CHARLESTON AND THE ISLANDS / LISTING BROKERAGE
A house that sits on the market was priced wrong on day one.
Wren & Hollis has sold 612 homes downtown, on the islands and inside 526 since 2012. Since 2022 our listings have closed at an average of 98.4% of asking, with a median of 21 days from photography day to a signed contract. Book a 40-minute walkthrough and we hand you the list price we would defend, in writing, with the three sales it is built on.
TWO AGENTS. FOURTEEN LISTINGS AT A TIME, ON PURPOSE.
Every closing figure on this page is in the public record
612
homes closed downtown, on the islands or inside 526
98.4%
average closing price against original list, 2022 to 2026
21 days
median from photography day to signed contract, 2022 to 2026
$1.06M
median sale price of the houses we represent
Charleston Trident MLS, closed sales, January 2012 through July 2026. The few percentages that come from our own files are labeled where they appear.
Four months on the market costs more than four months.
The first eleven days are the only days your listing is new. Charleston buyers with a saved search see it the morning it goes live, and if the number looks wrong to them they stop opening the email. In fact, a downtown house that takes two reductions closes at an average of 91% of its original list (Charleston Trident MLS, closed sales, 2022 to 2026). On a $1,200,000 house that gap is $108,000, and it opened before anyone made an offer.
01
The listing goes up at the number you wanted to hear
An agent who wants the signature will agree with your price. The market never sees that conversation. It only sees a listing that has been up since March.
02
Two reductions in six weeks
Every cut teaches the buyer pool to wait for the next one. Showings slow down after a reduction more often than they speed up.
03
Twenty-two photographs and no floor plan
We counted the media on every active downtown listing between $800,000 and $1,200,000 in June. The median was 22 photographs, a third had no floor plan at all, and eleven of them had at least one room shot with the blinds closed (our audit, June 2026).
04
Then nobody calls you back
The last real conversation you had with your agent was the day the sign went into the yard.
We give you the number before you give us the listing.
You see the whole pricing case at the walkthrough, on paper, before any agreement exists. Why? Because the price argument is the part nobody else will put in writing. Everything below it is the work we do once you have it.
17 LEGARE STREET / VALUATION MEMO / PREPARED 14 MARCH 2026
17 Legare Street, 3,240 sq ft, 0.19 acre, double piazza, X zone
SUBJECT PROPERTY
ADDRESS
CLOSED
DATE
LOT
PIAZZA
PARKING
FLOOD
ADJUSTED
22 Legare Street
$2,340,000
Feb 2026
+$40,000
0
+$25,000
-$15,000
$2,390,000
9 Gibbes Street
$2,275,000
Nov 2025
+$65,000
+$30,000
0
0
$2,370,000
41 Tradd Street
$2,510,000
Jan 2026
-$80,000
0
-$20,000
+$15,000
$2,425,000
Adjusted value, average of the three sales above
$2,395,000
DEFENDED LIST PRICE
$2,395,000
Ada Wren
SIGNED, 14 MARCH 2026
The memo, page one
Your house at the top, then three closed sales inside a half mile, each adjusted for lot size, piazza, off-street parking and flood zone, with every adjustment shown as a plus or minus in dollars. The defended list price sits at the foot with Ada’s signature under it. Hand the page to another agent and check our arithmetic.
A number we will argue up as well as down
Three times this year the memo came back above what the seller walked in expecting, twice on Cannon Street lots that the 2024 flood map moved out of the AE zone. The memo argues for whatever the three sales support, in either direction, and it shows you which direction it moved and why.
A prep list with a dollar figure on it
Usually between $2,400 and $6,000. Just as useful is the half that tells you what to skip. Repainting a kitchen that already photographs well has never returned a dollar for us.
The same two people from the table to the closing
Ada prices your house and writes the memo. Miles runs the showings and works the inspection. Both of them sit at the closing table, because there are only two of us and neither one hands your file to a junior.
Three weeks from your kitchen table to the first open house
Weeks 0 through 3 run the same on every house, and if your prep runs long we tell you on day one rather than in week three. After launch the market sets the pace. Of the last six houses we listed, four were under contract inside 26 days and the slowest took 41.
WEEK 0
The walkthrough
Forty minutes, room by room, at your table. Written valuation and prep list in your inbox within 48 hours. Nothing to sign at this stage, and nothing after it unless you decide to list.
WEEK 1
Prep and paperwork
We book the painter, the deep clean and the yard on our accounts and you settle it at closing. Disclosure, plat and any HOA documents get pulled in the same week.
WEEK 2
Photography day
Architectural photographer on site from 6am, because east-facing Charleston rooms are only worth photographing before ten. Floor plan measured the same morning.
WEEK 3
Launch and the first weekend
Live Thursday at 9am, broker preview Thursday evening, open house Saturday and Sunday. Of our listings since 2022, 42% were under contract within ten days of going live (our books, 2022 to 2026).
WEEKS 4 AND 5
Offers, then terms
We read every offer out loud with you, including the terms that quietly cost money: repair caps, appraisal gaps, rent-back. Then we hold the line through the inspection.
MEDIA
The first photograph decides whether the second one gets looked at.
We shoot every listing with an architectural photographer at the hour the light actually enters the house. A dining room on the north side at 4pm looks like a storage closet, and buyers do not forgive that. The media package runs about $1,900 a house and comes out of the 2.5%, never billed back to you.
24 to 32 finished frames
Shot on a tilt-shift lens so the walls stay vertical and each room reads at its real size instead of a fisheye version of it.
A measured floor plan
Square footage is the first thing a buyer messages about. We answer it before they have to ask.
A two-minute walkthrough film
For out-of-state buyers, who were 38% of our closings last year and almost all of the ones above two million (our books, 2025 to 2026).
The last six houses we sold
Address, what we listed at, what it went under contract at, and how long that took. Three of the six closed at or above the number we set, and the six together averaged 99.4% of list. All of it is in the public record and you are welcome to check every line.
17 Legare Street
Listed $2,395,000. Under contract in 14 days at $2,410,000. Two offers, both over asking.
9 Rose Lane
Listed $875,000. Under contract in 9 days at $901,000. Five offers, four of them on the Saturday.
44 Ashley Avenue
Listed $1,150,000. Under contract in 26 days at $1,138,000. Cash, no repair requests.
1204 Middle Street
Listed $1,480,000. Under contract in 18 days at $1,480,000. Full price, no concessions.
820 Ion Avenue, Sullivan’s Island
Listed $3,250,000. Under contract in 41 days at $3,175,000, which is quick above three million on the island. Seller was in Denver throughout.
63 Spring Street
Listed $749,000. Under contract in 33 days at $735,000, with a $14,000 roof credit at closing.
Ada Wren and Miles Hollis, and nobody else
Two agents, fourteen listings at a time. That cap is the reason the person who prices your house is the person who opens the door for the 5pm showing. We have turned down work in May to keep it there.
Ada Wren
LICENSED 2008
Prices every listing and writes every memo. 341 of the 612 closings are hers. She grew up three blocks off Colonial Lake and has been in enough Charleston attics to know what a 1920s roof deck looks like before the inspector says it out loud. She runs the Thursday broker preview.
Miles Hollis
LICENSED 2012
Runs the showings, reads the offers and walks the inspection. 271 closings, including the one on Ion Avenue where a $22,000 repair request came down to $4,500. He spent six years as a commercial appraiser, which is why the memo has adjustment columns at all.
Why fourteen
A listing needs about six hours a week of real attention in its first month. Fourteen is what two people can give that to without one of the houses quietly becoming the one that waits.
Sellers who had already tried it the other way
All three of these houses were listed with another brokerage first.
MARGUERITE D., 44 ASHLEY AVENUE
Our first agent had us at $1,295,000 for ninety-one days and two reductions, and every conversation was about being patient. Ada relisted us at $1,150,000 in March with a memo that showed me the three houses her number came from, and we were under contract in under a month. It was the first honest document anybody had handed us.
TOM AND PRIYA R., 9 ROSE LANE
They told us not to redo the kitchen. Every other agent who walked through wanted us to spend $40,000 first. We spent $3,100 on paint and mulch, and by Sunday lunchtime we were reading offers at our own table.
DR. ALAN W., 820 ION AVENUE
I was in Denver the entire time. Miles walked the inspection with a phone in his hand for two hours and talked a $22,000 repair request down to $4,500 without me having to be in the room.
2.5% to list, and you see the math before you sign anything
The Charleston standard is 3%. On a $1,200,000 sale the difference is $6,000 that stays with you, and nothing in the marketing gets cut for it, because the photography, staging and print all come out of the 2.5%.
2.5%
LISTING SIDE, ALL IN
2.5% listing side
Everything on this page is included. Nothing else is added at closing: no marketing invoice, admin fee, transaction fee or compliance fee.
Buyer agent compensation, negotiated per offer
Since the 2024 rule change this is a term inside each offer rather than a number posted in the MLS. We show you what every offer nets you after it, not the headline price.
Cancel any time before you accept an offer
If we turn out to be wrong about the price, or you simply do not enjoy working with us, one email ends it. No cancellation fee, and you keep the photography and the floor plan.
01
Included: architectural photography
About $1,900 a house, shot at the correct hour, relit and reshot at no charge if a room does not come out right.
02
Included: staging consult and rental
Four weeks of furniture in the rooms that need it, up to $3,200, on our account. An empty dining room is the worst photograph in Charleston.
03
Included: print, because it still works here
Postcards to 600 neighbors and the Saturday paper. 22% of our buyers since 2022 first heard about the house from someone on their own street (our books).
04
Included: pre-listing inspection
We find the $6,000 problem before a buyer’s inspector finds it and asks you for $18,000 to make it go away.
05
Included: broker preview evening
Thursday, 30 to 40 agents through the house with a caterer, before a single member of the public sees it.
06
Included: closing coordination
Attorney, lender, wind mitigation and the CL-100 termite letter. You show up and sign twice.
Book the 40-minute walkthrough
The questions we get at the kitchen table
If yours is not here, text 843 555 0148. You get an answer from Ada or Miles, not a callback form.
How do I know you are not pricing low just to sell fast?
Check the ledger further up this page. Three of the last six closed at or above the list price we set, and the six together averaged 99.4% of list. An agent who prices low to churn inventory posts a run of quick sales under list, and that pattern shows up in the public record inside about four closings, so it is the one claim on this page you can disprove in an afternoon. Then read the memo itself: three times this year it came back above what the seller was expecting, and it showed which comparable sale moved the number.
What if I only want the valuation and not an agent?
Take it. It is yours in writing with the comparable sales attached. Roughly one in four people who book a walkthrough lists with someone else or decides not to sell at all (our books), and we would still rather be the second opinion that turned out to be right.
Do you work outside the peninsula?
Downtown, Sullivan’s Island, Isle of Palms, James Island and Mount Pleasant inside 526. Past that we will give you the names of two agents we would use ourselves, at no cost and with nothing owed to us.
My house needs about $30,000 of work. Am I stuck?
Usually not. We have closed 47 houses as-is since 2019 (our books). The prep list separates the repairs that return more than they cost from the ones a buyer will price in anyway.
How quickly can you get me listed?
Photography books 6 to 9 days out in spring and 3 to 4 days out in January. Your prep work is what decides the launch date, not our calendar.
Who is actually going to show my house?
Whoever priced it. Ada writes the memo, Miles runs the showings, and the fourteen-listing cap is what keeps that true in May.
Forty minutes, your kitchen table, no agreement
Pick a time and we will walk the house room by room. We hold 14 listings at a time, so the calendar is the real limit: in spring the next photography slot is 6 to 9 days out, in January it is 3 or 4. The memo lands in your inbox 48 hours after we leave, and it is yours either way.
PROPERTY ADDRESS
17 Legare Street
YOUR NAME
Ada Wren
MOBILE NUMBER
843 555 0148
We call once, at the time you pick.
Answered by Ada or Miles, usually inside the hour on weekdays.