South Carolina

South Carolina forecloses in court, so a seller in default gets a docket and a hearing rather than an advertised countdown, with the lender filing in the circuit court and the case going to a Master-in-Equity, a judge who hears foreclosures, partitions and other non-jury real estate matters and who sets the sale.

A deficiency judgment is available to the lender afterwards, so the sale is not necessarily the end of it.

The same Master-in-Equity court hears partition actions, and that matters here more than in most states, because South Carolina has one of the largest concentrations of heirs’ property in the country, particularly in the Lowcountry and the Sea Islands and among Gullah Geechee families whose land has passed down undivided since Reconstruction.

The state adopted the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act in 2016, and the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation in Charleston works with families to establish clear title, but a parcel held by a dozen cotenants with no recorded conveyance is still a parcel nobody can sell alone.

An owner-occupied legal residence is assessed at four per cent of value and exempted from school operating millage, while a second home, a rental or vacant land is assessed at six.

An inherited house is not the heir’s legal residence, so it moves to the six per cent ratio and loses the school exemption in the same year the family inherits it.

South Carolina also reappraises at the point of sale, since an assessable transfer of interest revalues the property as of the December following the conveyance, subject to a partial exemption, so the tax bill an heir or a buyer inherits is rarely the one the previous owner was paying.