Q2 2026 Performance Snapshot

Island-wide home sales: 481 closings, +3.2% YoY
Island-wide home median: $1,200,000, unchanged YoY
Island-wide villa sales: 425 closings, +3.6% YoY — first gain since 2021
Island-wide villa median: $515,000, up from $512,750; 1.0% below 2024 peak
Island-wide home inventory: 223 homes; 2.8 months of supply
Island-wide villa inventory: 383 villas; 5.4 months of supply (down from 6.1 in Q1)
Sea Pines home sales: 120 closings, flat YoY
Sea Pines home median: $1,675,005, +5.2% YoY
Sea Pines home inventory: 44 homes; 2.3 months of supply
Sea Pines villa sales: 64 closings, +30.6% YoY — back to 2019 levels
Sea Pines villa median: $830,000 — new all-time high
Sea Pines villa inventory: 15 villas; 79.1% below pre-Covid levels; 1.5 months of supply
National context: National existing-home sales +3.2% YoY; national median +1.3% through May

Going into 2023, this newsletter asked a question. After a year when sales had tumbled and the economy had everyone bracing, would the market roll over, or could the gains of the boom be consolidated into a new pricing floor? Three and a half years later, the villa market has answered, and the answer is worth your attention.

Start with the floor, because it held. From 2017 through 2024, the median price of an island villa rose 140.9%, from $215,900 to $520,000. Seven straight years of appreciation. Then came the lull everyone expected would give it back. It gave back 1%. The median stands at $515,000 today, a single percent below its 2024 peak. A market that runs up that far and surrenders that little did not roll over. It found its floor.

Then, this year, the floor did something it had not done in two years. The median price stopped falling and ticked up, to $515,000 from $512,750 last year. Sales rose with it, 425 villas against 410 a year ago, up 3.6%. That is the first year-over-year gain in villa sales since 2021. Sales had fallen four years running, 670 to 501 to 482 to 410, and this year the line finally bent the other way. So the rollover question is settled. The floor held. But the numbers this year raise a second question the last three years never did: is the market starting to turn?

The turn is sharper up close than the half-year totals show. At the end of the first quarter, the island villa median was down 10.9% year-over-year and sales were down 4.5%. By midyear, the median is up and sales are up 3.6%. In one quarter the market went from falling on both price and volume to rising on both. That is a striking move, and it is why the second question is worth asking now rather than in hindsight.

The whole picture demands it. 425 sales is a gain, and it is still 28.5% below the 595 villas that sold in 2019. The market turned up, but off a low base, and one quarter is not a trend. This could be the pivot the last three years were building toward, or a blip the second half erases. No one can know yet. All anyone can do is watch it, report it honestly, and draw what inference the past allows. So this is the report: something moved this quarter that had not moved in two years, and it is worth tracking closely from here.

For buyers, one number matters more than the median. In 2023, 35.1% of island villa buyers paid list price or above. This year, 13.6%. The list-to-sale ratio eased with it, from 98% to 96.6%, moving back toward the 95% that has long been the sweet spot where buyers and sellers meet in a balanced negotiation. I flagged that 95% mark in this newsletter back in 2022 as the number to watch for the market finding its balance, and here it is, nearly arrived. Sellers are taking real discounts to asking again, and that is negotiating room buyers did not have at the peak. It is the room patient buyers spent three years waiting for, and it is open today.

But look at what it is open against. Villa listings island-wide rose from 319 at the start of the year to 383 today, and yet the market is tightening, not loosening. Supply stood at 6.1 months at the end of the first quarter. At midyear it is 5.4. A market this size does not turn on a dime, so a move of that direction, even a modest one, is worth noticing. Inventory rose and the market absorbed most of it, which is not what a softening market does.

Now look at Sea Pines

Sea Pines is what this market looks like once the tide comes back in. Villa sales there jumped from 49 last year to 64, a 30.6% gain that brings volume all the way back to its 2019 level. The median set a new high, $830,000, past the old 2024 peak. And even at those new highs, buyers still won back room: at-or-above-list sales fell from 47.4% in 2023 to 25% this year. Strength and leverage at once. While the island turned up off a low base, Sea Pines turned up to full recovery. Back to pre-Covid volume, a fresh high on price, and only fifteen villas left for sale, down 34.7% this year and 79.1% below where inventory stood before Covid, set against the roughly seventy-five a balanced market would have listed.

Here is the inference those numbers invite. Island villa sales run 28.5% below 2019 because the national mood has kept buyers on the sidelines. That mood will not last forever. When it lifts, buyers return, and they will not return to a full market. They will return to an island that has spent years draining its villa inventory. Of the 16,882 villas island-wide, just 383 are listed for sale. In Sea Pines, fifteen out of 2,042. Normal demand meeting this little supply moves prices in one direction. If sales climb back toward normal against today’s inventory, the escalation follows. That is not a forecast. It is what Sea Pines has already shown, back to 2019 volume and a new high on price in the same year, and it is why a buyer who has tested the water for three years may be looking at the last, best window before it closes.

For a seller, the quarter is the first real evidence your floor has become a base to price from. For a buyer, it is a reason to move while the froth is still off and the inventory is still yours to choose from. One quarter is not certainty, but it is the most this market has shown in three years.

If you have been waiting for the villa market to show its hand, this is the clearest look you have had in three years. Call me and let’s talk about what it means for the property you have in mind.

A Look at the Numbers

​Q2 2026 Hilton Head Island Home Market Performance: Home sales island-wide rose 3.2% year-over-year, 481 closings, with the median sales price unchanged at $1,200,000. Nationally, existing-home sales were up 3.2% and the median up 1.3% through May. Inventory stands at 223 homes, up from 202 at the start of the year, with approximately 2.8 months of supply, a sellers market in play.

Q2 2026 Hilton Head Island Villa Market Performance: Villa sales island-wide rose 3.6% year-over-year, 425 closings versus 410 a year ago, the first such gain since 2021. The median sales price rose to $515,000, up from $512,750 last year and 1% below its 2024 peak of $520,000. Sales remain 28.5% below the 595 villas sold in 2019. In 2023, 35.1% of buyers paid list price or above; this year, 13.6%, with the list-to-sale ratio easing from 98% to 96.6%. Inventory stands at 383 villas, up from 319 at the start of the year, with approximately 5.4 months of supply, down from 6.1 months at the end of the first quarter.

Q2 2026 Sea Pines Home Market Performance: Home sales in Sea Pines totaled 120 closings, essentially level with a year ago, and the median sales price stands at $1,675,005, up 5.2% from $1,592,500 a year ago. Inventory has eased from 46 homes at the start of the year to 44 today, well below the 150 listings that constitute a balanced market, approximately 2.3 months of supply.

Q2 2026 Sea Pines Villa Market Performance: Villa sales in Sea Pines rose 30.6% year-over-year, 64 closings versus 49, level with 2019. The median sales price set a new high of $830,000, past the prior 2024 peak. In 2023, 47.4% of buyers paid list price or above; this year, 25%, with the list-to-sale ratio at 97.91%. Fifteen villas are currently listed, down 34.7% this year and 79.1% below pre-Covid levels, against the roughly 75 that constitute a balanced market, about 1.5 months of supply.

For a comprehensive review of Hilton Head Island MLS YTD Q2 2026 sales data please click on the links below:

Q2 2026 Hilton Head Island Homes
Q2 2026 Hilton Head Island Villas
Q2 2026 Sea Pines Homes
Q2 2026 Sea Pines Villas

For all other communities, please contact us for a personalized report.

A Mile for Charlie

The Sea Pines Forest Preserve has a new trail, and it carries a neighbor’s name.

Charlie Miner spent a career running hospital systems. He led the Meridia Health System into its merger with the Cleveland Clinic, then ran the Clinic’s Eastern Region community hospitals, and was remembered as a leader who treated the receptionist with the same respect as the head of surgery. When he retired to Sea Pines, he treated retirement as more work to take on: the Country Club, Community Services Associates, and the board of the Forest Preserve. He painted watercolors of birds. He could put a fishing lure anywhere he wanted it. He walked these woods and beaches for years with Shiloh, his Bernese mountain dog. When he passed away at home in December 2024, after fifty-nine years of marriage to his wife Meg, his family asked that memorial gifts go to the Forest Preserve instead of flowers.

The preserve answered with a mile. Miner’s Mile is now on the map. It is a firm gravel path, a good ten feet wide, running through a deep stretch of woods most of us could never reach before, with water views and benches placed right where you’d want to stop. The surface is made from 1,080 tons of recycled asphalt ground into gravel, funded in part by a $40,000 grant from the Town and years of groundwork by the Forest Preserve Foundation. And unlike the preserve’s walking trails, this one welcomes bicycles. The Foundation’s David Henderson said it plainly: “There’s nothing else like it on Hilton Head Island.” Having walked it on a June morning under the live oaks, I can confirm he’s right.

Charles Fraser set these 605 acres aside, but land set aside still needs looking after, and that work falls to neighbors who give their time. Charlie Miner gave his generously. Take the walk. When you pause at a bench over the water, you’ll know who to thank.

​New Sand, Just in Time for Summer

This spring, the Town of Hilton Head Island completed the renourishment of South Beach, placing an estimated 755,000 cubic yards of new sand from Beach Marker 8 to Beach Marker 27, including Tower Beach here in Sea Pines. The access points reopened and the beach was ready before the summer crowds were.

I walked the new beach in mid-June and paced off the work myself. The fresh fill stands four to five feet deep. I counted 75 paces from the primary dune line to the seaward edge, with another 50 paces of open sand from the high tide mark down to the low tide line. The beach tents were already going back up.

The beach is the Island’s first asset, the reason folks come, and a good part of the reason property values here hold. The Island P cket, citing the Town, put the cost of this renourishment at $47.5 million, the price of keeping that asset whole. Standing on all that new sand, it looks like money well spent.

A New Chapter for the Inn at Harbour Town

The most recognizable building in Sea Pines is about to get the biggest makeover of its life.

The Sea Pines Resort has announced plans to renovate and expand the Inn & Club at Harbour Town, the island’s only Forbes Four Star hotel, an award it has now earned for 17 consecutive years. All 60 guest rooms will be fully gutted and renovated, with three of them converted to suites, and the lobby, lobby bar, and fitness and wellness space are all slated for major work.

The headline is a new residential village. Called “Harbour Town Residences,” the development will include 48 studio residences with kitchenettes plus six multibedroom units, built across four separate buildings where the front entrance of the inn stands today, with lawns and gardens filling the space between them. Cliff McMackin, the resort’s Director of Resort Development, told the Community Services Associates board that the goal is an “iconic experience beyond what you would expect” from a traditional hotel, and that the improvements will “put us at the highest category of luxury travel in the world.”

The change longtime members will feel most is at the Racquet Club. All 20 clay courts will be demolished to make room for the expansion, replaced by two tennis courts, four pickleball courts and two paddle ball courts, alongside a new resort pool, a poolside bar, and a restaurant. The main entrance to the inn will move from Lighthouse Lane to a new approach on Lighthouse Road.

This is a long runway, not a quick project. Planning runs through the next year, construction is expected to begin sometime in 2027, and the work should wrap in late 2028 or early 2029. As McMackin put it to the board, All the projects that have been done to date really were all leading up to this.”

Here is why it matters beyond the resort gates. The health of the Sea Pines real estate market has always tracked how people feel about Sea Pines itself, and a substantial reinvestment in its most iconic property is a vote of confidence in the community’s future. When the entity that stewards Harbour Town commits to a project of this scale, it is telling you where it thinks this place is headed.

Wishing you and your family a wonderful summer on the Island!