🦅 The Opening Trail

Happy Memorial Day. A long weekend, a reason to pause, and apparently a green light on white pants — though if you're grilling in them, that's entirely on you.

Last week ended on a good note — land deal under contract on a late Friday afternoon.

The kind of moment that sneaks up on you, head down all week, and then suddenly the ground shifts. You're standing somewhere different than you were that morning.

I've been thinking about what it means to know land. Not just to read it for development potential, zoning capacity or utility access, but to actually know it. To feel it under your feet and recognize immediately that you belong there.

Good land tells you something true.

Which is maybe why finding the right parcel for the right use feels more than a transaction. You're matching something to somewhere. Getting that right matters.

Sub 50 acre land deal under contract. That’s not a bad Friday.

Here's an update on the market.

💼 The Brief

The Upstate isn't cooling off. It's rationalizing. There's a difference — and it matters for how you position right now.

The commercial market here is quietly shifting into landlord territory. Developers pulled back 30% on construction pipelines. Tenants kept showing up like they didn't get the memo.

The math did what math does.

🏭 Industrial — the main character

3.9 million square feet of new leases executed in Greenville-Spartanburg. Million-square-foot spaces — essentially gone. Overall vacancy dropped to 6.3%. Class A vacancy falling sharply year over year.

Spartanburg went from "people were quietly nervous" to "distinct landlord's market" faster than anyone expected. New construction can't keep pace with demand. If you've been watching Spartanburg and waiting — that window is getting smaller.

The new math for industrial development: NNN lease rates need to hit the low-to-mid $8/sq ft range to pencil. That's the floor. Below it — doesn't work. Above it — developers come back. We're watching that line closely.

🏢 Office — nobody's favorite asset class is having a moment

Downtown Greenville CBD Class A vacancy: 2.4%.

That's effectively nothing.

Average asking rents cracked $40/sq ft. This isn't a national office comeback story, it's a Greenville story. Walkable downtown, quality of life that keeps attracting talent, and not enough Class A space to meet demand.

Worth paying attention to.

🏘️ Multifamily — the healthy reset

Cap rates averaging around 6.6%. Not a crisis, a correction. The market is rewarding disciplined investors who underwrote conservatively and quietly humbling everyone who underwrote to 2021 assumptions.

You know who you are.

If you've been patient — this market is getting interesting again.

The one-liner Constrained supply. Rapid absorption. Cap rates settling into the mid-to-high 6% range. The Upstate keeps attracting demand faster than it can build. Position accordingly.

❤️‍🩹 The Lazy Broker Award — Issue 01

This week's award goes to the broker who listed a property as "priced to sell" and then didn't respond to three offers for eleven days.

It sold eventually. To someone else.

(We are all rooting for you.)

🔍 Land Watch

Inventory is tight. Prices are moving. And the people who know what they're doing are already under contract.

A few things worth knowing right now:

The squeeze is real. Available raw acreage across the corridor is at historic lows. Professional buyers are securing off-market positions before listings ever exist. If you're waiting for something good to hit CoStar, LoopNet or Crexi, that's the problem.

Zoning is shifting. Greenville County's growth policies are pushing developers toward mixed-use infill and conservation developments in rural areas. Today's planning commission conversation is tomorrow's development opportunity. Pay attention to what's moving through right now.

Who's buying and why

The thing I keep coming back to: land is finite. The corridor just surpassed 1 million residents and is transitioning from rapid sprawl toward managed strategic growth. The people circling parcels quietly right now understand something the broader market hasn't fully priced in yet.

🎧 What I'm Reading (Ahem, I mean listening to)

Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount. Audiobook version because sometimes you need to hear someone say the fundamentals out loud to remember why they work.

Nothing in it I haven't heard before across a long career in tech and now in CRE. That's almost the point.

The best books on craft aren't revelations, they're reminders. Prospecting is prospecting whether you're selling software or land along the 290 corridor. Fill the pipeline. Stay consistent. Do the work nobody else wants to do on a Tuesday afternoon when the week already feels long.

Getting back to basics has a way of feeling radical when you've drifted far enough from them.

📅 On This Day in the Upstate

In 1781, 1,000 American soldiers spent 28 days trying to capture a star-shaped fort in Upstate SC called Ninety Six, named by someone who eyeballed the distance to a Cherokee village and said "close enough" and still couldn't pull it off. Tip your hat to the soldiers who held the line.

🐾 The Scout Report

Scout is my girlfriend, not one of the five dogs, a clarification I apparently need to make more often than you'd think.

She was in wine country in California with a friend; about as far from Greenville, SC as you can get without leaving the country. Coast to coast.

She sent me pictures of her at the winery petting horses. She grew up on a horse farm in Kentucky. There's something about watching someone step back into the landscape that made them, even just for an afternoon, that stops you cold.

She looked completely at home.

Two people. Two coasts. One good Friday.

See you next week.

— Haley

The Upstate Brief publishes every week. theupstatebrief.com · By Haley Stephens · Upstate SC · Since 2026 Reply to this email anytime. Haley reads every one.