Greetings from cold and snowy Saint Simons Island and the Golden Isles! Yes, you heard me right. We are getting this report out a little late and yesterday this area saw frigid temperatures and lots of snow and ice. It has been decades since this area has seen winter precipitation like we saw this week. Unfortunately the real estate market has been a little cold and stiff and could use some thawing out and sunny weather itself. I do believe the election took its toll on the market but since that date it has already started to show tremendous gains.

The number of homes sold in Glynn County fell 20% from the third quarter of last year to the fourth quarter of 2024. The average days that it took a home to sell dipped slightly in the fourth quarter to eighty six days but other factors like median sale price and the percentage of the sold price to the list price both remained essentially unchanged. The median sale price for a home in Glynn County remains at $399,000. The good news is that new listings are up compared to previously in the year. We are averaging about 706 active listings for the fourth quarter compared to approximately 670. This is the highest number of houses currently on the market that we have seen all year so hopefully that will carry into 2025.

The highest priced home sale for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $12 million for a huge ocean front estate in Ocean Forest.

Average mortgage interest rates still remain elevated at around 7% but I am hopeful that the spring of 2025 will show a completely different and more optimistic view of our real estate market.

We hope you enjoy reading this market report and enjoy the in-depth review of many of the beautiful neighborhoods that make up Glynn County.

- John Hallman

Listing Specialist & Expert Real Estate Broker, Engel & Völkers Golden Isles

St. Simons Island, or simply St. Simons, is a barrier island and census-designated place in Glynn County, Georgia. Part of the Brunswick Metropolitan Area, it had a population of 12,743 according to the 2010 census. Located on the southeast Georgia coast between Savannah and Jacksonville, St. Simons is both a seaside resort and residential community. It is the largest of Georgia’s Golden Isles, which also include Sea Island, Jekyll Island, and Little St. Simons Island. Visitors come for its warm climate, beaches, outdoor activities, shops and restaurants, historic sites, and natural beauty.

A popular tourist destination, Jekyll Island has beaches frequented by vacationers. Guided tours of the Landmark Historic District are available. Bike trails, walks along the beaches and sandbars, and Summer Waves, a water park, are among the active attractions. The historic district features numerous impressive and ambitious buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The island is also full of wildlife, consisting of many different mammals, reptiles, and birds living in the island's inland salt marshes. In 2018, Architectural Digest named Jekyll Island the eleventh most beautiful small town in America.

Sea Island is a privately owned, unincorporated area of Glynn County, Georgia, and is part of the Golden Isles of Georgia, which include St. Simons Island, Jekyll Island, Little St. Simons Island, and the mainland city of Brunswick. The well-visited seaside resort island is located along the Atlantic Coast just east of St. Simons Island. Known for it's beachside estates, Sea Island offers a true escape for discerning homeowners on the island.

Brunswick is a city in and the county seat of Glynn County, Georgia, United States. As the main urban and economic center of the state's lower southeast, it is the second-largest urban area on the Georgia coast after Savannah and contains the Brunswick Old Town Historic District. Brunswick supports a progressive economy largely based on tourism and logistics, with a metropolitan GDP of $3.9 billion. The Port of Brunswick handles approximately 10 percent of all U.S. roll-on/roll-off trade—third in the U.S., behind the ports of Los Angeles and Newark. In the 2010 U.S. census, the population of the city proper was 15,383; the urban area, 51,024; and the metropolitan area, 112,370.