Myrtle Beach oceanfront
condo buildings, compared.

The direct answer

Condo, condotel, and timeshare: three kinds of oceanfront ownership

Standard condos are buildings without a hotel operation; they buy, sell, and finance like any home. Condotels are whole, deeded units inside buildings run like hotels, with a front desk, daily rentals, and an onsite rental program; most of the famous Ocean Boulevard towers operate this way, and it changes both the economics and the financing. Timeshares, like Marriott's OceanWatch, sell deeded weeks or points rather than units; they are excluded from this directory and are categorically ineligible for conventional financing.

The operating model matters more than the ocean view. It sets who manages your rentals and at what split (an onsite desk commonly keeps 35 to 45 percent, versus 20 to 30 for third-party managers; the full math is in our Airbnb income report), what the HOA fee covers, which buyers can finance your unit when you sell, and which loans you can use to buy. Whether a specific building fits a specific loan is decided by the lender during the transaction; what we can map for you in advance, from public information, is how each building operates.

Myrtle Beach

Myrtle Beach oceanfront buildings, south to north

Operations, fees, and prices from resort websites, broker building pages, and published HOA fee tables as of July 2026. Fees and prices change; treat every row as a starting point, not a quote.

North Myrtle Beach

North Myrtle Beach oceanfront buildings

Sources for both tables: resort operator sites, broker building pages, published regime-fee tables, and July 2026 news coverage for Margaritaville. "Not published" means we did not find a current public figure; we can pull the actual number from MLS and association documents when you are looking at a specific building.

Financing

Condotel financing: how lenders decide which buildings qualify

Conventional lenders review the project, not just you. Fannie Mae's published guidelines make a project ineligible when it operates like a hotel: a rental or registration desk, daily cleaning, mandatory rental pooling, restrictions on owners occupying their own units, hospitality licensing, mostly transient use, too much commercial space, or one entity owning too many units. Active litigation over safety or structure can also disqualify a building, which is the subject of our condo litigation guide, and so can an underinsured master policy, which is exactly what our team once fixed mid-deal by helping an association re-shop its coverage so a buyer could close.

Two things make this opaque for buyers and sellers. First, project eligibility is checked in lender-only databases and can change year to year with the building's insurance, budget, and rental mix, so there is no permanent public list worth trusting. Second, FHA approval is nearly absent here: as of July 2026 a public mirror of HUD's data showed eight approved projects in all of Horry County, none of them oceanfront towers (HUD's official lookup is the authoritative check). The practical buyer pool for hotel-style towers is cash, DSCR, and portfolio loans at roughly 20 to 30 percent down.

This is why we check the building before you offer, not after. Our in-house lender BrickWood Mortgage finances condotels at the same fees as any other loan, and the review costs you nothing but a conversation. The warrantability standards themselves are in the Fannie Mae Selling Guide.

Reading the fees

Oceanfront HOA fees: $300 to $1,900 a month, and what that buys

Published examples across these buildings run from about $300 a month at lower-rise complexes to $1,900 at luxury towers. The number looks alarming next to a suburban HOA until you read what it covers: in-unit electricity in many towers, cable and internet, water and sewer, pools and elevators, the building's wind and flood master policies, and often your HO-6 contents coverage. For a rental unit, most of the operating budget lives inside that one fee. Selling a unit in one of these buildings? Start with selling a condo in Myrtle Beach.

The trendline matters as much as the level: coastal master-insurance premiums pushed many buildings' dues up 15 to 30 percent over the past two years, which is a big part of why condo prices in the city are soft while house prices have stayed steadier. When we underwrite a unit, the fee, what it includes, and the association's insurance and reserves get checked before the offer, alongside the unit-level insurance you still need.

Check a Myrtle Beach condo building before you offer.

We pull the association documents, the real fee, the rental program terms, and the financing path through BrickWood Mortgage before you write anything. The building matters more than the unit, so learn the building before you offer.

Common questions

Myrtle Beach condo buildings FAQ