The Hidden Risk in Downtown Greenville's Pre-Construction Condos Isn't the Price Tag
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
Walk East McBee Avenue near Cleveland Park this summer and you will see it before anyone tells you about it: rough particle board where limestone was supposed to be. The McDaniel, the townhome project that promised to bring Parisian facades and private elevators to downtown Greenville, has stood partially unfinished since 2024. Two contractors have filed mechanics liens against the property. A third says it hasn't been paid either. Collectively, the three claim they are owed $274,367.
None of that appears in a listing sheet. It appears in Greenville County court filings and in reporting from The Post and Courier, and it is exactly the kind of fact a buyer needs before signing a reservation agreement, not after.
The thesis worth sitting with is simple: in downtown Greenville's current wave of pre-construction condos and townhomes, the risk that actually catches buyers off guard has nothing to do with finishes, floor plans, or even price. It has to do with what happens between the day you put down earnest money and the day you get a lien-free title at closing. That gap is where The McDaniel's story lives, and it is where every pre-construction buyer downtown should be asking harder questions than the marketing invites them to ask.
The McDaniel launched in 2023 with a specific pitch. Twenty townhomes across five buildings on two acres fronting East McBee Avenue, priced from $1.4 million to $2.2 million, built primarily of limestone in a nod to Haussmann-era Paris and the neo-classical rowhouses of Manhattan's Upper East Side. Construction began in October 2023 with an anticipated timeline of 18 to 20 months. Three months before ground broke, Keene Development Group and sales partner Wilson Associates announced that half the units had already sold in six weeks.
That is a strong sales signal. It is not a delivery guarantee, and the distance between the two is the whole story here.
In February 2025, the developer launched a Phase 2 with 10 more units priced from $1.95 million to $2.5 million, targeting a late-2026 completion, a date now just months away. Prescott & Foushee Construction was brought on as a new builder for the project somewhere along the way, a detail that itself signals a project that had already changed hands once.
Work stalled in 2024. The townhomes were still wooden shells, unprotected from the elements, when Hurricane Helene tore through the Upstate that September. By May 2026, three contractors, H&H Concrete, PK Legacy Builders, and Yoder's Building Supply, had filed claims in Greenville County court alleging they had not been paid for completed work. H&H and PK Legacy went further and filed mechanics liens against the property itself.
Developer Kyle Keene told The Post and Courier the project is not doomed:
"The good news is that we are at the end of the road here with this pause. We've got to have a project that is economically in line, and that's what we're accomplishing now."
That may prove true. But a buyer who reserved a unit in 2023 based on a six-week sellout headline had no way of knowing, at the time, that the project would still be under a cloud of unpaid bills three summers later. The McDaniel is not an isolated data point in Keene's portfolio, either. A separate downtown project tied to Keene, a hotel and condominium concept known as The Kimpton at 100 N. Markley Street, is the subject of a $4.39 million foreclosure action filed by Fidelity Bank against Keene, other investors, and the holding company that owns the site. Keene told the paper he is no longer involved with that project. The point for a buyer is not who is right in either dispute. The point is that a developer's other commitments are part of the risk picture on any single project they are selling.
It helps to separate what a pre-construction announcement tells you from what it protects you against.
| What the press release says | What it actually guarantees |
|---|---|
| "Half the units sold in six weeks" | Buyer demand at reservation. Nothing about the builder's ability to pay subcontractors through completion. |
| "Construction underway" | Site work has started. Not that it will continue on the announced schedule, or that the original contractor will finish it. |
| "Completion expected [date]" | The developer's best estimate at the time of the statement. Not a contractual delivery date with a remedy if missed. |
| "Luxury finishes, limestone facade" | The design intent. Not proof that the capital stack behind the project can fund it to that spec. |
A reservation agreement and a purchase contract are not the same instrument, and the protections that matter, lien-free title, an escrow structure that actually holds your deposit against the builder's operating account, a clear remedy if delivery slips past a real deadline, live in the contract language, not the press release.
South Carolina's mechanics lien law gives a contractor, subcontractor, or supplier who has not been paid a way to attach a claim directly to the property they worked on. Under South Carolina Code Section 29-5-90, a contractor has 90 days from the last day they furnished labor or materials to file and serve that lien. Once filed, it clouds the title. In practical terms, a clouded title means the property cannot transfer clean at closing until the lien is resolved, either by paying the underlying debt or by the owner posting a bond equal to one and one-third times the claimed amount to have the lien discharged from the property while the dispute is litigated.
This matters for buyer sequencing on new construction specifically. A general contractor who files a notice of commencement within 15 days of starting work gains certain protections against later claims, but subcontractors and suppliers who deal with someone other than the property owner still have their own notice and lien rights under the statute. If a construction lender is also in the picture, a properly filed and served mechanics lien can take priority over money the lender advances after that filing, under Section 29-3-50. That is one reason a stalled project with unpaid trades can freeze faster than an outsider would expect. The lien does not just sit quietly in the background. It actively blocks a clean sale until someone pays.
None of this means every pre-construction project downtown carries McDaniel-level risk. It means the mechanism that turned a celebrated launch into a stalled site with liens on it is a known, documented part of South Carolina construction law, and it is fully avoidable with the right questions asked early.
Downtown Greenville's pipeline right now includes projects at very different points on the risk curve. The Avant, an $18 million condo development at 702 S. Main Street, was announced with a summer 2026 completion target, a date that has now effectively arrived. Markley + Main, a roughly $100 million mixed-use project in the West End, broke ground with move-ins projected for summer 2027, still more than a year out. Each carries the ordinary uncertainty of anything not yet fully delivered.
Compare that to a building that is already standing and already has a track record. Falls Tower, a 17-story building with just 18 condos, runs HOA dues around $950 a month, a figure buyers can verify against actual reserve funding and completed common areas rather than a pro forma. The Broadview, near East Downtown, runs closer to $400 to $650 a month. 121 Rhett, in the West End, sits in the $500 to $800 range. Those numbers are not projections. They are what current owners are actually paying, in a building where the roof, the elevator, and the lobby already exist.
That is the real trade-off a downtown buyer is weighing. A pre-construction reservation offers a chance to select finishes and lock in today's price for a home that does not yet exist. A resale in an established building offers a known cost structure and a track record you can check before you write an offer. Neither is automatically the better choice. But only one of them requires you to ask the questions below before you commit real money.
A title company or closing attorney familiar with South Carolina's lien statutes can run most of these checks directly. The answers are a matter of public record in Greenville County, not a matter of trust in a sales brochure.
The lesson from East McBee Avenue is not that pre-construction downtown is a bad bet. It is that the protections worth caring about are procedural, not promotional. A six-week sellout headline tells you about demand. A lien search tells you about risk. Only one of those actually determines whether you get a clean closing.
If you are weighing a reservation on a new downtown project against a resale in an established building, or you just want a second set of eyes on a purchase contract before you sign, Patrick Furman built his career on exactly this kind of due diligence. Let's Connect before you put down a deposit, not after.
Does a mechanics lien mean the project will never be completed? No. A lien is a legal claim, not a death sentence for a project. It can be resolved by paying the underlying debt or by the property owner posting a bond to discharge the lien while the dispute is litigated. It does, however, mean the title cannot transfer clean until that happens, which can delay closings for buyers already under contract.
If I already have a reservation agreement on a downtown pre-construction unit, what should I check now? Ask your closing attorney or title company to run a current lien search on the parcel, not just the developer's public statements. Also ask whether your escrow deposit is held separately from the builder's operating funds, since that separation is what actually protects your money if the project stalls.
Is buying pre-construction downtown a mistake? Not inherently. Downtown Greenville has several active projects, from The Avant near Main Street to Markley + Main in the West End, and new construction remains a real way to buy into a walkable core. The difference between a smooth purchase and a stressful one usually comes down to how carefully the contract, escrow structure, and builder's financial standing were vetted before any money changed hands, not which project you choose.
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