Search "Mount Pleasant median home price" this summer and you will get five different answers within five different price brackets. Redfin says the median sale price in February 2026 was $831,000, down 7.9 percent from a year earlier. Houzeo, pulling from the same general market a month earlier, says $855,000, up 1.12 percent year over year. Movoto's April 2026 read puts the sold median at $1,125,000, a full quarter million above either of the other two. None of these sites is wrong. They are measuring different slices of the same town, and the gap between them is the most useful thing a buyer comparing Mount Pleasant to Summerville or West Ashley can learn right now.
The softer story underneath those headlines, more days on market, more price cuts, a slight buyer's-market tilt, is real. But it is layered on top of a supply constraint that a Charleston Trident Association of Realtors advocacy official says will not meaningfully loosen before 2029. That is the part most comparisons skip, and it changes what "soft market" should mean to someone deciding whether to buy here now or wait.
Five Reports, Five Numbers
| Source | Period Measured | Reported Median | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Redfin | February 2026 | $831,000 | down 7.9% YoY |
| Houzeo (CTAR-sourced) | January 2026 | $855,000 | up 1.12% YoY |
| Movoto | April 2026 | $1,125,000 (sold) | vs. 759 homes sold the prior year |
| CTAR-based county read | February 2026 | ~$710,000 (Charleston County single-family) | up 2.4% YoY |
Part of the spread is geography. CTAR itself splits Mount Pleasant into two tracked halves, north and south of the Isle of Palms Connector, which also lines up with the town's two zip codes: 29464 to the south and 29466 to the north. A median calculated from the Old Village side of that line behaves nothing like one calculated from newer construction north of it. One CTAR-based figure from 2025 put the Upper Mount Pleasant median near $892,500, itself a different number from anything above.
Part of it is home type. A month with a heavier share of $1 million-plus single-family contract activity, like the first week of July 2026, when one regional tracking report counted 11 Mount Pleasant contracts over $1 million in a single week, will pull a monthly sold median well above a month dominated by townhome and condo closings. Movoto's April spike likely reflects exactly that kind of mix.
And part of it is simply timing. Sold medians, list medians, and year-over-year comparisons against different base months will never line up perfectly, even when every source is using accurate data. The lesson for a comparison-stage buyer is not to pick a favorite number. It is to stop trusting any single median as a stand-in for the whole town.
What Every Number Agrees On
Where the sources converge is more instructive than where they diverge. Inventory has been sitting around 3.41 months of supply, a level that leans toward buyers but is nowhere near the 4-to-6-month range considered fully balanced. Homes sold above asking price fell to roughly 10 percent of transactions, down from about 13 percent a year earlier. Listings with at least one price reduction rose from roughly two-thirds to about three-quarters. Days on market, depending on the source and the exact window, moved from the 60s into triple digits compared with the same period a year prior.
That is a consistent picture of a market that has cooled from its 2021-2022 pace. It is not, however, a market where sellers have lost their footing. One Charleston-area broker put it plainly when describing the region's spring conditions: the market is "still a strong market, but it is not a blind bidding market anymore." Buyers today are pricing in condition, insurance costs, and school zones in a way they simply did not during the pandemic run. That is a change in buyer behavior, not a collapse in demand.
The Permit Cap Behind the Curtain
Here is the piece that explains why the softening above coexists with continued upward price pressure rather than canceling it out. According to Josh Dix, vice president of advocacy at the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors, speaking to the Post and Courier in July 2026, Mount Pleasant currently limits how much substitute housing, meaning apartments, townhomes, and condos, can be permitted each year. That limit has already pushed single-family home prices higher than they would otherwise sit, because buyers who might have chosen a townhome or condo instead are funneled back into competing for the same detached-home inventory.
The mechanism that matters for a 2026 buyer is that this cap does not reset when monthly sales numbers soften. A slower spring, more price cuts, or a longer average days-on-market figure reflects near-term demand and rate sensitivity. The permit structure reflects a multi-year supply ceiling that, per CTAR's own advocacy team, is not expected to expand meaningfully until around 2029. Cyclical softness and structural scarcity are stacking on top of each other, not offsetting one another. That is the reason a buyer's-market headline in Mount Pleasant can be true this quarter and still not translate into the kind of durable price relief a similar headline might produce in a town without a permit ceiling on substitute product.
Why Demand Keeps Showing Up Anyway
The demand side of the equation has not slowed down to match. Boeing has been consolidating all of its 787 operations in North Charleston, a move that puts roughly 9,059 employees on site with another 300 engineering positions inbound. Google has committed $9 billion to South Carolina investment through 2027. The Port of Charleston handled 2.6 million TEUs in its most recent full-year count. None of those jobs land in Mount Pleasant exclusively, but the commute geography of the region means a meaningful share of that employment growth becomes Mount Pleasant housing demand, whether the buyer is a relocating engineer or a family moving up from a starter home elsewhere in the metro.
That is consistent with what the contract data showed heading into midsummer 2026: strong absorption at the high end even while the median-price story looked flat to soft. A market absorbing eleven seven-figure contracts in a single week is not a market where scarcity has quietly resolved itself.
What This Means If You're Comparing Neighborhoods
If you are weighing Mount Pleasant against Summerville, West Ashley, or Daniel Island on price alone, the permit-cap dynamic is the reason Mount Pleasant's floor tends to hold even during a soft quarter. It is worth knowing where the genuine entry points still exist inside that ceiling. Gregorie Ferry Towns, a workforce-oriented townhome community built in 2021 and 2022, sold out entirely, and a follow-up project, the Towns at Carolina Park, brought 100 more townhomes to market in 2026 under the same builder. Smaller condo inventory, like the handful of one-bedroom units at the Madison in Park West that traded under $300,000, still exists alongside homes selling above $5 million in the same town at the same time. That spread is not a contradiction. It is what a supply-capped, demand-heavy market looks like when you zoom in past the median.
For anyone currently sitting on a low pandemic-era mortgage rate and eyeing a move up within Mount Pleasant, the rate side of the equation had its best recent window earlier this year and it has already partly closed. The 30-year fixed rate dipped to 5.98 percent on February 26, 2026, per Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey, the first sub-6-percent print since September 2022. By late May it had drifted back up to 6.53 percent, and Fannie Mae and the Mortgage Bankers Association are forecasting the mid-6 percent range holding for the rest of the year. If you were waiting on rates alone to make a move-up purchase pencil out, that window opened and partially closed already this year rather than sitting ahead of you.
A Few Direct Questions
Does 3.41 months of supply mean Mount Pleasant is a buyer's market now? It means buyers have more room to negotiate than they did in 2021 or 2022, particularly on condition and price, not that inventory has caught up with demand. A fully balanced market typically runs 4 to 6 months of supply.
Will the permit cap on apartments, townhomes, and condos change before 2029? Based on CTAR's own advocacy commentary as of July 2026, no meaningful expansion is expected before then, which is a large part of why single-family prices have stayed firmer than the softer headline numbers suggest.
Is there anywhere in Mount Pleasant still under $500,000? Entry points exist, mostly in condos and smaller townhome product like the Madison in Park West, but they are a shrinking share of what comes to market and tend to move quickly when they do.
If you are trying to figure out what any of this means for the specific street or school zone you are targeting inside Mount Pleasant, that is a conversation worth having before you start touring. Reach out to Weichert, Realtors® - Lifestyle for a straight read on where your budget actually lands right now, and get your home valuation started if a move up is part of the plan.
