Isle of Palms vs. Sullivans Island: One Buy Box, Two Very Different Paces Right Now

In the twelve weeches ending August 23, 2026, days to pending, months of supply and sold-home counts moved in opposite directions across Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island, two markets that sit inside the same barrier-island buy box.

Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island sit inside the same buy box on paper. Same stretch of barrier island, same general buyer pool, same island price tier by local standards. Anyone shopping both this summer would reasonably expect the two markets to move together.

They didn't. Not this period.

Start with Isle of Palms. The median time to go under contract there ran 97 days in the twelve weeks ending August 23, 2026. Supply sits at about 4.5 months, meaning at the current sales pace the homes listed today would clear in roughly four and a half months. Sold volume slipped too, down about 14% year over year, though this is still a market actively working through its pool.

Sullivans Island tells a stranger story. There, the median time to go under contract ran 79 days, on its face faster than the market next door. Supply runs about 12.6 months there, and sold counts fell about 54% year over year, a much thinner pool clearing at a much slower overall rate, even though the one median that measures speed alone looks quick.

That's the piece worth sitting with. A market carrying far more standing supply should, in theory, take longer to find a buyer than a tighter one. Sullivans Island doesn't fit that pattern, at least on the median. The likely explanation is scale, not speed: when sold volume drops as sharply as it has there, a handful of transactions can swing a days-to-pending median hard in either direction. Isle of Palms' figure is built on a deeper, steadier pool of sales. Sullivans Island's is built on far fewer of them, so it moves more and settles less.

For a buyer, that difference is not abstract. Shopping Isle of Palms means competing inside a market still absorbing homes at a working pace. Shopping Sullivans Island means negotiating in a market with very few other buyers to compare against, a seller there is not fielding a crowd.

Price sits in a different tier on each island, too. Isle of Palms' median sale price ran $1,625,000 this period.

Sullivans Island's median sale price ran $3,487,500 this period, more than double the tier next door, riding on the same thin sold volume that's been feeding these swings.

Across the territory, 61 homes sold in the twelve weeks ending August 23, 2026, down from 77 in the same period a year earlier. That pullback shows up on both islands, just at very different scales.

Put the two side by side and the verdict depends entirely on who's asking. A buyer working a real timeline, someone who needs to close within a season, has better odds in Isle of Palms: the pool is deeper and the market is still functioning even with sales off from last year. A buyer with room to wait and no urgency to compete finds real leverage in Sullivans Island right now, where thin supply and a sharp drop in sold homes have left sellers with fewer other offers to lean on.

Sellers should read their own market rather than their neighbor's island. An Isle of Palms listing competes inside an active pool. A Sullivans Island listing is one of very few, and that cuts both ways depending on how it's priced.

What to watch from here: whether Sullivans Island's sold count builds off such a small base, and whether Isle of Palms holds its months of supply near current levels as more listings arrive later in the year. Either move would start to answer whether this period was a one-time wobble or the new pace for both islands.

These figures come from MLS sold data, aggregated by ZIP code through Listing Leads.

Chris Eller