Condo, villa, regime, fee simple

“Regime” is the word that confuses out-of-state buyers most, partly because it sounds like an organisation — something with a board and a newsletter. It is not. It is a legal structure the property itself is placed into.

South Carolina’s Horizontal Property Act says a horizontal property regime is established when the owner or co-owners expressly declare, by recording a master deed, that they are submitting the property to the regime (§ 27-31-30). The master deed itself is defined at § 27-31-20 as the deed establishing and recording the property of the regime.

§ 27-31-100 then sets out what that master deed has to contain, and this is the part worth reading before you buy: a description of the land and buildings, the number and description of each unit with its area and location, a description of the general and limited common elements, and the value of the property and of each unit with the percentage share of the common expenses attached to it.

That last item is where a regime fee comes from. It is not a membership subscription somebody set. It is your recorded percentage of the cost of running the common property, fixed in a document you can read.

An association is a governing body that levies dues under covenants. A regime is a form of ownership created by a recorded deed. They answer different questions: the regime says what you own and what fraction of the shared costs is yours, the association says who decides things and what the rules are.

A property can sit inside a regime, inside an association, or inside both at once — which is exactly why people use the words interchangeably and why the answer to “what’s the fee?” is sometimes two fees. What to check in the governing documents goes through what to ask for.

This is the honest answer to one of the questions I am asked most, and it is not the answer people expect.

“Villa” appears nowhere in the Horizontal Property Act. The statute’s term for an individual unit inside a regime is apartment. “Villa” is local marketing usage that arrived with the resort development of this island and stuck.

Which means two properties advertised as a condo and a villa can be the same form of ownership, and two properties both advertised as villas can be different ones. The word is not a reliable guide to ownership structure, and it is not a reliable guide to size, style or quality either.

The question that does have an answer is what the recorded master deed says you own and what percentage of the common expenses it assigns you. That is knowable for every property, and it is what I go and read.

When a townhome here is described as fee simple, the claim being made is that you own the land your unit sits on — not just the unit plus an undivided share of common elements.

The contrast is with the regime structure above, where § 27-31-100 requires your unit to be defined by its area and location and given a percentage interest in commonly held elements. A fee simple townhome is closer to owning a detached house that happens to share walls.

What it does notautomatically mean is that there is no association and no fee. Covenants can run with the land regardless of how the units are owned. Fee simple answers “what do I own,” not “what am I obliged to pay” — those are separate documents and they need reading separately.