Why the reversal cost matters more in Mount Pleasant
The historic core has the constraints its period implies: narrow lots, buildings close to the street, tall elevations relative to footprint, and porches and bay features that put a run above a roof rather than above open ground. None of it is unmanageable and all of it is slower than open subdivision work. The newer edges are ordinary.
That is worth reading before deciding between the two products people call leaf guard, because the harder a roof is to reach, the more expensive it is to change your mind about what is on it.
A cover that clips over your existing gutter is reversible: removal is $1.50 to $3 a foot and the gutter underneath is untouched. A one-piece system, where the hood and the gutter are a single extruded unit, is not. Taking the hood off means taking the gutter off, because they are the same object, so undoing it is a full replacement, $2 to $4 a foot to remove, then $8 to $17 a foot for a new run. On a 150-foot house that is roughly $1,500 to $3,150 to get back to a conventional gutter, before the access surcharge that Mount Pleasant height adds to both halves.
That asymmetry is essentially never mentioned at the point of sale, and it is the single most important fact about this category. So: ask any company quoting a one-piece system what removal would cost, and note whether the answer comes readily.
On the product itself, reverse-curve uses surface tension to carry water around a curved lip into a narrow slot. It works, up to a flow rate. Charlotte peaks at 7.27 inches of rain an hour over a five-minute burst, and past the point where surface tension holds, water leaves the nose in a straight line and goes over the slot entirely. Under willow oak and pine we recommend stainless micro-mesh at $10 to $18 a foot instead: finer aperture, roughly half the price, and it unclips.

What Mount Pleasant itself changes
What drops on these roofs
The historic core has the substantial mature planting of a town centre that has stood for well over a century, with large hardwoods arching over the older streets and directly above the roofs. The newer edges are open and lightly planted. The debris difference across a few hundred yards is considerable, and it is another reason the older half of the town needs a different cleaning schedule from the newer half.
The housing in Mount Pleasant
Mount Pleasant has a listed historic district at its centre and newer building around the edges, and the distinction is unusually visible from the street. The older buildings were designed with deep overhangs, moulded fascia and decorative eaves detailing, and that detailing is exactly what a gutter has to be fitted to. On a house of that period the profile is an appearance decision as much as a drainage one, and a stock K-style run fastened across carved eaves reads as wrong even to somebody who could not say why.