Short-term rental investing in Myrtle Beach

The real numbers

What Grand Strand short-term rentals earn

The Grand Strand is intensely seasonal. Occupancy on a typical vacation rental is in the teens to low 30s percent in the dead of winter and into the 80s or low 90s at the July peak. The blended annual average is roughly in the 45 to 55 percent range. Average daily rates swing the same way, high in summer, soft in the off-season. The exact curve depends heavily on where you buy. An oceanfront building in Garden City or Surfside spikes hard in summer and empties out in winter. A marsh or golf market like Murrells Inlet or Pawleys Island has a gentler peak with a stronger shoulder season. The published market-wide numbers, by area and percentile, are in our Airbnb income report.

We publish a month-by-month occupancy estimate on every one of our neighborhood pages, and when you are serious about a specific property, we build the real numbers for that exact address. Treat any blended annual figure with suspicion; the season you can book determines whether a deal works.

Legality first

Short-term rental rules change street by street

Where you can legally run a short-term rental is the single biggest factor in a Grand Strand STR deal, and it changes by town and even by zone. South Carolina defines a short-term rental as any stay under 90 days. Inside the City of Myrtle Beach, most traditional residential neighborhoods are not zoned for short-term rentals at all, with the exception of the RMV (Residential Multifamily Visitor) zone and a small number of grandfathered homes. North Myrtle Beach requires licensing and enforces it, while much of unincorporated Horry County is more permissive.

A beautiful house in the wrong zone is not an Airbnb, no matter how good the numbers look. We confirm the zoning and any HOA short-term-rental rules for a specific property before you ever make an offer.

Two local rules matter here. In the City of Myrtle Beach, a rule covers the commercial zones between Kings Highway and the ocean. There, a unit in a short-term rental building with more than two units cannot be leased for 90 days or more. The exit from nightly rental to a yearly lease is not available there. A unit that held a long-term rental license when the rule was adopted can keep renting long-term while that license stays active. In North Myrtle Beach, a short-term rental needs a city business license, renewed every year. The city does not require a rental permit, an inspection or a local agent.

The most common failure we watch is self-managing from another state and hiring the cheapest cleaner available. At best a bad cleaner costs you reviews. We have seen theft and real damage. Cleaning is trusted, skilled work: check references and pay for reliability, or hire a manager who does.

The rentals that stay booked pick one guest and build for that guest: golf groups, families with young children, traveling workers, or house hunters visiting before a move. The theme shows in the furniture, the photos and the listing text, and the calendar fills because that group has few better options.

The workaround

Mid-term rentals: the 90-day strategy where nightly rentals are banned

If a property you love sits in a zone where nightly rentals are banned, you are not necessarily out of options. Because South Carolina only counts a stay under 90 days as short-term, renting to mid-term tenants on 90-day-plus leases, traveling nurses, remote workers, and October-to-March snowbirds, stays outside the short-term-rental rules and the accommodations tax. It is a common way to cash-flow a property in a zone where an Airbnb is not allowed. Run any address through our investment analyzer to compare the long-term and mid-term numbers.

Financing

Financing a short-term rental (and a condotel)

A lot of the best oceanfront STR candidates are condotels or non-warrantable condos that ordinary lenders will not touch, including buildings in active litigation. How these loans work, and what they cost, is covered in our condotel financing guide; whether the address may legally run as a short-term rental at all is covered in STR rules by city. Our lending partner, BrickWood Mortgage (NMLS #189497), works with us daily, so we can walk you through the paths that work for these properties. Those include DSCR loans that qualify the property on its rental income instead of your tax returns, and non-warrantable or portfolio financing for the buildings conventional loans decline.

How we check it

We build the STR numbers before you offer

For any property you are serious about, we run a full analysis: projected short-term revenue, and average daily rate and occupancy by the month. From those we calculate net operating income, cap rate, cash-on-cash return, and expected appreciation. We also check the zoning and HOA rules that decide whether you can run an STR at all. It is the same building study we run on every deal.

Occupancy and revenue figures are estimates for screening and education, based on Grand Strand market data, not a guarantee of income. Zoning and short-term-rental rules change; confirm the current rules for a specific property before you buy.

Common Questions

Frequently asked questions