July 15 with the Lowcountry-leaning Leeward restaurant, a golf simulator lounge, an indoor pool, and nearly 8,000 square feet of event space in Sterling Hall. Upper King keeps absorbing new flags without pausing to catch its breath, which tells you what the operators believe about the corridor.
July 18, 2026101.7 WGOG
Oconee County moves to dismiss the Mill Hill lawsuit, and Keowee's large-tract supply stays frozen.
The county asked a federal court on July 15 to throw out East Shore South's challenge to its eight-month moratorium on residential subdivisions of more than 10 lots, the rule currently blocking a planned development of over 600 acres at Newry near Lake Keowee. Trial would come no earlier than March 2027, while the county rewrites its road and zoning ordinances. A moratorium reads as anti-growth until you already own something inside it.
July 18, 2026Upstate Business Journal
EPC Power opens in Fountain Inn: 167,000 square feet and 275 jobs building the power systems behind AI data centers.
The California company opened its second Upstate facility on Southcase Boulevard this week, tripling its production capacity for the power-conversion systems that feed AI data centers and grid storage. The Upstate built cars for thirty years. It is now building the grid that AI runs on, and the payrolls are following.
July 18, 2026WRDW
After five years of delays, the Hotel Aiken redevelopment breaks ground in August.
Oliver Hospitality's rebuild of the downtown landmark, with a restaurant and a parking garage along Laurens and Richland streets, is set to begin construction next month. Add the Laureate and two more boutique conversions in the pipeline, and downtown Aiken's room count is changing faster than it has in decades.
July 18, 2026Spartanburg.com
GSP repaves its runway starting July 27: nightly closures into November, and two full weekend shutdowns in September.
The airport is rehabilitating more than 6,500 feet of runway last paved in 2009, with nightly closures July 27 through September 4 and September 14 through November 12, plus two complete 60-hour shutdowns September 11 to 14 and September 18 to 21, when no flights operate. If your fall travel routes through GSP, book around those two September weekends now.
July 11, 2026BMW Group Press
BMW closes out its $1.7 billion Upstate investment: Plant Spartanburg expanded, Plant Woodruff online.
The program completed June 30, pairing the Plant Spartanburg expansion with the new Plant Woodruff battery plant. The fifth-generation X5 premiered with it, and the iX5 becomes the first fully electric BMW built in the United States when production starts in late 2026. An announced $1.7 billion is a press release; a completed one is a payroll.
July 11, 2026SC Daily Gazette
The last cruise ship leaves Union Pier, and 65 acres of Charleston waterfront start over.
The final departure sailed June 30. Ben Navarro's Beemok now redevelops the 65-acre site with an approved TIF district and a plan it describes as intentionally incremental. Sixty-five acres of peninsula waterfront without a cruise terminal is the rarest kind of blank page.
July 11, 2026Post and Courier
Beaufort County puts $42 million behind keeping 5,000 acres beside Palmetto Bluff as forest.
The county approved the funds to preserve the New River Forest adjoining Palmetto Bluff, and the Nature Conservancy transfers the tract to the South Carolina Forestry Commission within three years. For owners inside the gates, the view across the New River just moved from variable to fixed.
July 11, 2026PGA TOUR
The PGA TOUR comes to Asheville: the inaugural Biltmore Championship plays The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, September 17 through 20.
It is Asheville's first TOUR event in more than 80 years, with Biltmore Estate and Explore Asheville as co-title sponsors on a four-year deal. Four Septembers of national broadcast over a Cliffs course is the kind of exposure a community cannot purchase directly.
July 11, 2026Lake Keowee Market Coverage
Keowee in May: the most inventory in several years, and a ceiling that will not move.
Inventory on Lake Keowee sits at its highest level in several years, handing buyers below the ceiling a degree of leverage they have not had since 2020. Cliffs luxury demand remains the exception: cash-heavy, decisive, and largely indifferent to the rest of the market.
July 11, 2026Post and Courier Greenville
Breeze keeps stacking routes at GSP: Columbus, Cincinnati, and Fort Lauderdale five days a week.
Columbus service began May 8, a seasonal Cincinnati nonstop followed on July 3, and Fort Lauderdale now runs five days a week. Airlines add capacity where the passengers already are, and Breeze keeps finding them in the Upstate.
July 11, 2026WCBD News 2
Charleston's nonstop count reaches 29: Breeze adds Trenton from September 20.
Trenton, New Jersey joins Thursdays and Sundays as the airport's 29th nonstop, following Cancun on January 17 and Atlantic City on May 6 this year. Twenty-nine nonstops is not a beach-town route map. It is a relocation-market route map.
July 11, 2026The Island Packet
Hilton Head breaks ground on its first new hotel in years.
The Wave, Crevo Capital's first hotel development, broke ground in June. On an island that approves almost nothing new, a shovel in the ground is its own market report.
July 11, 2026Town of Hilton Head Island
Hilton Head's beaches are officially back: Phase 2 renourishment wraps at South Beach.
Marinex pulled the last dredge equipment off South Beach in late June, closing out the second phase of the island's beach renourishment program. The least glamorous line item in Lowcountry ownership is the one holding up all the others.
July 11, 2026Living in Greenville SC
The Swamp Rabbit Trail bridges Verdae Boulevard in October, then paves on toward CU-ICAR.
The bridge over Verdae Boulevard completes in October, after which Greenville County paves the connection to CU-ICAR. Every extension pulls the region's most valuable residential amenity into a new corridor, and Verdae is next in line.
July 2026The Southern Ledger, No. 002
The equestrian arbitrage, measured: Wellington land averages about $842,000 an acre. The Tryon-Landrum corridor runs near $92,000.
The Land Report's study of Wellington, Florida puts the average equestrian parcel at roughly $842,000 per acre, with improved farms near $945,000 and the best streets past $1.5 million. Current listings around Landrum average about $92,000 per acre, and greater Aiken about $53,000. The sport's calendar has already moved to the Southeast. The land math is still catching up.
July 2026Post and Courier
South Carolina leads the nation in population growth, and the fastest-growing cities cluster in the Upstate.
New census-backed reporting maps where the state's growth is actually landing, with Greer, Mauldin, and Woodruff among the fastest-growing cities in South Carolina, all in the Greenville-Spartanburg corridor. Growth at the state line is an abstraction. Growth in your zip code is a comp.
2026Post and Courier
The Days Inn comes down: the site clears for Four Seasons' first South Carolina hotel.
Four Seasons Hotel and Residences Charleston will bring 139 rooms, four restaurants and bars, and 36 branded residences priced from about $5 million to a 1.9-acre Meeting Street site, targeting 2028. A flag at this altitude tends to reset the peninsula's condo comp ceiling before the first unit ever closes.
2026Daniel Communities
Cashiers Lake: a new 100-acre private community with 54 homesites at the Crossroads.
Daniel Communities and Silverwing Partners will build around a private lake in the heart of Cashiers, with a signature restaurant, greenway paths to the Village Green, and lock-and-leave owner services. It is the first new private community of this scale in the village core in years, and a read on where plateau demand is heading.
2026Aiken Standard
Aiken's boutique hotel wave: the 80-room Laureate advances, two more in the pipeline.
The Design Review Board cleared the way for the Laureate Hotel with a restaurant and bar in historic downtown Aiken, with construction possible this summer and a 2027 opening. Two additional boutique hotel conversions are proposed for historic buildings nearby. The equestrian capital of the South is getting places to put its visitors.