August 21, 2020
Kiawah Island Housing Market Study & Q&A Session
Earlier this year the Town engaged an independent firm to study Kiawah’s property values and trends, market position, and brand positioning. The goal was to better understand our recent experience and identify actions that the community – property owners, the Town, and major entities like KP, KIGR and KICA – should consider to ensure that Kiawah experiences growing property values and remains an outstanding place to own property and live or invest. This study grew out of last year’s consideration of short-term rental policies, during which a great deal of opinion and discussion revolved around property owners’ differing views and experiences with property values on the island.
The Town Council engaged a highly respected consulting firm, HR&A Advisors, to study the question, with specific focus on how our community’s property values have performed compared to our peer communities. In addition, HR&A Advisors was charged with identifying the strengths and weaknesses of our market, the long-term challenges we face, and steps we can consider to address those challenges.
HR&A incorporated a wide array of data and information from stakeholders, including full and part-time residents and short-term rental owners and also from KIGR, KP, and KICA. The resulting report will be presented to the Town Council in a workshop on Monday, August 24 and is available to the public here. Given social distancing requirements, HR&A will conduct the presentation via Zoom and interested residents are encouraged to view the meeting through the Town’s YouTube channel.
The full report is comprehensive, and detailed, but the Town wishes to make the entire unedited report available. After it has been presented to the Town Council on Monday and after public comments and questions, we anticipate a later communication that will highlight the information, findings and recommendations that will be of most interest and importance.
We would like to thank Kiawah Partners, Kiawah Island Golf Resort, KICA, and all of the business community and property owners who met with HR&A to give them their perspectives and provide the valuable background which informs their report.
Virtual Q&A Session Session – Wednesday, August 26 at 2 p.m.
Because of the limitations of a “virtual meeting” in accommodating public input and participation, HR&A will host a follow-up virtual public meeting on Wednesday, August 26 at 2 p.m., to answer questions about the study from Kiawah property owners. HR&A will collect resident and property owner questions about the report and respond to those questions during the Wednesday virtual meeting.
The virtual Q&A session will be live-streamed on the Town’s YouTube channel. There are two ways to participate.
1) There are 15 “seats” available to members of the community that would like to participate virtually in the session. Participants must register in advance, and registration is first-come, first-served. These participants will be able to ask the HR&A representative questions in the session and are not required to submit questions in advance.
Sign up to participate in the virtual Q&A
2) Submit questions for the Q&A until Tuesday, August 25, at 12 p.m., and then watch the Q&A on our YouTube channel.
Watching Methods
To access the Town’s YouTube channel, do one of the following:
- Save this email and click here at the meeting time.
- Visit http://www.youtube.com/c/TownofKiawahIsland
- Visit www.kiawahisland.org and click the YouTube icon at the bottom of the homepage.
- Visit www.youtube.com and search the Town of Kiawah.