Dual Military Life Meets Northeast Columbia | New Construction, Design Studio Decisions & What Every Military Buyer Needs to Know

In this episode of the Closing Chapters Podcast, Brittney shares the story behind helping a dual military family — Army & Air Force — find their perfect landing spot in Northeast Columbia, South Carolina. With Fort Jackson & Shaw Air Force Base both in the picture, finding a home that put them somewhere in the middle of two very different duty stations was no small feat. They settled on a beautiful Stanley Martin new construction build in Lake Carolina, complete with a woodline lot.

If you are a military family navigating a dual-branch situation, or simply someone who wants to understand what building new construction actually involves, this episode is packed with insight & a whole lot of heart.

Key Takeaways

• Dual military families crossing Army and Air Force branches have a unique opportunity in the Columbia/Sumter region with both Shaw AFB and Fort Jackson nearby.
• New construction with a production builder means design selections are typically final once materials are ordered or installed.
• Real estate professionals are ethically bound to treat every client equally, regardless of rank, background, or personality.
• Education equals empowerment: sometimes the most valuable thing an agent can do is simply share the facts and let the client make an informed decision.
• Building relationships with your brokerage team is essential, especially when life takes you to another state mid-transaction.

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and pass it along to a military family or friend who could use it. Your share could be the thing that helps a dual military couple find exactly where they need to be.

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Website: https://www.homeswithbrittney.com  

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@homeswithbrittney 

Email: brittney@homeswithbrittney.com

Closing Chapters Podcast: Where Every Mission Has A Story

Thanks for listening. We talk all things military real estate, my transactions, the mistakes, the wins, and simple plays you can use right now.

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• Buying or selling near Fort Bragg & Moore County
• Agents, partner with me 

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If this episode helped, follow the show, leave a quick review, and share it with a friend in PCS season.

Disclaimer: This podcast education only & is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Talk with your own pros about your situation. Opinions are my own.

© 2025 Brittney Frye. All rights reserved. Realtor, license # 352197 in NC. Brokerage: REAL Broker l Military Division

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey there, friend. Welcome back to the closing chapters podcast where every mission has a story. Now it is time to get down to business. It is time to wrap up July 2019. This next closing was July 31st, 2019. Just another reminder that I was in South Dakota at the time of this closing in South Carolina. Hello, hello. Welcome back. You are joining me after a full day of being in the sun with my family, if you cannot tell at the time of this recording. What a cool day. We actually got to go see driving horse races where, like, they're with a like a driver, like a cart behind the horse. It was really neat. It was our first time getting to watch them race. We have watched them practice in Pinehurst. So it was another first for our family. So what a cool experience. And we were able to find one of our families that we love so dearly. It was actually a babysitter of ours that we met. And then she happens to have a granddaughter that's our daughter's age, and they have played and hit it off and spent time together. So it was a nice little reconnection. Now that school has been in, of course, everybody is busy, and there has not been a lot of time to connect or hang out or do play dates. So it was really cool to see the kids reconnect and have a great day. So now it is time to get down to business. It is time to wrap up July 2019. This next closing was July 31st, 2019. Just another reminder that I was in South Dakota at the time of this closing in South Carolina. Thank goodness for good people all over. So my girlfriend at my brokerage in South Carolina helped me take this one to the finish line, and I could not be more happier. So this one was a really cool and unique situation where it goes to show the specialty that South Carolina has to offer in the middle South Carolina region. You know that my husband was prior Air Force, if you have followed along, and we were stationed at Shaw Air Force Base. Now, 45 minutes down the road, there's also Fort Jackson Army Base. So we have a pretty major installation on both the Army and Air Force side. Fun fact, once again, is that the Third Army headquarters, like big Army headquarters with the generals, is located at Shaw Air Force Base, not Fort Jackson. So go Shaw. But Fort Jackson is a great base. It is a basic training base. And the nice piece about that is that it has some family amenities there because it's a training base. So when people come for a family day and stuff like that, there's things to do. So there happens to be a nice like pool area there with a lazy river situation and putt-putt golf and stuff like that. So a little something for everyone. But the reason that this is so unique in this circumstance is that this family that I got to help happened to be a dual military family. And he happened to be in the army and she happened to be in the Air Force. And we happened to find a house for them to build in Northeast Columbia. And it put them just about in the middle of their worlds. So the Army side was a smidge closer, let's be honest. But Northeast Columbia to this the southeast side of Columbia, where Fort Jackson is at, there's still a little bit of a stretch there. So it put them in the middle of both of the worlds in a fantastic neighborhood. It's my favorite neighborhood over in Northeast Columbia, Lake Carolina. They built new construction and back in this nook of the neighborhood, had a beautiful woodline lot, which was awesome. And they had a great time. They bought a Stanley Martin home. And this was one of my first experiences in a big design studio, which was really cool. So my client was able to come in and pick out his lot and pick out the floor plan and was ready to go. So we made a trip over to the design studio and we were able to pick out all of the colors for everything. Spoiler alert, when the husband is in tow to pick out the colors and not the wife, and the wife is seeing things over video, things look different, and it doesn't always align like you think. And that was the wrench in this transaction. Was that once it was a countertop that kind of threw them off? Once things were installed, it was absolutely the materials they had picked out. But once they saw them together installed, they were like, oh, this is not what we were expecting. This does not look good. We do not want this, we want to change it. And it was like too late. So that's one of the things whenever you're working with a builder, is like there are certain time frames that things can be done. And once it's installed, unless there's something physically wrong with the product, it's not very easy to get that to retroactively be fixed. Your best bet is to know that you have to accept it at that point. And if you want to change it later on down the road, then so be it. And some might say, no, no, no, Britney, that's not how every builder does it. And maybe you're right. But in my experience with most what I say, like production builders, right, where they have a pretty set floor plan, they're not going to make a lot of changes, they are not a semi-custom, they are not a custom builder. You're probably not changing things after the fact. I've had to the fact that there's been mistakes on the builder side and they still do not want to change it after things are installed. And they will do anything possible to offer other incentives or figure out a way to move forward without ripping cabinets back out, without changing out flooring unnecessarily, even if it was not exactly what the buyer had picked out. Because sometimes things are already ordered and you try to retroactively stop it and swap it, and it can be swapped in a system, and then yet the original product that was ordered shows up at the property. We I've lived that experience. So that is coming from another new construction transaction that I've had along the way. But in this situation, everything was delivered as it should. It was exactly what the client had picked out, yet the client just had a change of heart once they saw it all put together. So at some point, you have to be able to say, it was a choice and it'll be okay. Also, once you move into a property, it tends to look completely different. When you are seeing everything like absolutely empty, things can look awkward or glaringly obvious or very clashy because there's nothing in it to balance and offset things. So a lot of times once your decor is in there, your furniture is in there, the focal points shift and it does not tend to be where you think it is. So this concern that you may have could very quickly go away once you are situated in the home. So that was the big question mark to get us to the closing table with this one. Now the other part was, and when I say this, I really do not mean offense to it, but this was this particular person's mindset. My buyer was definitely like a wear your rank on your shoulder kind of guy. He really thought that he was hot stuff and that he could throw around his weight because of his rank. Spoiler alert, his rank was not that high to be able to do that in general. But he was high enough that he thought, I'm over guys, I'm an MP, I'm a this, I'm a that, military police. So he really just thought like he was somebody and he could get whatever he wanted. He just had a very big personality and thought that if he said something, if he demanded it, that that that is what it was going to be. And that is not how the world works. And I think sometimes I'm not quite sure how they don't run into that more often. And I'm sure he probably does get that kickback. He just thinks, oh, well, might as well try. Uh so great effort, valiant effort, but at some point, you it is what it is, what it is, and you have to be able to move forward. So, word for the wise, whenever you are building a house, my military folks, this is you're not on base. This is not base housing, right? There are standards. The house will be in much better shape than most houses you would accept if you were living on base, and that's just the reality of that. But you don't get to throw your weight around, right? Even if you weren't military, that's not how it works. But I think sometimes it's very hard for folks that are very used to a certain structure. And if I am this, then I can do that. And that's just the furthest from the truth. We are all equal in this world, especially when it comes to real estate transactions, right? That is a huge part of our job, is literally to see everybody as one, meaning nobody is better than another person, right? So you don't get preference over this person, you're treated the same fairly across the board. So when it came to this silly countertop issue, getting high and mighty was not the answer. And it did not yield the response that my client wanted. And that wasn't from me, that was directly from the builder, but I'm just passing along the message. People aren't here to be bullied around. That's just a matter of the fact. They delivered and you need to accept. Yeah, that is my little TED talk for a second. I just I just want to make sure that people understand that, hey, you remember, we're all human, we're all here, we're all the same. We all have a purpose. And when we're in a real estate transaction, we have a common purpose, and that's to get everybody to the closing table. Do we want you to be happy? Absolutely. Do we want to be reasonable across the board? Absolutely. So that might mean there's a little bit of give and take on both sides. We don't need to bring, I am this, you are that, into any part of that equation. And that can be really hard sometimes in real estate. It can be really hard, right? Because especially from agent to agent, like we feel like we need to protect our clients, yeah. And we can get like nose to nose on things. And it goes right back to the whole. So in real estate, we have a huge duty not to steer people. What looks right to me might be different to you. What looks good to me might be different to you. My aesthetic style could be different than yours. So it's not up to me to decide that for you. It's not up to me to pick your location. It's not up to me to pick what criteria you want in a home. It's up to you to set those standards and for me to respect that. So that can be the same thing working realtor to realtor, and it can get very hard and very, very sticky. What I believe to be right, what I believe to be respectful does not necessarily correlate on the other side to the same way. And it can be hard. It can be hard to back down and say, hey, I just have to let this go. Or how do I work this out? This person on the other side is like just being completely unreasonable. I feel they're being unreasonable. They probably feel I'm being unreasonable. Like, how do we move forward? So, just a reminder that in this situation, there are a lot of people involved and a lot of personalities involved. And that is a huge part of our job is how do we mediate that? Like, how do we meet in the middle and make sure that everyone is taken care of and that everybody is being respectful to one another? And I will tell you that I try very hard to make sure respect is given to my clients, and yet I will also not tolerate disrespect from my clients. So you need to know that that is of the utmost importance if you're gonna work with me. Point blank. And I I have a hard time with that. That's a huge piece. I have a hard time with it whenever it doesn't, it it is not in the picture. When it's not reciprocated or people are not playing kind, that really gets under my skin, right? So, like in this instance, I was not about that. I was not about, hey, you're gonna bully people around or say somebody needs to fix this or change this. It was your decision, you made a decision, we're going to move forward with that decision. Literally, nobody did anything wrong. So there's no error to be corrected, and you need to acknowledge that and just you're gonna be okay. But I obviously cannot pass that along right to the other side. I cannot take his response, his brashness, and then pass that to the other agent. And same thing, agent to agent. I cannot take another agent's brashness and pass that along to my client. And that can be very difficult, right? If if you can imagine if you have someone that is being very harsh on one side of the coin, and then you are supposed to relay to your client, like, hey, I'm not getting the desired answer that we want, and this other person really isn't like willing to to try to budge, to reciprocate, to anything. How do you say that? And and I have learned that a lot of times I literally just tell them verbatim what the response was to me. I'm like, I'm just gonna read this to you so that you can understand what's going on behind the curtain. And I don't do that often unless I get in a sticky situation where I don't know how to move forward without telling the truth in a way that would like not look kind on someone. And I don't want that. So at that point, I literally just deviate to here's the information so that you can make a qualified decision. And that once again goes to my motto education equals empowerment, right? And some of that sometimes education is literally just here's the information that I have, here's the conversation that I have, here is the statistics on this particular thing, here is this resources phone number, right? Like sometimes it's literally not necessarily an opinion, it is just simply the information at hand so that you can make a good decision. So there is a lot intertwined sometimes to all that. But let's bring this back to the fact that once again, South Carolina, Columbia, Sumter, Elgin, Lugoff, this little melting pot, Camden, is a fantastic spot for dual military families. There is a very good opportunity, especially if you are in two different branches, meaning Air Force and Army, in this particular situation, that you would have a very good chance of accommodating your lives where you could be stationed at the same location. And that is something that happens. There are dual military families that cannot be stationed together. Their jobs don't always allow for that. And that is a very hard thing to navigate. So, what a blessing to be able to provide a spot where you could accommodate so many military families in so many different ways, right? So this one was very, very unique in the fact that they were two totally different branches, even though they were dual military, and they were still able to stay together. They were still able to find a place to meet in the middle and be able to continue growing their beautiful family and allowing this transition to be positive. And oh, by the way, one of them was about a year and a half out from retirement. So how cool was that? So they were able to literally meet in the middle, ride the road to the ride the rubber to the end of the road and get to that retirement piece and have a really cool spot to be in and let the other partner do out the duration of their military career. And the other partner was the one that was gonna be at Shawl. And we all know that Shawl stands for stay here a while. So there's a pretty good chance that they were able to literally stick it out through the rest of their career right there in Northeast Columbia. Word to the wise, if you are a dual military family, especially if you are crossing branches, Army and Air Force, look into Fort Jackson and Shaw Air Force Base, there could be some really great opportunities for you there. I hope you all have a wonderful day, and I cannot wait for you to come back and hear more on the closing chapters podcast. By the way, if you really enjoyed this podcast, please and subscribe, pass it along to somebody. If you've got a buddy that is in the army and wants to be able to be somewhere that then maybe they could cross paths to two different bases and stay in the same location, hello. Shaw in Fort Jackson could be a great opportunity. If you have someone that is naturally already coming to one of those bases and is curious about the sweet spot to be in Northeast Columbia, maybe then send it this way. I would love for you to share, share, share, share, share. Have a wonderful day. Hey, I just wanted to say thank you for being here and listening in on this episode of Closing Chapters with me. I truly enjoy putting this content together, and I hope that you enjoy it too. If so, could you like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you know that will enjoy it just as much as you did? Thank you so much.