Relocating to South Carolina?

Enjoy your adventure as you visit the best South Carolina relocation resource available today.

Before you start your journey, take a minute and review what makes South Carolina a great place to work and play.

What makes South Carolina real estate worthwhile?

South Carolina comprises three distinct land regions—the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, and the Blue Ridge. But to South Carolinians, their homeland simply divides at what they call the Fall Line into Upcountry and Lowcountry. The southeastern Lowcountry features a number of small, sandy isles that skirt the seacoast, including the popular resort destinations of Kiawah Island and Seabrook Island.

Moving inland, the swamps and marshes that soak much of the coastal lowlands give way to verdant, rolling hills and valuable forests that cover nearly two-thirds of the state. The juncture of the soft, low coastal plain with the harder granite and slate slopes of the Piedmont Plateau is the Fall Line. Swift-running rivers tumble over this divide from highland to lowland, forming rapids and falls, and serving as a major source of hydroelectric power. The northwest corner of South Carolina holds a sliver of the fabled Blue Ridge Mountains, including the state’s highest point, Sassafras Mountain, at 1,085 meters (3,560 feet).

Long before the Civil War, and for decades afterward, cotton dominated the economy of South Carolina. Although plantation farming based on slave labor was supplanted after the war by a system known as sharecropping, cotton remained the state’s major commodity until boll weevils destroyed much of the crop during the 1920s. Today the South Carolina economy is much more diverse, featuring a textile industry that leads all but two other states in total production. Textile-related products such as dye and synthetic fibers are key elements of the state’s other main industry, chemicals. Tourism also plays an important economic role, with attractions ranging from the genteel charm of historic Charleston to balmy seaside getaways such as Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head Island. Tobacco is the state’s leading crop, but the production of cotton has recently bounced back, its acreage increasing threefold since the early 1980s.

Cotton’s preeminence as an economic force meant a huge demand for slave labor—so much so that African Americans outnumbered whites in South Carolina between 1820 and 1920. The state’s racial balance shifted after 1920 as many African Americans migrated to northern states in search of better social and working conditions. Today they make up around 30 percent of the population, and remain a majority in some rural parts of the state. Just over half of the people in South Carolina live in urban areas, clustering for the most part in and around the state’s largest cities: Columbia, Charleston, and Greenville.

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