By RAY WYCHE

Is Columbus County on the threshold of an unprecedented spurt in residential growth?
The recent news of a 300-house development planned for the Dothan area came as surprising—and welcome—news but a study of the situation reveals good reasoning backs up the developers’ decision.

Columbus County is a good place to live. Particularly for those who spent their working lives in a metropolitan setting, where the houses were so close to each other that if your neighbor snored at night, you were awakened by the noise.

It was only a few years ago that land-selling in our rural communities was an iffy business; the vast majority of the county’s population was born in Columbus County. Im-migrants were rare, and usually came to the county as spouses of natives.

There was little market for home-building land. Natives had parents or other relatives who owned land, and if not given as a gift, a home site could be bought for a comparatively modest sum when measured against today’s land prices.
But things change.

Out-of-staters, tired of the frantic pace of urban living with horrendous traffic and winters that seemed to never end, are among us.

Upon retirement, many residents fled from their northern and midwestern cities for a more reasonable climate where land and home prices and taxes were much lower than those they had lived with so many years.

Myrtle Beach, considered by many non-residents to be the Nirvana of places to live, priced itself out of the market, so to speak. And the hustle and bustle life that our home-searching new residents were seeking to avoid was present, with a higher price tag, all around the Grand Strand as well as in the North Carolina beach communities to the north.

In keeping with the laws of demographics, the sprawl of new residents moved to the outskirts of the high priced beach area communities, wandering westward in search of their ideal home sites. These outskirts could move only to the west. Columbus County (since western Brunswick and northern Horry [S. C.] counties) were fast filling up,) became the focal point for lot hunters. Hence the feasibility of the Dothan development.

Many expect to see more and more developments like that at Dothan. To some natives, life in a housing development would be a disturbing change, but to those whose former residences were in crowded cities, the idea of living at least a quarter mile from the nearest house is most inviting.

The land is available. With the continuing change in agriculture and the decline of money-making tobacco farming (except for the big operators), cleared land that once was valuable for growing crops has lost some of its luster as farmland. But, particularly if located on a paved road, such land makes fine home sites.

Years ago, a real estate broker working the Brunswick County beaches predicted that soon there would little land available for sale in that area. “I’ll be out of a job,” he said, “since nobody wants to sell their beach property. They want to leave it to their kids.”

He continued by remarking that rural areas of Brunswick County were becoming more attractive to those contemplating a move to the south, but added that rising land prices were sending these people to look at potential home sites away from the beaches. He added that as soon as Brunswick filled up, southern and eastern Columbus County would get the overflow.

His prediction, questionable at the time about 20 years ago (too bad he didn’t live to see his forecast come true), is proving to be right on target.

Columbus County’s countryside is changing; those of us who rode the county’s rural roads 30 to 50 years ago remember houses scattered along the roadsides, with woods or fields separating them.

There are still fields and woods along quiet roadsides today, but homes have replaced some open land, and more building can be expected because Columbus County is a good place to live.