Mark Nix, Executive Director, Home Builders Association of South Carolina

Mark Nix, executive director of the Home Builders Association of South Carolina, spoke with Invest: about housing attainability, planning for growth, and developing the construction workforce. Nix emphasized the connection between employment and housing. “You can’t recruit a corporation with hundreds of jobs unless those families have places to live. We need the jobs and the houses that go with them.”

How has South Carolina’s growth affected housing, and what is your outlook?

South Carolina has been one of the fastest growing states in the nation since COVID. More of our own people are staying here, and new residents are arriving from every corner of the country. Years ago, you might spot a license plate from Pennsylvania, North Carolina or Georgia in a new subdivision. Today, I’m seeing plates from Hawaii, California and Washington state.

When I started this job almost 20 years ago, an economist told me that a house is where a job goes to sleep at night. That has stayed with me ever since. A home is not just four walls and a roof. It’s where a family puts down roots and where a community is built. I have four children, and I want each of them to have the chance to stay in South Carolina, build a career and raise a family here.

The jobs keep coming, and people across the country see South Carolina for what it is: a great place to raise a family, enjoy life and thrive. Our job is to make sure there are homes ready for them.

What does the Housing Attainability Index reveal about the state’s housing needs?

We created the Housing Attainability Index to give lawmakers, local leaders and the public hard data on what families are facing in all 46 counties. Our latest release shows that 62.8% of South Carolina families cannot afford a home at the median price. That is a sobering number, and it tells us we have work to do. South Carolina still offers real value compared with many other states. Someone can sell a home in Pennsylvania or New Jersey and live very well here. But we also have to make sure the families who already call South Carolina home have somewhere to live.

My staff and I spend much of every day knocking down regulatory barriers at the local and state levels. Interest rates add another headwind. But the demand is enormous. We could put 60,000 houses on the ground tomorrow and still need more. We went through 12 years of severe underbuilding around the Great Recession, and we have never caught up.

You can’t recruit a corporation with hundreds of jobs unless those families have places to live. We need the jobs and the houses that go with them. We also need the roads, water and sewer that protect our quality of life. All of those pieces have to move forward together.

What changes in growth planning would better support housing development?

The biggest question in front of us is how we handle growth. Several bills this year addressed concurrency, often described as making growth pay for growth. In practice, it too often means getting approval from every government agency and paying up front before a single house can be built. That approach has been tried in California and Washington state, and their housing costs show how it turned out. When people are frustrated sitting in traffic they never used to see, that is a planning problem. The real question is how we plan for growth.

We’re advancing legislation that would put our Councils of Governments and other partners to work, helping municipalities, counties and regions plan ahead together. Growth isn’t confined to one part of the state. It’s happening along the coast, in the Charlotte market extending into South Carolina, across the Upstate and throughout the Midlands. Good planning has to match that reach.

How do liability costs and proposed legal changes connect with housing affordability?

Tort reform is another priority. Our legal system has given South Carolina the highest tort costs in the country. When a South Carolina family is paying almost $4,000 in what we call a tort tax, that hits affordability directly. The governor has been pushing for reform, and the Senate passed S.244 by a vote of 35 to 7. Now we need to finish the job.

We’re also developing a Right to Cure bill that would provide a home warranty on every new home. The experience of other states shows this approach can reduce lawsuits and save homeowners hundreds of dollars on insurance. It gets the homeowner a faster fix and keeps disputes out of the courtroom. These issues are all connected. At the end of the day, we’re building communities, and people need to be able to live in the communities where they work.

What are you doing differently to attract people to skilled construction careers?

Labor is a major challenge here and across the country. About six years ago, we were doing what many trade associations did: setting up a table at school career fairs with brochures and a bucket of candy. Students would grab a piece of candy and keep walking without learning much about our industry. We knew we had to do something different.

So we partnered with other trade associations and the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce to bring Be Pro Be Proud to our state. South Carolina was only the second state in the nation to join. It’s a mobile workshop built into a tractor trailer that travels the state, packed with interactive experiences, including VR games, truck driving simulators and forklift simulators. I call it Disney World on wheels.

In four years on the road, Be Pro Be Proud has visited every county in South Carolina and welcomed more than 60,000 visitors aboard. The results speak for themselves. Technical colleges tell me their electrical and plumbing classes are filling up, and they’re adding classes to keep pace. I’m proud of how far this program has come, and we’re going to keep building on it and finding new ways to reach students.

What should students understand about the work and opportunities in the trades?

Students need to know these careers pay well, and many come without the burden of student debt. At a recent event, more than one young woman came up to ask about careers in construction, which was a first for us and a great sign. Our members also tell me there’s nothing like driving past something they built and seeing their work stand for years. Homes are built by people who live and work in their communities, and that’s a story we’ll keep telling.

AI won’t build a house. Our interactive games show students that construction is much more than working on a roof in July. In one, students step into a bathroom and have to fix a leak with the tools provided before the room floods. In another, they change the lights on a football field. Those experiences open students’ eyes to parts of the industry they never knew existed.

The workforce is growing, and the need never stops. I tell young people all the time: learn a trade, and you’ll find work in South Carolina. You won’t go unemployed.

What will guide the association’s priorities over the next three to five years?

My goal is simple. I want my children, and every South Carolina family’s children, to be able to stay here and raise families of their own. That means continuing to push for good jobs and places to live near them. My son rented a one bedroom apartment in downtown Lexington where the rent started at $1,400 and climbed to about $3,600 by the time he moved out. That’s exactly why supply matters.

Adding supply is how we relieve that pressure. We can repeat the mistakes other growing states have made, or we can chart our own course. I’m confident South Carolina will find its own solutions. Through my service on the Tourism Expenditure Review Committee, I see everything this state has to offer, from the mountains to the coast. Whether someone has lived here all their life or just arrived, South Carolina offers a way of life and a future worth building.