SULLIVAN’S ISLAND — The number 29482 isn’t the average home mortgage cost out here, but it’s a pretty ritzy number just the same.
This town of 950 homes bordering the Atlantic Ocean has continued its hold as one of the most expensive ZIP codes in America, putting it 70th on Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of U.S. housing prices by ZIP code.
Town Administrator Andy Benke said the reason is simple: The unbendable law of supply and demand.
Because Sullivan’s is an island, there simply isn’t room to expand, annex or add any more rows of single-family housing. That makes every home or lot desirable to a potential buyer.
“People want to move to the South, and they want to live by the ocean,” Benke said.
Case in point: In mid-August, a sales record was set when New York businessman Todd Boehly paid $4.72 million for a 4,500-square-foot, six-bedroom Atlantic Avenue house on an oceanfront lot.
The sale broke the previous record from April 2006, when a home on I’On Avenue went for $4.7 million.
For the rest of the island, the median home-sales price in 2006 was $1,195,000, down from $1,220,000 in 2005, when national housing sales were still soaring.
Also making the list were Isle of Palms (29451) at No. 199 and Charleston (29401) at No. 327. IOP’s median sales price was $862,000 and Charleston’s was $765,000.