Downsizing on the Grand Strand, at your pace.

There are three ways to do this, and none of them is wrong. Sell first, and you know exactly what you have to spend before you write an offer — but you may need somewhere to land in between. Buy first, and you move once, on your own timetable — but you carry two homes for a while, which is the thing most people on a fixed income want to avoid. Or write the next offer contingent on this sale, which the seller of that home will weigh against any offer that isn't.

Which one fits depends on three things you can settle before anything is signed: how flexible your move-out date is, whether the next home is already picked out, and whether this house is your primary residence or a second home — because that last one changes the tax picture entirely. Robin walks through all three with you at the start, before a price is ever discussed.

South Carolina exempts the first $50,000 of your home's fair market value from county, municipal, school and special-assessment property taxes once you are 65 — provided you've been a South Carolina resident for at least a year and reached 65 on or before December 31. Where spouses own jointly, either one qualifying is enough, and a surviving spouse keeps it while the home stays their legal residence. The same exemption reaches people classified as totally and permanently disabled, and the legally blind.

Two things trip up downsizers. The homestead exemption is not the same as the 4% owner-occupied assessment ratio — they are separate applications at separate Horry County offices, and in Horry County the homestead exemption is applied for in person at the Auditor's office. And the 4% ratio does not move with you: when you buy the smaller house, you apply for it again, before the first penalty date, or the new home is assessed at 6% until you do.

Start with what you're actually shopping for, not the label: one level, a yard someone else cuts, the drive to your doctors and to the nearest hospital, an airport within reach for the grandchildren, and monthly dues you've read the budget behind. Robin has listed and sold in Del Webb at Grande Dunes and Cresswind at Market Common, and represented buyers in both — the communities on this coast built with this move in mind — and she'll tell you plainly which ones answer your list and which don't.

As for the label: “55+” is a legal status under the federal Housing for Older Persons Act, not a description of the atmosphere. A community has to keep at least 80 percent of its occupied homes occupied by someone 55 or older, publish its age policies, and re-verify ages at least every two years — and it can lose the status if it stops. Robin doesn't publish a ranked list, because the honest way to check is per community, at the time you're buying: the recorded covenants, the association's published policies, and its current verification survey. She pulls all three before you write an offer.