Traffic backed up, businesses booming, real estate soaring following pandemic
by Bill Davis | Current Staff Writer
Last year was tough all over, and Folly felt its sting from COVID shutdowns and checkpoints to cancelled reservations at restaurants and accommodations.
Consider that there will be no July 4th fireworks celebration at the beach this year, or in very many places in the Lowcountry either.
Public officials across the region had no idea a few months ago when fireworks companies were taking reservations what kind of virus protocols would be in place. So, any bang-bangs in the sky at Folly this year will be set off by private individuals.
But halfway through 2021, the tide has turned, and tourists and business are flocking back like migrating birds on their way South. And Mayor Tim Goodwin is happy to welcome them back.
“Just to give you an example of how extreme it is, I was trying to leave the island on a Thursday afternoon and people were backed up to the Harris Teeter,” says Goodwin as if it were the grocery near the connector and not the first one on Folly Road.
“I guess people were feeling cooped up or just getting their first chance at a vacation; it’s just crazy numbers,” he says, adding that all the accommodations on Folly were booked up and will be for the foreseeable future. “They got plenty of money from somewhere.”
Goodwin says he sees lines outside of many Folly restaurants lately: “About the only problem they have is the one everyone else in the restaurant business is having: getting people back to work to fulfill the demand of hungry and thirsty vacationers.”
Soraya McKay also has a good perch to see the numbers coming to and interested in coming to Folly this summer. Not only is McKay the secretary of the Folly Association of Business, but she also works with the Tourism Visitors Promotions Committee helping to market Folly to the vacationing world.
McKay sees drool-inducing numbers when she studies at internet traffic to the VisitFolly.com website.
“Looking at traffic from April 1 through today versus last year, we are up 137 percent,” she says.
Additionally, McKay works with Little Dog agency, a full-service public relations and marketing firm. Some of her clients include several Folly restaurants and accommodations, and all reporting “all-time records.”
McKay echoes Goodwin’s one worry, saying that every businesses’ “biggest challenge, as with everybody else, is finding staff.”
Tristan Levant, the front desk supervisor at Tides Folly Beach Hotel says every room has been sold-out for a while and will be for the near future. After last year’s mild occupancy drop, he says Tides increased rates to between $346-$429 a night.
Alyssa Gallo, a property manager at the Folly office of Dunes Properties also reports a record year. While her company didn’t raise rates, she says, “this year’s influx isn’t like anything we have ever seen before.”
Gallo, like Goodwin uses traffic onto the island as a quick metric. “It used to be that on Saturday morning I could always just sail through traffic onto the island at 9 a.m. to open the office by 10,” she says.
Lately, though, she’s been finding it harder and harder to get onto the island without leaving even earlier.
LaJuan Kennedy over at Fred Holland has seen it all, having grown up on Folly. And now all she sees is sunshine.
“Everybody wants to come to the beach; they know it’s safer in the sunshine, as the virus does not like sunshine,” says Kennedy, who happily says all of her properties were fully booked out the last week of June, too.
Those considering living on Folly better bring a deeper pocketbook than last year, according to Michael Scarafile, president of Carolina One Real Estate which handles many sales on Folly.
On top of rentals being “through the roof,” Scarafile says that 62 properties were sold on Folly between January and May of 2020. This year for the same months, that number, he says, jumps to 82 properties – a more than 30-percent jump.
Significantly, for the same period, the market-wide numbers for the region are only up 25 percent, which means Folly is outperforming the rest of the local real estate market.
“But the big number is that last year’s median sales price here was $557,000, and this year it’s $780,000,” says Scarafile, adding that more oceanfront and larger properties went on the market than last year.
So, it looks like 2021 will be big for business on Folly based on the first half of the year. It won’t be big enough to make up for everything, much less everyone lost in 2020, but it’s a record-setting start.
