Buying a Home in Lexington, SC: The Old Mill on Twelve Mile Creek, the Icehouse on Main Street and Where the Town Limits Run

The granite in the Old Mill at 711 East Main Street came out of the ground less than two miles from where it stands. The Lexington Manufacturing Company put the mill up in 1891, and in December 1892 its 204 looms and 7,000 spindles started turning out bed ticking, the cloth that covers a mattress, with about 150 jobs behind them. Water from the pond on Twelve Mile Creek ran all of it, as the Lexington Chronicle's history of the town's water-powered mills tells it. The stone sections you see today are the oldest part of the building. The Old Mill Brewpub is in there now, and the Town's Old Mill Pond Trail runs beside the water.

Lexington is the seat of Lexington County, a town of 25,729 people on Twelve Mile Creek in the Columbia area, and a Lexington mailing address can be inside the town limits or out in the unincorporated county around it. That count is up 8.9% since 2020, by the Census Bureau's July 1, 2025 estimate. I'm Jeff Moran, NMLS #483943, a mortgage broker licensed in South Carolina through C2 Financial Corporation, and I have been in the mortgage business since 1996. I work out of Bluffton, and this page is for anyone looking at a home in Lexington. The Columbia area page covers Lake Murray, the county tax rates, the loan limits and the lower 4% property tax rate on the home you live in, which you apply for. On this page I stick to the town itself.

Main Street: Lexington Court House, the clock and the Icehouse

The town was called Lexington Court House until about 1900, and the courthouse is still the middle of it. The South Carolina Encyclopedia has the town founded in 1820 to replace Granby, now Cayce, as the district seat, and named for the 1775 Battle of Lexington in Massachusetts. The 1940 courthouse at 139 East Main is the Town's traffic court today, and the Lexington County Judicial Center is at 205 East Main, next to Lexington Square and the Lexington Clock.

At 107 West Main, the Icehouse Amphitheater is a town-owned venue with about 900 seats, built to bring business to Main Street. Its free Thursday-night concerts started out as Lexington Live and are now Icehouse Live, presented by Lexington Medical Center, as the Post and Courier's Free Times reported in 2025. The Christmas parade runs from Haygood Avenue along West Main toward North Lake Drive.

A four-story, 111-room Courtyard by Marriott broke ground at 116 East Main in October 2025 and is due in spring 2027. To go with it, the town is building a lot of about 100 spaces at Church and Corley streets, and WIS reported that the hotel leases 35% of those spaces, with the rest planned as free parking.

From 969 people to 25,729

Laurence Corley owned most of the land the town now covers, and his widow sold land to the state in 1819 to establish it. The town was incorporated in 1861. In February 1865, Union troops under General Sherman set fire to the county's courthouse and jail, which stood inside the present town, as the Sheriff's Department history recounts. The county's public records through 1840 were lost in that fire, and the town came back after the Columbia-to-Augusta railroad was completed in 1869.

The SC Encyclopedia counts 969 people in Lexington in 1970 and almost 10,000 by 2000, and the Census Bureau's 2025 estimate is 25,729, about 26 times the 1970 count. The Lexington County Museum at 231 Fox Street keeps the older story.

Barr Road, the 1100 block of West Main and the Smallwood Cove plan at the lake

The biggest new neighborhood is coming on Barr Road. On January 5, 2026, council voted 6-0 to annex 191 acres in the 300 block, where Meritage Homes plans 299 single-family homes with one entrance. Because the land is now inside the town, the builder has to pay for the traffic studies and the road improvements, as WIS reported after the vote. On May 4, 2026, council gave final approval to a 51-townhome neighborhood and annexed the 1100 block of West Main Street. The same night it authorized the 14 Mile Creek gravity sewer project. Both are in the Town's council action items.

In 2023 the town gave preliminary approval to annex Smallwood Cove, a 93.5-acre resort plan on Lake Murray with 1,100 residential units, two hotels and a marina. Critics pointed out that the property touched the town limits only across the water of Lake Murray, with no land connection. The landowner withdrew the project on July 19, 2023, as the Post and Courier reported. So a lakefront home with a Lexington address can be inside the town or outside it, and the county parcel record is where you find out which.

Lake Drive, Church Street and the roads the hospitality tax is paying for

On June 23, 2018, Lake Drive and Church Street became one-way streets. The pair splits traffic at Main Street and North Lake Drive so the signals there can handle about twice as many vehicles. It was the first project the town paid for with its 2% hospitality tax, according to the Town's release, posted by the Lexington Chamber.

Sunset Split would turn Sunset Boulevard, which is US 378, into two one-way roadways near Corley Mill Road. The Lexington Chronicle put the whole plan at $36 million in August 2024. Part of it is paid for by hospitality tax and part by a tax increment financing district, where the growth in property tax collected inside a drawn area pays for the improvements in it. Sunset Boulevard is a state road, so SCDOT has to sign off, and that approval was still pending in that report. That August 2024 report is the latest public word on it, so please ask the town's transportation office where it stands before you plan a commute around it.

Lexington One's new schools, and the clinic on West Main

Lexington's schools are in Lexington School District One, which has nearly 28,000 students in 31 schools and also serves Gilbert and Pelion. Lakeside Middle School on Old Cherokee Road opened in August 2022 and replaced Lexington Middle School after 44 years on North Lake Drive. South Lake Elementary on South Lake Drive opened for 2024-25, and the Post and Courier's education desk reported that the rezoning approved in December 2023 moved 466 students out of the Carolina Springs and Saxe Gotha Elementary attendance areas. The district's current attendance map is the place to confirm the schools for any address you are considering, and the district's 2026 growth study is on the Columbia area page.

Lexington Health's downtown campus at 811 West Main Street has urgent care, outpatient surgery, imaging, a lab and physical therapy, according to Lexington Health's own page. The system's emergency room is at its main campus at 2720 Sunset Boulevard in West Columbia.

A Lexington mailing address and the town limits

ZIP code 29072 covers 68 square miles of land, and the Postal Service lists Barr, Edmund, Macedon and Red Bank as other names for it, according to zip-codes.com. The Town of Lexington covers about 12 square miles. The 29072 ZIP alone covers more than five times the town's land. ZIP 29073 takes in part of the town along with Red Bank and Oak Grove, which are unincorporated. A home with a Lexington address and a 29072 or 29073 ZIP can be inside the town or well outside it.

The quickest way to tell is the tax district printed on the county tax bill. The Lexington County Auditor's 2025 schedule of tax rates by district lists separate districts for "Town Limits of Lexington" and "Town of Lexington TIF," so the district on the seller's bill says whether the town's tax is on it. Please have the listing agent pull the county parcel record before you compare two homes, because the town's tax rate, its impact fees and its utilities all follow the town limits rather than the mailing address.

The tax bill on a Lexington home

A home you live in as your legal residence is assessed at 4% of its value in South Carolina, and you apply for that 4% rate. Lexington County takes the application online, and the county Assessor's office is in town at 212 South Lake Drive, Suite 201. The county reassessed every property in 2025, so the value on a 2025 or 2026 bill is a fresh one. On the home you live in, the Lexington One tax that pays to run the schools comes off your bill, and the tax that pays back what the district borrowed to build schools stays. The Columbia area page has those figures.

The town's own tax rate is the one to confirm by phone. Homes inside the town limits also pay the Town of Lexington's own tax, on top of the county's. The county's own tax FAQ says only the taxing agency on the bill can answer questions about its own rate. So please ask the Town of Lexington for its current rate, or read it off the seller's actual bill. One subdivision inside the town, Golden Hills, carries a $308 street pavement fee on its tax bill, according to the same 2025 table.

On a new home, the builder has paid the town's impact fees before you ever see the price. An impact fee is a one-time charge the town collects on new construction to pay for parks, town facilities and roads. The town began collecting on February 1, 2020, and by early 2025 the fees had raised more than $1.7 million, as the Post and Courier reported. A Phase 2 update passed first reading 7-0 on May 4, 2026. The amounts are in an exhibit attached to the ordinance, so please ask the builder which fees are already in the price.

Twelve Mile Creek, the three dams and the flood map

Three dams on Twelve Mile Creek, at Old Mill Pond, Gibson's Pond and Barr Lake, stand one after another in the same watershed. In the October 2015 flood, all three failed. Gibson's Pond Dam, built in 1930, went over the top on October 4, 2015, according to the national dam-safety incident record, and US 1 flooded.

The Post and Courier reported in 2021 that the three dams were coming back. The Lexington Chronicle reported the Old Mill Pond dam nearly complete in June 2023, with the pond to be refilled for the first time since 2015.

For a home near the creek or one of the ponds, the flood zone on FEMA's map for that parcel decides whether the lender requires flood insurance. In the high-risk zone, which FEMA calls the Special Flood Hazard Area, that premium becomes part of your monthly payment. Unincorporated Lexington County holds a Class 7 rating in FEMA's Community Rating System, which gives policyholders there a 15% discount on flood insurance, according to the county's floodplain management page. That discount is for the unincorporated county, so for a home inside the town limits, please ask your insurance agent whether it applies to the specific address. You'll want the flood quote before you make the offer, so the payment you plan around already includes it.

The water bill and the sewer bill on a Lexington address

The Town of Lexington runs a sewer utility, and a big part of it came through the courts. On February 1, 2018, the town took over the Carolina Water Service wastewater plant at I-20 and its more than 2,000 customers, as the Town's release, posted by the Lexington Chamber, explains. The town took the plant by condemnation, which is the court process a government uses to take private property for public use and pay the owner for it. A Lexington County jury set the price at $7.25 million, as the Free Times reported.

The water bill may come from a different utility than the sewer bill, depending on the address. A court ordered the town to pay West Columbia $5.7 million in a three-decade dispute over which utility serves water to six subdivisions near Lake Murray, Settlers Point among them, and the Columbia area page has that story. So on any address, please ask the seller or the listing agent who bills the water and who bills the sewer. On a new home, please also ask whether the sewer connection is already approved and what the tap fees were, meaning the one-time charges to connect the home to the water and sewer lines.

Putting the Lexington numbers into a payment

The costs above that come back every year are part of the monthly payment a lender qualifies you on. That means the county tax, the Lexington One tax, the town's tax if the home is inside the town limits, the Golden Hills paving fee where it applies, flood insurance in a high-risk zone, and any association dues. Impact fees and builder-funded road work reach you through the price of a new home. The whole town is in Lexington County, so the 2026 conforming and FHA loan limits in the box below apply to every Lexington address.

Pre-approval in South Carolina explains what I will ask you for and what the letter is based on, and the South Carolina page covers the attorney closing and the rest of the state's rules. If you own a business, the self-employed page explains how your complete income tax returns get read. If you already own in Lexington, refinancing in South Carolina is where to start. Once you have a Lexington address in mind, you can see your rates and payment for the purchase on this site, with no credit pull and no account. You choose the rate option that works best for you, the selection can change later, and the application opens from there. If you would rather talk it through first, you can call me.

None of this is a loan approval, a denial or a commitment to lend, and none of it is tax advice. The Lexington County Assessor sets the value and the classification on a specific parcel, and the Town of Lexington is the one that says whether a parcel is inside its limits, so please confirm both before you rely on either.

Common questions

Is a Lexington, SC address inside the Town of Lexington?

Not always. ZIP 29072 covers 68 square miles of land against the town's 12, and ZIP 29073 takes in Red Bank and Oak Grove, which are unincorporated. The tax district on the county bill, "Town Limits of Lexington" or "Town of Lexington TIF," says whether the home is inside the town, and the county parcel record shows it.

Which county is Lexington, SC in?

Lexington County, and the town is the county seat, with the courthouse and the county assessor both in town. The 2026 conforming and FHA loan limits for Lexington County are in the box on this page.

Is Lexington, SC on Lake Murray?

The town limits reach the lake, and the 2023 Smallwood Cove annexation was questioned because that land met the town limits only across the water. A lakefront home with a Lexington mailing address can be inside the town or outside it, and the county parcel record is the place to see which.

What happened to the Old Mill Pond in Lexington?

Its dam failed in the October 2015 flood, along with the Gibson's Pond and Barr Lake dams on the same creek. The dam was rebuilt and reported nearly complete in June 2023, and the Old Mill Pond Trail runs beside the pond at 711 East Main Street.

Who provides water and sewer in Lexington, SC?

The Town of Lexington runs a sewer utility and took over the former Carolina Water Service plant at I-20 in 2018. The town and West Columbia went to court over which one serves water to six subdivisions near Lake Murray. Please ask who bills the water and who bills the sewer on the specific address.

Is there an emergency room in Lexington, SC?

Lexington Health's campus at 811 West Main Street has urgent care, outpatient surgery, imaging, a lab and physical therapy. The system's emergency room is at its main hospital at 2720 Sunset Boulevard in West Columbia.