If that's the case, then McLaura Bluff, a new neighborhood off Ashley River Road, fits the profile. "From past experience, we realize what people want to have and we give it to them," said Scott Gise, real estate agent with the Charleston Home Team unit of Prudential Carolina Real Estate. It is handling sales and marketing on behalf of local developer Meridian Builders.
Options are few while standard features are many. The development and sales partners, who have teamed up on neighborhoods before, even use the slogan, "Our standard features are other builders' upgrades."
Among the perks with every home are hardwood floors, granite kitchen countertops, cultured marble garden tubs and showers, crown molding in the living and dining rooms, smooth ceilings, fireplaces, prewiring for ceiling fans, cable in bedrooms and living rooms and landscaped, sodded yards. Every house has a screened porch and detached double garage (except for one design with an attached garage that's no longer being built).
While most features are standard, there are a few choices. Buyers can upgrade to jetted tubs in bathrooms or Berber carpet in bedrooms, for instance. Buyers get a $1,500 stainless-steel appliance allowance and can forgo some standards such as the microwave oven. (Refrigerators, washers and dryers aren't provided.) They also have a $1,500 lighting allowance to choose the types they want.
The strategy has led to various types of customers purchasing homes in McLaura Bluff. "We have a very good mix of families and individuals," Gise said. "Some are buying their first home, some are buying their last home."
The community, across from Shadowmoss Plantation, will have 44 fiber-cement-sided houses priced at $309,000 to $345,000. "We've had two price increases already," Gise said. The three- and four-bedroom dwellings range in size from 1,840 to 2,496 square feet.
Floor plans in the so-called "Charleston cottage series collection" include the Allendale, Anderson, Bluffton, Brookshire, Canterbury, Colleton, Georgetown, Oglethorpe and Williamsburg. "I guess the reason people are coming here are the Lowcountry style of homes," he said.
"They are pretty well open floor plans."
McLaura Bluff has other benefits as well. "The location is what people like, being close to the Mark Clark Expressway, shopping and (Bon Secours St. Francis) hospital," Gise said.
The homes border on woods or other natural buffers. "We're trying to keep as many trees as possible," he said.
Built around the new High Tides Drive, the neighborhood will have sidewalks on both sides of the street. Buyers pay $350 a year in homeowners association fees to cover maintenance of common space.
Gise credits the builder with providing as many extra touches as possible in every home. "They get an idea, and just put it in at the base price," he said.
To reach McLaura Bluff from downtown Charleston, cross the Ashley River Bridge and take the right lane onto S.C. Highway 61 (Ashley River Road).
Follow the road past the Highway 61 connector and Bees Ferry Road. McLaura Bluff is on the right-hand side just past Schieveling Plantation.