Despite a persistently sluggish real estate market, Carriage Properties, LLC, ended 2011 with the area’s strongest results in luxury home sales. The firm’s 22 agents sold a total of $64,266,868 in metro-Charleston luxury homes priced at $1.5 million and above—11.68% above the firm’s closest competitor. And, looking specifically at properties South of Broad, the firm’s market dominance is even more pronounced: Carriage Properties 2011 sales of $55,000,843 were more than double that of its nearest competitor.

In the $1 million and above range, Charleston agencies sold a total of 480 homes in 2011, for a combined value of $887,449,280. Of this total, Carriage Properties agents were responsible for 10.4%: 45 properties totaling $84,248,368—a mighty accomplishment for a relatively small team of agents.

Contributing to Carriage Properties’ bottom line was last year’s most expensive residential property sale, listed by Carriage Properties: 45 Meeting Street, which sold for $4.8 million. Other major 2011 sales included the 1779 Samuel Chadwick House, 17 Meeting Street, which sold for $3.4 million; 2 Gibbes Street, the six-bedroom Robert Fenwick Giles House on a double lot South of Broad, for $3.2 million; and, for $2.9 million, 27 Meeting Street, the grand 18^th-century single featured in 60 Famous Houses in Charleston.

Lynn Hanlin, a founding partner at Carriage Properties, credits the company’s success to “agents who have a combined 400 years of real estate experience, with an average of about 20 years—and some have more than 30.” She emphasizes their dedication to working together and supporting each other as a team—not always the case in the competitive world of real estate—as well as their deep and longstanding ties to the community. “Thanks to their strong local involvement,” notes Hanlin, “our agents often are the first to hear about the really special historic and high-end homes about to come on the market,” which frequently leads to Carriage Properties securing the listing.

Looking ahead to 2012, founding partner Charles Sullivan is optimistic about the Charleston luxury real estate market, observing that the firm is “seeing much more activity with showings and contracts versus last year at the same time. So far in January we have closed a home on Murray Boulevard for $5.975 million and a property on Wadmalaw for $4.2 million. I would say we are off to a very good start.”

Currently, Carriage Properties offers 126 exclusive listings, 50 of which are priced at over $1 million, and 22 over $2 million.

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