A $10K strip of grass helps students outside of Charleston County get into CCSD schools — legally
CHARLESTON — Every school year, Charleston County parents jump through hoops to verify their child’s residency with tax statements, rental agreements, utility bills and notarized forms to prove where they live and get their kids registered in a public school.
A strip of grass alongside a North Central church in downtown Charleston is on the market for $10,000. The vacant parcel cannot be developed. The listing notes its biggest selling point: “school qualifying purposes.”
The parcel for sale at the corner of Romney Street and Athens Court is a 12-foot-wide swath of grass between Grace Tabernacle Church and a sidewalk.
The listing sheds light on another option to enroll a child in the Charleston County School District aside from actually living here.
An obscure South Carolina law, passed in 1962, allows students to attend school in any district as long as the child owns property in the attendance zone with a tax assessed value of $300 or more.
At a 6-percent tax rate in today’s market, that’s roughly a $5,000 piece of property.
Daniel Prentice, chief financial officer for CCSD, said the law is “now seen as a workaround” by parents to be able to enroll children in Charleston County public schools if they can find “a cheap enough piece of property to be able to meet that condition.”
A couple thousand dollars today doesn’t buy a property of “any substance that would be able to be lived upon in any way,” Prentice added.
But as long as “the child has an ownership portion of at least a $300 taxable assessment … they would qualify to go to one of the magnet schools,” said real estate lawyer Chase Payne, owner of Payne Law Firm in Berkeley County.
He told The Post and Courier that he has helped four families do so over the last seven years — though he noted he is just one of several closing attorneys in the area.
A shifted purpose
The Athens Court parcel has sold eight times since 1982, but it wasn’t until somewhere between 2018 and 2022 that its purpose pivoted, according MLS documents.
In 2018, it sold for $6,000, according to the Multiple Listing Service. It was zoned residential for either a garden, food truck spot or “one of those very fashionable micro-homes,” the listing said.
The property was re-listed in 2022 and for the first time noted its unusual use.
“Per an old listing, it notes that property was initially acquired via a tax sale,” the listing said. “Current clients needed property to fulfill required property for school purposes.”
The plot sold again in May 2025 for $20,000 — down from an original $50,000 asking price. That listing also stated it was “currently being used for qualifying purposes.”
Now the plot is back on the market as of Sept, 3, with the owners asking $10,000 for fractional ownership.
“Undevelopable. Property was previously and is currently being used for qualifying school purposes,” the listing states. “Vacant land, NO structures on lot for sale.”
The site does not have a mailbox or structure of any kind, though it is an individual piece of land.
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Michelle Rosato with Coldwell Banker Realty listed the property on behalf of the sellers. A request for comment from the sellers went unanswered.
Prentice said he has been in touch with the county as a “point of awareness.”
“Obviously, we want to make sure that property that gets split off from what they call like a parent parcel … that existed before that the appraisal and the assessment and everything is properly calculated,” Prentice said.
Based on the property’s $10,000 price, its tax assessment would be around $600, meeting the threshold, Payne said.
Prentice added the district keeps on top of such listings or transactions and is in communication “anytime we see something pop up that that strikes us as strange.”
History of the SC law
The law in question, S.C. Code of Laws Section 59-63-30(c), was introduced in 1962 and has been relatively unchanged since.
Students who live outside the county still must qualify for acceptance into magnet schools through the established merit-based application process as non-property-owning students.
Additionally, those who do not live in Charleston County are required to pay more than $13,000 annually in out-of-town tuition to attend a CCSD school. The district has 80 schools with about 50,000 students.
For the 2026-27 school year, 35 students residing outside of the district used the property law to attend Charleston County schools, Prentice confirmed. Those enrollments amounted to $431,000 in revenue for CCSD, Prentice said.
Most of the families are from the 29492 Berkeley County ZIP code, Prentice said, which includes the Daniel Island and Cainhoy communities.
The figure is relatively static to a decade ago when 40 students attended during the 2016-17 academic year, up from seven in 2011.
Heather Studer, CCSD’s director of planning and real estate, confirmed that students who enroll via this property law “wouldn’t take precedence over an actually zoned student.”
The law is only applicable to transfer schools that are open to transfer, and if they have space.
Districts are not required to accept any non-residential students once a school has reached at least 90 percent of its grade level, class or specialized program capacity, S.C. law states.
“If the school is already full, they can’t get in,” Studer said.
In the case of proving ownership for such a property, Prentice said a student who claims property in Charleston County would have to show the ownership under the law, such as a deed, Prentice added.
“It’s a very strange piece of legislation in the sense that obviously a piece of property with an assessed value of $300 is not really a tangible piece of real estate, particularly in today’s real estate market,” he said. “Maybe when you take the history back to when it was first established, pieces of real estate with a $300 assessed value might have been more practical.”
In 1962, for example, a 3-apartment house at 125 Queen St. in downtown Charleston “conveniently located near schools & bus line” was listed for $11,500, according to past Post and Courier real estate records. Today, the house on the same property, built in 1986, is estimated to be worth $1.3 million, per Zillow.
Posted by: Byron King on 9/30/26 (This information is only accurate as of 9/30/26. You must contact SCR for updates and changes to this information after 9/30/26, as laws and regulations may change over time. SCR 803-772-5206 or email info at screaltors.org or email byron at screaltors.org
This information is not legal advice. This information is intended only to provide general information and may not be relied upon as specific legal guidance. Legal counsel should always be consulted before acting in reliance on this information.