Real estate offices in South Carolina: counts, sizes and growth markets

South Carolina had 3,321 real estate brokerage offices with paid employees in 2023, counted as offices of real estate agents and brokers (NAICS 531210) in the U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP). They reported 7,065 employees in the March pay period and $438.7 million in annual payroll.

Scaled to the Vintage 2024 population estimate of 5,478,831, the state has 6.06 brokerage offices per 10,000 residents, or one for every 1,650 people. Summed across all U.S. counties, the code totals 163,019 offices and a rate of 4.79. South Carolina has 1.61 percent of the U.S. population and 2.04 percent of its employer brokerage offices, so the state has noticeably more brokerage offices than its population share alone would suggest.

CBP counts only offices with at least one paid employee and only counts employees on payroll. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook reports that 55 percent of real estate brokers and 54 percent of sales agents are self-employed, so most agents affiliated with these offices do not appear in the employment figure. Treat the 7,065 employees as office staff and salaried roles, not as a count of agents.

Beaufort County has the highest density of real estate brokerage offices in South Carolina, at 17.84 per 10,000 residents, nearly three times the state rate. Charleston (14.04), Horry (12.07) and Georgetown (9.99) follow. Those four coastal counties hold 1,530 brokerage offices, 46.1 percent of the state total, while they are home to 20.3 percent of residents. Resort and second-home areas such as Hilton Head Island and the Grand Strand draw buyers who do not live in the county, which likely explains why these rates run so far above the local population.

Inland, Greenville (8.41), Oconee (7.27) and York (6.80) are well above the state rate. Nine counties are at or above the U.S. rate. Richland County, home to Columbia, is just below it at 4.71.

Several of the fastest-growing counties have relatively few brokerage offices. Spartanburg grew 12.6 percent from 2020 to 2024 to 369,256 residents and has 117 offices (3.17 per 10,000). Lancaster grew 16.3 percent and has 40 (3.58). Jasper, the fastest-growing county in the state at 23.7 percent, has 13 (3.65). Edgefield grew 14.9 percent and has 6 (2.04).

Some of this is likely geography. Lancaster and York border the Charlotte metro, and Jasper sits between Beaufort County and Savannah, so buyers moving there can choose agents based across county or state lines. Brokerages near those borders can serve the growth from where they already are, as long as they show up when buyers search for the communities they are moving to.

• 15 counties have no published count: Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Calhoun, Chester, Chesterfield, Dillon, Fairfield, Hampton, Lee, McCormick, Marion, Marlboro, Saluda and Williamsburg. Together they are home to 327,218 people.
• CBP publishes a county cell only when it covers three or more establishments, so these counties have zero, one or two employer brokerage offices. Many agents there likely work from offices in a neighboring county or without employees.

Almost all of them are very small on paper. 92.3 percent of South Carolina brokerage offices have fewer than five employees, matching the U.S. share of 92.1 percent. Only 0.8 percent have 20 or more. The average office has 2.1 paid employees.

Because most agents are independent contractors, an office with two employees can still support many agents. The practical effect is that lead handling, follow-up and transaction coordination are spread across individual agents, each with their own habits and tools, unless the brokerage provides a shared system.

Assume a crowded market and compete on response and local knowledge. The BLS projects real estate broker and sales agent employment to grow 2 percent from 2025 to 2035, slower than the average for all occupations, while South Carolina already has 26 percent more brokerage offices per resident than the nation. Growth will come from taking share, not from an expanding pool of offices.

Size data points the same way. With nine in ten offices reporting fewer than five employees, most brokerages do not have a marketing department or an inside sales team. The ones that grow usually put shared tools in place early: a common CRM, a defined lead response standard, and reporting that shows which listings, pages and sources produce appointments. That gives a small office the consistency of a larger one without adding headcount.

• On the coast (Beaufort, Charleston, Horry, Georgetown), a share of buyers are relocating or buying second homes and do not know local agents. Community pages with useful local detail and quick replies to online inquiries are how they choose an agent they have never met.
• In Spartanburg, Lancaster, Jasper and Berkeley, growth is ahead of local office counts. A dedicated page for each fast-growing community and an accurate Google Business Profile reach movers early.
• Give every agent the same intake and follow-up process so a lead from the brokerage website is answered within minutes, no matter which agent it routes to.
• When recruiting, use county rates to show agents where the brokerage has room to grow.

In a market this dense, the brokerages that grow are the ones buyers can find and reach first. Monvell's Marketing and Platform teams help brokerages build community pages, route leads to the right agent and track which sources turn into closings.

Dataset: U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns 2023, county file (cbp23co.txt), NAICS 531210 (offices of real estate agents and brokers). CBP covers establishments with paid employees; employment is for the pay period including March 12 and payroll is annual. CBP data from 2017 to 2023 use 2017 NAICS codes.

Population: Census Bureau Vintage 2024 county estimates (co-est2024-alldata.csv), POPESTIMATE2024. Growth is POPESTIMATE2024 divided by ESTIMATESBASE2020, minus one. The U.S. population is the sum of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Method: we filtered CBP to South Carolina (state FIPS 45), joined county population by FIPS code, computed offices per 10,000 residents and ranked all 46 counties. The U.S. rate sums the code across every county record. Size shares sum the published size class columns; cells marked N are excluded and shown as not allocated.

Limits: CBP excludes brokerages with no paid employees and agents who are independent contractors, counts office locations rather than firms, and applies noise to employment and payroll. County cells with fewer than three establishments are not published. Vintage 2025 population estimates are now available; we used Vintage 2024 to stay closer to the 2023 business data.