This is the library: every guide I have written, sorted by what you are trying to do rather than by when I wrote it. Find the situation that matches yours in the table below, or scroll to the section that fits and take the guide whose title is your question. Nothing on this page is the answer itself. Each line tells you what that guide settles, and the link takes you to it.
I write these one question at a time, because that is how they arrive: someone has orders and no idea which gate they report to, or a builder has just handed them a contract, or an online estimate has told them their house is worth a number they do not believe. So there is no single long page here that tries to cover everything badly. There is a guide per question, and this is the map to them.
If you would rather just ask me, that works too. Every one of these started as a real conversation.
Where should I start?
Start from the thing you are actually doing, not from the topic you think it falls under. The table below sends you to the hub that owns your situation, and each hub routes on from there to the specific guide. If two rows describe you, take the one with the nearest deadline: orders and contracts move faster than research does.
| If this is you | Start here | What that page does |
|---|---|---|
| You have orders to Joint Base Charleston | PCS to Joint Base Charleston | The whole move in one place: timeline, which installation is yours, housing decision, house-hunting trip. |
| You are buying with your VA benefit | VA loan FAQ for Charleston military buyers | The loan questions, one page each, from entitlement to the appraisal. |
| You are buying a brand-new build | New construction in the Charleston suburbs | Representation, contracts, negotiation, and what the timeline really looks like. |
| You are still deciding which town | Neighborhood guides | Six Living guides, one per market I work, on objective facts. |
| You are torn between two specific communities | Compare communities | Seven side-by-side guides, no place ranked over another. |
| You are selling | Selling your Charleston-area home | The seller journey in order, with a link to the full answer at each step. |
| You are buying, and not on orders | Buying a home in the Charleston suburbs | Pre-approval through closing, written for the civilian buyer. |
| You are moving here from out of state | Moving to the Lowcountry | Orientation to the region before you start picking streets. |
| You want current prices and inventory | Market update | The dated read on what the market is doing, with its source named. |
None of these hubs is a better starting point than another, and none of them ranks one place, one loan program or one kind of house above the rest. They are entry points, sorted by situation.
How is this page different from Field Notes?
Field Notes, in the menu at the top of every page, is the same writing in the order I published it, newest first, with a few lines of each guide showing. It answers “what is new here”. This page answers “which one of these is about my question”, and it is sorted by subject instead of by date, so nothing useful sinks just because it was written a while ago.
There is one more difference worth knowing, because it means these two pages are not copies of each other. Three of the guides below sit directly under this address as pages rather than as dated posts, so they never appear in the Field Notes stream at all. This is the only index on the site that lists them. They are in the selling section, near the bottom.
PCS and military moves
Nine guides, and together they are the PCS cluster: the move itself, the two installations, the commute, the housing decision, and the allowance that pays for it. The PCS to Joint Base Charleston hub is the front door if you want the whole thing in order; these are the chapters you can read on their own.
- PCS to the Naval Weapons Station (coming soon). Which suburbs sit within a reasonable run of the Weapons Station gates, and what the Navy side of the move looks like.
- PCS to Charleston Air Base (coming soon). The same question from the Air Force side, which is a different set of roads and a different set of towns.
- Commute to Joint Base Charleston. The drive from every suburb to both gates, treated as two separate installations, because “closer to base” means nothing until you know which gate you report to.
- On-base versus off-base (coming soon). The honest tradeoffs on both sides, including the ones nobody mentions at in-processing.
- BAH in Charleston. What the allowance is, how it is set, and what it is actually meant to cover.
- What your BAH affords, rank by rank (coming soon). The same allowance read as a housing budget, grade by grade.
- The house-hunting trip (coming soon). A day-by-day plan for a short trip, so you spend it deciding instead of driving in circles.
- Rent or buy on a three-year tour (coming soon). How to think about that call when the length of the tour is the whole problem.
- School zones near Joint Base Charleston. Which districts serve the areas around each installation, how enrollment works, and what to do when you arrive after the school year has started. It names districts as attendance-zone facts and rates no school.
VA loans
Ten guides, and they exist because the VA questions are narrow, they are asked one at a time, and a single page trying to answer all of them helps nobody. The VA loan FAQ hub gathers them. Every one of these is general information rather than lending advice, and every one says so on its own page: I am a real estate agent, not a lender or the VA.
- Who pays my agent under a VA loan. How buyer-agent compensation works on a VA purchase after the 2024 NAR changes.
- Will a seller accept my VA offer. The objection itself: where it comes from, what is true in it, and what to do about it in a real offer.
- VA loans on new construction in South Carolina. Whether the benefit works on a build, and where the paperwork differs from a resale.
- Seller concessions on a VA loan. What a seller is allowed to contribute, and what that contribution can be spent on.
- The VA funding fee. What the fee is for, who is exempt, and how it is paid.
- Occupancy when you are PCSing or deployed (coming soon). The move-in requirement, and how it works when the military decides where you are.
- Using the benefit as a first-time buyer in South Carolina (coming soon). What is different about a first VA purchase, and what to line up before you shop.
- Do VA loans still have limits (coming soon). How entitlement and county limits interact, and when a limit actually binds.
- Reuse and entitlement (coming soon). How many times the benefit can be used, whether two loans can run at once, and how restoration works.
- VA appraisal versus home inspection (coming soon). What each one checks, who it protects, and why you want both.
New construction
Three guides on buying from a builder, which is a different transaction from buying a resale in almost every way that matters. The new construction hub covers the whole process; these settle the three questions people ask before they get that far.
- Do you need a realtor for new construction. What the on-site sales agent’s job actually is, and who is representing whom.
- Can you negotiate with a builder (coming soon). What builders in this corridor will and will not move on, and why price is usually the last thing on the list.
- New construction versus resale (coming soon). The honest tradeoffs, including the ones that only show up two years in.
Choosing where to live
One guide sits here, and it is the router: where to live near Charleston (coming soon) walks the suburbs by objective attributes, county by county, so you can narrow the list before you start driving. It ranks nothing and describes no place by who lives there.
Everything deeper than that belongs to two hubs rather than to this page, and they are worth going to directly:
- The neighborhood guides are the long editorial read on each of the six markets I work: Summerville, Nexton, Cane Bay, Moncks Corner, Goose Creek and Carnes Crossroads. Boundaries, housing stock, HOA structure, the district that serves the area, flood facts, and the drive to both base gates.
- The comparison guides put two communities side by side on the same objective facts. Seven pairings, each built once and in one direction.
- The Lowcountry lifestyle guides cover the things that shape a week rather than a purchase: the beaches within reach of Summerville, what living with I-26 is really like, and what to check about flood zones and hurricane season before you write an offer.
Money, timing and everyday life
Six guides on the parts of a move that are neither the loan nor the house: the cost of being here, the order you do things in, and what the closing actually takes out of your pocket. These are the guides people read at the beginning, before they know which of the trees above they belong in.
- Relocating to Charleston from out of state. The move itself, written by someone who did it: what to sort before you arrive and what can wait.
- What it really costs to live in the Charleston suburbs (coming soon). The recurring costs that decide whether a payment is comfortable, insurance and taxes included.
- First-time home buyer in South Carolina (coming soon). Programs, steps and real costs, written for the civilian buyer.
- Buyer closing costs in South Carolina (coming soon). What is on the settlement statement, who customarily pays each line, and where a South Carolina closing differs from the one you had somewhere else.
- Sell or buy first (coming soon). How to sequence a move-up when you need one to fund the other.
- The best time to sell in the Charleston area (coming soon). How to think about timing a listing here, and how hurricane season sits inside that.
Selling your home
Three guides live directly under this page rather than in the dated stream, which is why the Field Notes archive never shows them. They are the ones sellers ask for first, and they answer the same three questions in every listing conversation I have. The selling hub is the front door to the whole seller journey, and the two seller guides above (sell or buy first (coming soon) and when to list (coming soon)) belong with them.
- How I price your Charleston-area home to sell. Where a list price actually comes from, and how we choose a strategy together rather than picking a number that sounds good.
- How accurate is the Zestimate here (coming soon). What an automated estimate can and cannot see about a specific Lowcountry address.
- Sell or rent your home when you PCS (coming soon). The math-and-life decision under orders, equity and entitlement on one side, long-distance landlording on the other.
What this page deliberately does not do
It routes. That is the whole job, and holding it to that is what keeps the guides worth reading. Specifically:
- No answers of its own. Every line here tells you what a guide settles, not what it concludes. If you want the answer, take the link.
- No figures. No rate, fee, price band, median or drive time appears on this page. Every number lives on the guide that owns it, with its source and the date it was checked, so nothing here can quietly go stale.
- No ranking. No town, no loan program, no builder and no kind of house is called better than another. What is right depends on facts about you that a web page does not have.
- No description of who lives anywhere. Places are indexed here by jurisdiction, housing stock, road access and amenities, never by the people in them. That is a fair-housing commitment, and it is also just better information.
- No duplicate library. The six neighborhood guides, the seven comparisons and the three lifestyle guides are indexed by their own hubs, linked above. They are not re-listed here so that two pages can drift apart.
Where to go next
- Not sure which situation you are in yet? That is a conversation, not a page. Talk to Megan.
- Want the whole military move in order rather than a guide at a time? Start at PCS to Joint Base Charleston.
- Want current prices and inventory before you read anything else? The dated market update carries them with its source named.
- Want the read on one place rather than a topic? The neighborhood guides cover all six markets.
- Want to see what is newest rather than what fits? Field Notes, in the site menu, lists everything in publication order.
About the author
Megan Duncan is a Lowcountry real estate agent with Modern + Main Realty who specializes in military and PCS relocations to the Joint Base Charleston area and in new construction. An out-of-state transplant herself, she has worked with buyers and sellers across Summerville, Nexton, Cane Bay, Moncks Corner, Goose Creek, and Carnes Crossroads. She holds the Military Relocation Professional (MRP) designation and is fluent in BAH, VA loans, and the timelines that come with orders. SC License #141795.
One clear next step: if one of these guides got you most of the way and left a question about your own move, talk to Megan. No pressure, just a straight answer.
