Moncks Corner, SC · Berkeley County · Tail Race Canal
Santee Circle Homes for Sale
Santee Circle is the country end of Moncks Corner: the acre-lot roads north of town on US-52, Old Black Oak Road and Power House Road, tucked between the Pinopolis dam on the Tail Race Canal and the Lake Moultrie dike. About 240 houses on lots from an acre to twenty, no HOA, septic tanks, farm zoning, and the Pinopolis lock four minutes away. It is not a waterfront subdivision, and this page explains why that matters. Our Summerville office is about 35 to 40 minutes away.
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Sold, new and pending listings in Santee Circle, live from the Charleston MLS.What is it like to live in Santee Circle?
Santee Circle is not a subdivision in the usual sense. It is a rural community that grew up in the late 1930s around the construction of the Santee Cooper power plant, and the name probably comes from the loop the powerhouse road made during the project. Today the Charleston MLS files homes here under "Santee Circle" (and sometimes "Tail Race Canal"), and Berkeley County appraises the whole area as one neighborhood, "Tail Race Canal to Santee Circle." There is no entrance sign, no HOA, no pool and no sidewalks. What you get is land: the typical house sits on one to two acres, a quarter of them sit on two or more, and a few dozen sit on small farms of five to twenty-five acres with barns, workshops and detached garages.
The houses are as mixed as the lots. Along US-52 and the older side streets are 1,300 to 1,800 square foot ranches from the community's first decades. Down the newer lanes off Old Black Oak Road, Millies Way Drive and Edisto Drive are custom brick and farmhouse-style homes from the 2000s to the 2020s, one of them over 5,000 square feet on five and a half acres. County records also show about 118 manufactured homes on 86 parcels, because the Flex1 zoning allows them. If you are picky about what the neighbors' places look like, drive every road before you fall for one lot.
The trade-offs are the country ones. Every house is on a septic tank and most are on Berkeley County water, so a new build or an addition starts with a soil evaluation. US-52 carries the truck and commuter traffic for everything north of Moncks Corner, and the homes that front it hear it. The zoned high school is Timberland in St. Stephen, twenty minutes north, not Berkeley High. And despite the "Tail Race Canal" label, no lot in Santee Circle actually touches the canal or the lake: Santee Cooper owns the banks and the dam grounds, and the nearest houses sit several hundred feet back. Boating here means a trailer and a public ramp, not a dock in the backyard.
Where exactly is Santee Circle?
About five miles north of downtown Moncks Corner on US-52, in the wedge of land between the Tail Race Canal, the Pinopolis dam and the Lake Moultrie dike, ZIP 29461. The main roads are North US-52, Old Black Oak Road (which runs west from 52 toward Overton Park and the lake), Power House Road (toward the dam), and the side streets off them: Manigault Drive, Marlow Drive, Leslie Street, Millies Way Drive, Old Macbeth Road, Cornerstone Drive, Jessamine Drive, Goldensand Lane and about thirty more short lanes. The Santee Circle Community Church, a Boy Scout camp, a church camp on Camp Christian Trail and the Navy's Short Stay recreation area are all inside or beside the area.
Every address is "Moncks Corner, SC," but none of it is inside the Town of Moncks Corner. All 555 parcels in the county's Santee Circle appraisal area are in unincorporated Berkeley County (tax district T05), so there is no town property tax and no town services. Police protection is the Berkeley County Sheriff, fire protection is the North Berkeley fire district funded by a fee on the tax bill, and trash pickup is a county contract with Carolina Waste. Water is Berkeley County Water and Sanitation for the side streets (Moncks Corner Water Works serves the stretch of US-52 nearest town), and county records list no sewer provider for any residential side street: it is septic.
Drive times without traffic: the Pinopolis dam and lock about 4 minutes, Santee Cooper's headquarters about 8, downtown Moncks Corner about 10, the Publix at Moncks Corner Marketplace about 15, Google's Mount Holly data center about 25, Goose Creek about 30, the nearest I-26 interchange at Nexton Parkway about 30, Volvo and Boeing about 45, the airport and the Naval Weapons Station about 45, and downtown Charleston about 50. Rush hour on US-52 through Moncks Corner adds to all of them. Santee Circle suits someone who works in Moncks Corner, at Santee Cooper, at the county offices or from home, far better than a daily Charleston commute.
How does boating work from Santee Circle?
From a trailer. The area's whole reason for being is the Santee Cooper project, and the Pinopolis lock at the Jefferies hydroelectric station is a four-minute drive, but the canal banks and the lake shore here belong to Santee Cooper, not to the homeowners. We checked every parcel in the county's Santee Circle area against the county's water layers: none touches the Tail Race Canal, and the closest houses to Lake Moultrie, on Fieldstone Lane, sit a few hundred feet from the water behind Santee Cooper land. A listing that says "near the lake" or "canal access" means a public ramp is close, not that you can build a dock.
The public ramps are the real amenity. The William H. Dennis "Biggins" landing on the Tail Race Canal, the closest one, closed in February 2026 for a Santee Cooper expansion to a four-lane ramp with 470 feet of staging docks, and is expected to reopen in spring 2027; until then the nearest alternatives are the Rembert C. Dennis landing at the Wadboo Creek bridge on SC 402, Cypress Gardens and the Hidden Cove marina area. From the canal, the Pinopolis lock lifts motorized boats of 10 to 150 feet the 75 feet up to Lake Moultrie, free of any fee we could find, from 9 a.m. until 30 minutes before sunset year-round; in summer 2025 Santee Cooper asked boaters to arrive by 6:30 p.m., and the lock does not run in thunderstorms or rough water. Call 843-899-LOCK before you go. Downstream, the canal becomes the West Branch of the Cooper River and runs to Charleston Harbor. Overton Beach Park on the lake, a swimming beach with lifeguards, is at the end of Old Black Oak Road.
Lot types
Which kind of Santee Circle property fits you?
There are no sections, phases or villages here, and the MLS uses two labels for the same roads. On the ground, buyers choose between distance to the lock, lot size, the age of the house, and price.
Near the dam and the landings
Power House Road, Manigault Drive, Marlow Drive and the south end of Old Black Oak Road are the roads nearest the Pinopolis dam, the lock and the Biggins landing, most within a mile. These are ordinary acre lots with the best boat-trailer logistics in Berkeley County, not waterfront: Santee Cooper's 377-acre tract holds the canal banks between the houses and the water. A few lots back up to small ponds off Manigault and Jessamine drives.
Fits: trailer boaters and Lake Moultrie anglers who want to be launched in ten minutes. If a dock at the house is the goal, look at Hidden Cove across the canal instead.
Acre and two-acre homesites
The typical Santee Circle lot. County records show more than 150 house lots of an acre or more, with a median of about 1.7 acres, on Old Black Oak Road, Millies Way Drive, Leslie Street, Goldensand Lane, Reynold Court, Twin Creek Lane and the short lanes off US-52. Room for a shop, a pole barn, a pool, chickens and a boat under its own roof, with no HOA to ask. Recent listings on Millies Way Drive were 2-acre lots.
Fits: buyers who want elbow room and outbuildings ten minutes from a grocery store. Budget for septic and well or county-water checks on every one.
Acreage and small farms
Twenty-seven of the houses sit on five acres or more, and the area holds about 110 parcels of five acres or more, some of them timber tracts of 50 to nearly 190 acres. Examples that have traded: a farmhouse on 10.96 acres on Monk Lane, a 5,000-square-foot custom on 5.5 acres on Edisto Drive, and 24-acre homesteads on Fairsprings Road and Old Macbeth Road. The county's Flex1 Agricultural District allows farming, home occupations and up to two dwellings per acre without subdividing, with a 30,000-square-foot minimum lot when you do.
Fits: horse, hobby-farm and multi-generation buyers, and anyone who wants to build a second house for family on the same land. Ask us to pull the zoning letter and the soils before you count on either.
Older ranches and cottages
The community began with the Santee Cooper construction crews of the late 1930s, and the oldest houses line North US-52, Leslie Street (the platted "Santee Circle Park"), and the Tiverton Lawn lots on Cornerstone and Jessamine drives. Expect one-level brick and frame ranches of about 1,300 to 1,800 square feet, carports, big oaks and pecans, and a workshop out back. The county's median house here is about 1,770 square feet.
Fits: buyers who want the land and the location at the lowest price and will budget for a roof, heat pump, plumbing, wiring and septic work on a 40- to 80-year-old house.
Newer custom homes
There has never been a production builder in Santee Circle. The newer houses are one-off customs on lots carved from family land: a 5,036-square-foot brick home built in 2021 on Edisto Drive with a three-car attached and four-car detached garage, a 3,671-square-foot brick house with an attached apartment on Millies Way Drive, and a 3,000-square-foot home on 1.5 acres on Twin Creek Lane from about 2016. The largest house on county records is about 5,160 square feet.
Fits: buyers who want a newer house with acreage, or who want to build. We can line up a lot, a soil test and a custom builder.
What each tier costs
Small wooded lots have sold and listed from about $60,000 to $75,000 for under an acre; an 8-acre wooded tract on US-52 was asking $235,000 and 21 acres on Mount Pleasant Drive $1,500,000. Older and smaller houses have closed from about $315,000 to $345,000, acre-lot homes from about $400,000 to $550,000, and a 1,743-square-foot ranch on 2 acres was asking $469,000. The top tier is the customs: $700,000 to just over $1,000,000 on Millies Way Drive and $1,250,000 for the Edisto Drive estate in 2026.
Fits: everyone. With three listings at a time and two MLS labels, an area average means little here; price the lot type and the house age.
Homes & Builders
What kinds of homes are in Santee Circle?
Single-family houses and manufactured homes on individual lots; no townhomes and no condos. County records show 240 stick-built homes from about 500 to 5,160 square feet, with a median of about 1,770 and the middle half between 1,340 and 2,240. On current and recent listings the average house is about 28 years old, which hides a wide spread: 1940s to 1970s cottages on US-52 and the older streets, 1980s and 1990s brick ranches, and 2000s to 2020s customs on the newer lanes. Detached garages, workshops, barns and RV and boat sheds are everywhere, because the lots and the zoning allow them.
Manufactured homes are part of the picture: county records show 118 of them on 86 parcels, some as second homes on family land. That matters two ways. It keeps the entry price low, and it means the view from a $1,000,000 custom can include a mobile home next door. There is no HOA or architectural committee, and we found no recorded master covenants, only small plats (Tiverton Lawn, Santee Circle Park, Old Country Stores) whose restrictions, if any, you read in the deed. We name no builders here because none has worked at scale; if the builder or permit history of a specific house matters to you, we pull the county permits.
What era of home?
On a 1940s to 1980s Santee Circle house, have the inspector look at the roof, the heat pump, the water heater, the electrical panel (and any aluminum branch wiring in 1960s and 1970s homes), the plumbing (polybutylene was common in homes built from 1978 to 1995), the crawlspace moisture and the big trees close to the house. Ask for a CL-100 termite letter and any transferable bond. On every house, old or new, add a septic inspection and pumping record, a water test if there is a well, and the location of the drain field before you plan a pool, a shop or an addition. On acreage, walk the lines with the survey and ask about timber, easements and any family members with a second home on the parcel. These are routine checks for the age and the setting, not known defects of Santee Circle.
If you want a new house here, the path is a lot, a soil evaluation for the septic permit, and a custom builder. We can also show you the new communities in Moncks Corner and along US-52 if you want a warranty, sewer and sidewalks. How new-construction representation works
Schools
Which schools serve Santee Circle?
Santee Circle is in the Berkeley County School District. We checked the district's 2026-27 attendance zones on the county GIS map for twelve addresses spread across the area's main roads.
- H.E. Bonner Elementary (171 Macedonia Foxes Circle, Moncks Corner, grades PK to 5), about 8 miles and 13 to 15 minutes east toward Macedonia.
- Macedonia Middle School (200 Macedonia Foxes Circle, Moncks Corner), on the same campus, about 13 to 15 minutes.
- Timberland High School (1418 Gravel Hill Road, St. Stephen), about 10 miles and 20 minutes north.
Note the direction: Santee Circle is zoned east and north, to the Macedonia and St. Stephen schools, not to Berkeley Middle and Berkeley High in Moncks Corner, even though the town schools are closer by the clock for some addresses. The stretch of US-52 nearest town falls in the Moncks Corner Elementary, Berkeley Middle and Berkeley High zones, so the line runs through the area. A district rezoning took effect in August 2026, when Bee Tree Elementary and Midtown Middle opened, and the district has said it expects to rezone again in about two years. Confirm the zone for the exact address with the district before you write an offer, and ask about the bus route; rides are long from here.
Fees & Taxes
What does it cost to own in Santee Circle?
No HOA dues and no town tax. The ongoing costs are county line items, the septic tank, and, for boaters, the trailer. Here is what county records show.
| Item | What it is |
|---|---|
| HOA dues | None. There is no homeowners association, no special tax district and no special fee on any of the 240 house parcels in county records. Listings here advertise "no HOA" for a reason: you can park the boat, the RV and the work truck on your own land. |
| Property tax | Berkeley County and school district rates only; no town millage. A primary residence is assessed at 4% once you file the legal residence application; a second home, rental or family lot is assessed at 6%, which roughly triples the bill. Larger tracts in active farm or timber use may qualify for agricultural use assessment; 85 parcels in the area already carry it. How Summerville-area property taxes work |
| County fire, landfill and stormwater fees | The North Berkeley fire district fee ran $75 to $165 a year on the house parcels we sampled, plus the county's residential landfill fee ($75) and stormwater fee ($36). All appear on the Berkeley County tax bill. |
| Septic and water | Every residential side street is on septic; county utility records list no sewer provider for any of them. Budget for pumping every three to five years and for a septic inspection at purchase. Water is Berkeley County Water and Sanitation for most addresses, with some homes on private wells; confirm which for the specific house. A new house or a large addition needs a state septic permit based on a soil evaluation, which decides how big the drain field can be and therefore how big the house can be. |
| Flood and home insurance | Almost none of Santee Circle is in a FEMA special flood hazard area. Of 240 house parcels we checked against the county's flood layer, 238 were outside the AE and A zones; the AE polygons follow the Tail Race Canal, Broad Ax Branch, the lake and the ponds, and only one house on Willow Haven Lane and one on Cabin Creek Lane fell inside. Flood insurance is optional and cheap for most lots, and worth carrying near the branches and ponds. Homeowners insurance guide |
| Zoning | Berkeley County Flex1 (Agricultural District) on nearly every residential parcel, with small pockets of rural and general commercial along US-52. Flex1 permits stick-built and manufactured homes, agriculture, home occupations, and up to two dwellings per acre without subdividing; the minimum lot when subdividing is 30,000 square feet. A few US-52 lots are marketed as candidates for commercial rezoning. |
| Docks and shoreline | Not applicable to Santee Circle lots, which do not touch the canal or the lake. If a listing anywhere on Lake Moultrie or the Tail Race Canal claims water frontage, the shoreline is usually Santee Cooper's: its Property Management office (843-761-4068) issues water-based permits at $325 for residential work, limits Berkeley County docks to 4 feet wide with a 24-by-16-foot terminal, one pier per lot, and the permit does not transfer with a sale. |
Fees change with each county budget. We pull the current tax bill, the septic permit, the zoning letter and the flood map for any Santee Circle property before you go under contract.
CPRES-Certified · Probate and inherited homes
Inherited a home in Santee Circle?
The Mills Team is CPRES-certified. Jim Mills holds the Certified Probate Real Estate Specialist designation, which is formal training in how a home is sold out of an estate: who has the authority to sell, what the probate court needs first, and how to value, clean out and prepare a house when the heirs live somewhere else. We work alongside your probate attorney and the closing attorney so the sale does not stall, and we will tell you plainly if selling is not your best move.
How selling an inherited house works Probate sales in Moncks Corner View the CPRES certificate (PDF)
We are real estate agents, not attorneys, and nothing here is legal advice.
Market Report
Sold, New Listings, and Pending Listings in Santee Circle
Live from the Charleston MLS and updated automatically: what has sold, what just came on the market, and what is under contract in Santee Circle. Some homes on these same roads are filed under "Tail Race Canal" instead, so if you want the whole area, one price range, acreage only, or alerts as homes come up, tell us and we will set up a saved search for you.
Search all Santee Circle homes with filters · Get alerts for new Santee Circle listings
Nearby Communities
Santee Circle is the acreage-and-trailer-boat choice in Moncks Corner. If you want a dock at the house, compare Hidden Cove directly across the Tail Race Canal, Pimlico on the West Branch Cooper River, and Berkeley Country Club near the lake. For an older in-town neighborhood with sewer and a short drive to everything, look at Fairlawn and Fairlawn Barony. If you want a newer house with a pool and sidewalks on the same commute, look at Foxbank Plantation and Spring Grove Plantation, or the master-planned communities at Cane Bay Plantation, Carnes Crossroads and Nexton. Many Santee Circle shoppers also look in Goose Creek, 30 minutes south. Stationed at the Weapons Station or the air base? See Joint Base Charleston homes.
FAQ
Questions buyers and sellers ask about Santee Circle
Not in the usual sense. Santee Circle is a rural community north of Moncks Corner that dates to the construction of the Santee Cooper power plant in the late 1930s. The Charleston MLS uses "Santee Circle" (and sometimes "Tail Race Canal") as the subdivision name for homes on North US-52, Old Black Oak Road, Power House Road and the lanes off them, and Berkeley County appraises the same roads as one neighborhood. There is no HOA, no recorded master covenants that we could find, and no county subdivision boundary; the Flex1 farm zoning allows stick-built and manufactured homes, agriculture and home businesses.
No. Every home has a Moncks Corner mailing address, ZIP 29461, but all 555 parcels in the county's Santee Circle area are in unincorporated Berkeley County, tax district T05, about five miles north of downtown on US-52. There is no town property tax. Police service is the Berkeley County Sheriff, fire service is the North Berkeley fire district, trash is a county contract, and water for most homes is Berkeley County Water and Sanitation.
No. Despite the "Tail Race Canal" label some listings carry, no parcel in the county's Santee Circle area touches the canal or Lake Moultrie. Santee Cooper owns the canal banks and the dam grounds on a 377-acre tract along Power House Road, and the closest houses to the lake, on Fieldstone Lane, sit a few hundred feet back behind Santee Cooper land. A few lots back up to small ponds. If a dock at the house is what you want, look at Hidden Cove across the canal or Pimlico on the West Branch Cooper River.
Trailer it to a public ramp. The closest, the William H. Dennis "Biggins" landing on the Tail Race Canal, closed in February 2026 for a Santee Cooper expansion and is expected to reopen in spring 2027; until then use the Rembert C. Dennis landing on SC 402 at Wadboo Creek, Cypress Gardens or the Hidden Cove marina area. From the canal, the Pinopolis lock at the Jefferies hydro station lifts motorized boats of 10 to 150 feet the 75 feet up to Lake Moultrie, from 9 a.m. until 30 minutes before sunset, weather permitting. Call 843-899-LOCK before you go. Lake ramps to the north, at Overton and toward Bonneau, skip the lock entirely.
Berkeley County School District: H.E. Bonner Elementary and Macedonia Middle on Macedonia Foxes Circle, then Timberland High in St. Stephen. All twelve Santee Circle addresses we tested on the county's 2026-27 zone map returned those three schools after the August 2026 rezoning, but the stretch of US-52 nearest town is zoned to Moncks Corner Elementary, Berkeley Middle and Berkeley High, so the line runs through the area. The district expects to rezone again in about two years. Confirm the zone for the exact address.
Almost none of it. The FEMA AE zone follows the Tail Race Canal, Broad Ax Branch, the lake and the ponds, and the houses sit on the higher ground between them. Of 240 house parcels we checked against the county's flood layer, 238 were outside the AE and A zones; one on Willow Haven Lane and one on Cabin Creek Lane fell inside. Most buyers here will not be required to carry flood insurance, but order a flood determination for any lot near a branch or a pond, and consider a low-cost policy anyway.
Septic. Berkeley County utility records list no sewer provider for any residential side street in the area; only the commercial stretch of US-52 nearest town has Moncks Corner or BCWSA sewer. Water is Berkeley County Water and Sanitation for most homes, with some on wells. Get a septic inspection and pumping record on any purchase, and understand that a new house or a large addition needs a state septic permit based on a soil evaluation of the lot.
It depends on the land and the age of the house. On September 18, 2026 there were three listings under the Santee Circle name, averaging about $998,000 and 127 days on market, but that is a small sample skewed by a 21-acre tract at $1,500,000; the houses were a 1,743-square-foot ranch on 2 acres at $469,000 and a 3,671-square-foot custom with an apartment at $1,025,000. Recent closings ran from about $315,000 for an older house to $400,000 to $550,000 for acre-lot and small-farm homes, and $1,250,000 for a 5,000-square-foot custom on 5.5 acres. Small lots have sold from about $60,000. Ask for a current number for the specific lot type.
The court is set by the county where the person lived, not where the house is. If they lived in Santee Circle, that is the Berkeley County Probate Court, which sits in Moncks Corner itself, about 10 minutes down US-52. Family land here often has more than one house or an heirs-property title, which the court and your attorney need to sort out before a sale. The Mills Team is CPRES-certified: Jim Mills holds the Certified Probate Real Estate Specialist designation, and we work with your probate attorney and closing attorney from the first court filing to the closing table. Selling an inherited house in Moncks Corner walks through the steps. Our full guide to selling a house after someone dies
Talk to a Santee Circle agent
Buying or selling in Santee Circle?
We are based in downtown Summerville, about 35 to 40 minutes from Old Black Oak Road, and acreage is a different sale from a subdivision house: septic permits, zoning, surveys, heirs titles and what "lake access" really means all matter. Tell us what you are thinking and we will come back with a straight answer, not a sales pitch.
The Mills Team at NextHome The Agency Group. 69+ combined years, 2,000+ homes sold, and 94% of our business comes by referral. CPRES-certified for probate and inherited-home sales. Contact us
Community facts on this page come from Berkeley County GIS parcel, utility, zoning, flood and school attendance zone layers, the Berkeley County zoning use summary, the Berkeley County School District, Santee Cooper's published lock, park and permitting pages, local news reports, and C.H. Neuffer's Names in South Carolina for the origin of the name, all checked September 18, 2026. Market figures are from public Charleston MLS feeds as of September 18, 2026 and change daily; the live report above is current. Some online material calls this area "Santee Shores"; that name does not appear in county records, the MLS or on any map, and we do not use it. Flood zones, septic and water connections, zoning, fees and school zones should be confirmed for a specific property before you rely on them. Drive times are estimates without traffic. The Mills Team is an independent brokerage and is not affiliated with Santee Cooper (the South Carolina Public Service Authority), the Santee Circle Community Church, Berkeley County or any developer or builder. Santee Circle, Tail Race Canal and Santee Cooper are names used by their respective owners. Last reviewed September 2026.