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What Makes Hilton Head Island So Special? | August 2026 Market Update

Rick Turner looks at the history and vision that shaped Hilton Head Island, what makes the area unique today, and the latest August 2026 Bluffton and Hilton Head real estate market numbers.

Watch the August 2026 Market Update
I want to talk to you a little bit about the history of Hilton Head. What? Hi, Rick Turner here with Sabes International Realty on Hilton Head
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Island, South Carolina. I'm at Shelter Cove Harbor. It's Labor Day weekend, Saturday morning. People are out here dining and starting to shop and I'm sure
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many will head down to the beach. I want to talk to you a little bit about the history of Hilton Head. What makes Hilton Head so special? And it is the
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history. It's the foundation of how Hilton Head got developed. Uh my wife and I were blessed to move here in 1972.
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So we got to see some of the very earliest days of Hilton Head, but it goes back to a gentleman named Charles
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Frasier. Charles's father, General Joseph Frasier from World War II, owned with some partners most of Hilton Head,
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and they were running a timber operation after World War II. And Charles, young Charles, was at Yale and he had this
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vision for taking the southern portion of Hilton Head and turning it into a great place to live, not your uncle's
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beach town. Okay. And uh so that was 1957 when he did that and it was amazing
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the vision that he created. And his vision was different than a normal beach town. His vision was to create
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community, a real sense of community. So whenever there's people walking all around, bicycles coming by and everything, but his vision was to create
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a real sense of community. So whenever a church, whenever a school, whenever a civic organization, a cultural organization, whenever people needed to
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build something or create something that would serve a community, a place for people to live, Charles would give them
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buildings or land. So very quickly throughout the 60s and then in the 70s, I saw it just boom. this sense of community developed, schools, churches.
1 minute, 51 seconds
I mean, it it was amazing. Community playhouse. So that whole spirit then transferred right across the inter
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coastal waterway into Bluffton. And so now we think of it as Hilton Head Island, Bluffton. And it's a great sense
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of community. It's been thrilling for my wife and I to live here, to watch families thrive here, grow up, and of course, you know, it's hard to beat the climate. It's hard to beat the beach.
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But I want to tell you, here's Hilton Head Island, largest island on the east coast except for Long Island, bigger
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than Manhattan, 12 miles of beach, and 85% of the beach is single family homes.
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Only 15% is villas and hotels, and there's only one that's over five stories tall, and that's a 10-story
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hotel. Anyway, it's been a great place to raise a family. It's a great place to have a vacation home. It's a great place to live and just thrive. So, I wanted to
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talk to you about that. And here's Kai Nast magazine named Hilton Head Island the number one island in America. That
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includes all the Hawaiian islands, number one island in America for nine years in a row. I mean, it's just it's a
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special unique place. So, the Hilton Head Island Bluffed area has been thrilling to live here. It's been thrilling to help people buy vacation
3 minutes, 10 seconds
homes here. It's just a a wonderful place, very unique. So, people ask me all the time, they'll say, "Rick, how's the market? What's going on in the in
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the real estate market, the real estate market continues, you know, when you got a special place like this that's unique all up and down the coast?" Uh, you
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would expect it to do well, and it continues to do well. This year is another awesome year. Prices are up
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almost 3% year-over-year compared to last year. At this time, the number of sales are up almost 3%. So, the market continues to be strong. So, come to
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Hilton Head. Come to Hilton Head Island, Bluffton. Enjoy this as a place to live or as a place to vacation. And I want to show you one of my favorite spots here.
3 minutes, 53 seconds
And this is Poseidon over here. Let me see if I can zoom in on him. There he is. And you got Shelter Cove Harbor. A
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great place to live. Anyway, thank you for joining me today.