Charleston County is one of the richest, oldest and most storm-exposed housing markets in the Southeast, and no contractor of ours is running it. This brief lays out what the county looks like ZIP by ZIP, who is already competing for it, and exactly what a week with us would look like for the company that takes it.
Every figure on this page comes from a public record or from our own operating rules, and the source for each is listed at the bottom. Nothing here is a projection of what you would earn.
Charleston County had 408,235 residents at the 2020 census and an estimated 436,200 by 2025, growth of about 7% in five years. Nearly a fifth of the Census 2020–24 housing stock is on the peninsula and in West Ashley and James Island, where lots are older and trees are largest. Mount Pleasant and Johns Island carry the newest and most expensive detached housing.
Chatham County, Georgia is Savannah, a market we already run. Berkeley and Dorchester are Charleston's neighboring counties. All Census figures are American Community Survey 2020–2024 five-year estimates.
Zillow's typical home value for Charleston County was $311,110 in July 2016 and $617,997 in July 2026. The neighboring counties and the other Southeastern markets we watch rose too, but from a lower base and by less. A homeowner with a $600,000 house protects the roof, the driveway and the insurance premium; that is who answers a text about a leaning oak.
Zillow Home Value Index, all homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted, county level. Values are the 35th to 65th percentile "typical" home. Click a county to add or remove it.
We pulled every National Weather Service storm event logged for Charleston County from January 2015 to the end of the 2025 file. There were 866. Reading the narratives, 299 describe trees or limbs down, and 54 describe a tree landing on a house, vehicle, fence or other structure. Thunderstorm wind is the most common event at 264, coastal flooding second at 210. Ten named tropical systems appear in the record.
NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database, county and forecast-zone entries named Charleston, South Carolina. Tree counts come from reading each event narrative for "tree", "limb" or "branch"; structure counts add a mention of a house, roof, vehicle, fence or similar. Named systems are those the narratives name. Hover a bar for the year's detail.
These are the 24 ZIP codes we would draw territory from, plus three on the county line that a Charleston contractor usually serves anyway. Pick a measure and sort. The bar is each ZIP's share of the largest value in the column.
American Community Survey 2020–2024 five-year estimates by ZIP Code Tabulation Area, via Census Reporter. Sullivan's Island's median value is reported by the Census as "$2,000,000 or more". Small-population ZIPs carry wide margins of error. 29485 straddles Charleston and Dorchester counties.
We built a list of every tree service, arborist and stump-grinding company we could locate with a Charleston County base, from company websites, the Better Business Bureau, industry directories and federal carrier registrations. We found 92. Their contact details stay with us; what matters for you is the shape of the field.
City of the published business address. "Charleston" includes the peninsula, West Ashley and James Island. Three companies publish no address.
Four national or franchise brands operate in the county: Bartlett Tree Experts, SavATree, Davey Tree and a Monster Tree Service franchise. Everyone else is a local owner-operator, and 43% of the field is either invisible or broken online. A homeowner who texts back gets an answer from whoever answers first.
We do one thing for tree contractors: we text homeowners in your ZIPs, qualify the ones who reply, and put a quote appointment on your calendar that a person has checked. The week runs on a fixed rhythm, and the numbers below are our operating targets, not a promise of results.
A homeowner in your ZIPs who replied, described work with at least $500 of potential, gave an address we could place, and took a time on your calendar that a human verified.
$1,500 per tier per week, due Monday. A tier is one protected county-based territory with the data, texting, qualification, booking and verification bundled. No per-lead fees.
Across our current contractors, about 20 quote appointments per contractor per week is the observed average and roughly 95% of booked homeowners are there when the estimator arrives, by our owners' count. Both are averages, not commitments.
Our operating average is one booked, verified, qualified appointment for every 1,250 texts sent. Pacing decisions during the week are made on that number.
The contractors who stay with us are the ones who heard this part first.
We did not test where any individual company ranks in local search, count reviews, price the market, or examine the City of Charleston and Mount Pleasant tree-protection ordinances and permitting, all of which matter to a bid. We did not survey homeowners. The competitor count is companies we could find from public sources on one day; there are certainly crews we missed. Census ZIP figures are five-year estimates with margins of error that widen in small ZIPs. Storm counts depend on what the Weather Service logged and how its narratives were written.
What we would do next, with your agreement: draw the ZIP set for your first tier from the table above, run your existing web presence through the same checks we ran on the field, and put a launch date on the calendar.
114,350 homes are owner-occupied, 64% of all occupied households, out of 178,975 households in the county, per the Census Bureau's ACS 2020-24 5-year estimates. Owner-occupied is the number that matters, because the person who decides on a removal and pays for it lives at the address.
Median owner-occupied value is $489,100 on the Census measure and $618,000 on Zillow's, against $259,000 for South Carolina as a whole. Median household income is $88,494, 28% above the state. A $500 minimum job is a small pruning ticket here rather than a stretch.
92 tree companies based in the county were found on our own count, dated 11 September 2026. That is the supply side of the market this brief measures against the demand side.
101,311 of the county's 209,803 housing units were built before 1990, and 121,738 are detached single-family homes. An older detached house under a mature canopy is the shape of a property that needs tree work.
Households, tenure, value and housing age are U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2020-24 5-year estimates. The typical-home-value figure is Zillow's ZHVI, July 2026. The company count is our own list. The full sources and their limits are at the bottom of this page.
This brief was built by Your Algorithm from public records. We run one company per territory. If this county is yours, check whether it is still open.