The Real Cost of Owning in Myrtle Beach

The Oceanfront HPR Market: A Condo-Insurance Crisis With Real Numbers

South Carolina doesn't use the word "condominium" in its own statute -- it uses Horizontal Property Regime, or HPR, a term dating to the state's 1960s-era Horizontal Property Act. An HPR is defined by its ownership structure (a master deed, bylaws, and rules and regulations govern it), not by architecture, so everything from a 20-story oceanfront tower to a detached cottage can legally be an HPR. In Myrtle Beach, that structure covers the buildings that actually define the skyline: per a July 2026-dated investment report from abesafa.com, which describes analyzing 30-plus major oceanfront buildings including Kingston Plantation, North Beach Plantation, and Sea Watch, oceanfront condos were averaging roughly $340 per square foot as of July 2026.

The cost story layered on top of that price is current, specific, and worth leading with. The same report puts HOA/regime fees up 15-30% over the past 24 months, with monthly fees now ranging from under $400 to over $1,200-plus depending on building size and amenities. Insurance specifically has "skyrocketed": wind/hail premiums are up 40-80%; a building's master insurance policy that cost $300,000-$400,000 a few years ago now runs $600,000-$700,000 or more annually; and individual unit-owner policies cost 30-50% more than three years prior. The same source describes the buyer pool shifting away from cash-flow-driven short-term-rental investors -- squeezed by higher rates and tightening building STR policies -- toward owner-occupants, retirees, and longer-hold investors.

What we could not verify, and won't fabricate: no source found this session broke out an exact percentage split between HPR/condo inventory and single-family inventory across the whole city, and no source gave a single-sourced days-on-market or price-per-square-foot figure specific to single-family homes the way the $340/sq ft figure above is specific to oceanfront condos. Nor did any source name a specific building's own HOA rental restrictions or in-house-rental-program requirements, even though South Carolina HPR law generally lets an association's master deed and bylaws control what an individual owner may do with a unit. Before buying any Myrtle Beach oceanfront unit, request that specific building's current regime fee schedule, its master insurance policy and premium history, and its rules on short-term rental use directly from the HOA -- not from a market-wide average.

Purchase Price: Real Sources, Real Disagreement, No Single Number

Myrtle Beach's home-price data doesn't converge on one figure, and three real, dated sources disagree by tens of thousands of dollars. Zillow's home value index (ZHVI) puts Myrtle Beach's typical home value at $323,460 as of its most recent monthly read, down 0.5% year over year -- essentially flat to softening, not a hot seller's market. Zillow's own supplementary figures tell a different story again: a median sale price of $274,357 (May 31, 2026), a median list price of $267,633 (June 30, 2026), a median 55 days to pending (June 30, 2026), and 3,026 active listings (June 30, 2026). A third source, housingdata.report, puts the median home price at $315,047 as of February 2026, down 2.9% year over year (from roughly $324,500 in February 2025), describing prices as having "dropped for the 11th straight month" -- though the pace of decline had slowed and roughly flattened between December 2025 and February 2026.

Line those up and the gap runs roughly $50,000-$60,000 depending on exactly which metric and date you use: $323,460 (Zillow's typical-value index) versus $274,357 (Zillow's own median sale price) versus $315,047 (housingdata.report's median). Those are three different, non-interchangeable measurements -- a broad value index across the entire housing stock, a median of actual closed sales, and a separate aggregator's own median -- and none of them should be read as contradicting the others so much as measuring different things, all trending flat-to-down rather than the sharp appreciation this market saw earlier in the decade.

housingdata.report also breaks prices out by ZIP code, and the spread is real and worth knowing before assuming a single citywide number applies to a specific neighborhood: 29577 (downtown/central Myrtle Beach) shows a $275,146 median home price and $1,675 median monthly rent; 29572 (Grande Dunes and the northern area) shows $312,710 and $1,459 rent; 29588 (the southern Socastee area) shows $318,604 and $1,722 rent; and 29579 (Carolina Forest, the newer inland master-planned community) shows the highest of the four at $353,726 and $1,766 rent.

New construction tells a slowdown story that cuts against the boomtown narrative many buyers assume applies here. Horry County issued 17,552 building permits in fiscal year 2023-24, valued at $1.54 billion -- only a 1% increase in permit count year over year, the lowest growth rate since 2019-20's 3% rise, and a 6% decline in total construction value from 2022-23's $1.63 billion. The multi-year trend (13,396 permits around $800M in 2019-20, rising to 17,552 permits in 2023-24) shows real growth off a pandemic-era surge, but local builders quoted in that same reporting describe conditions as "stable but unspectacular," with some projects "canceled or delayed due to interest rates."

Property Taxes: South Carolina's 4%/6% Mechanic, and the Millage Gap We Couldn't Close

South Carolina doesn't tax a property off its fair market value directly. The formula, per Horry County's own published tax FAQ, is Tax = Fair Market Value x Assessment Ratio x Millage -- and the assessment ratio is where Myrtle Beach ownership costs diverge sharply depending on how a property is used. An owner-occupied legal residence is assessed at 4% of fair market value; every other class of real property -- second homes, straight rental property, commercial property, vacant land -- is assessed at 6%. Run the math before any millage rate even applies: an identical $300,000 property assessed at 6% instead of 4% carries a 50% larger taxable base, purely from its classification. That distinction matters more here than in most markets on this site, given how much of Myrtle Beach's housing stock -- especially its oceanfront HPR towers -- is second-home or investment property rather than a primary residence.

On the millage rate itself, the most current breakdown independently found this session is a tax-year-2023 compilation (via Ownwell) covering Horry County's unincorporated baseline: County 56.2 mills, School 128.1 mills, Fire 23.2 mills, and Waste Management 8.7 mills, for 216.2 total mills. That figure is a real, disclosed gap, not a final answer: it appears to represent the unincorporated-county rate, and the City of Myrtle Beach almost certainly layers its own municipal operating millage on top for properties inside city limits. This research could not independently confirm the current city-specific millage rate -- confirm it directly with the Horry County Auditor or the City of Myrtle Beach Finance Department before budgeting a property-tax figure from the 216.2 number alone.

South Carolina also offers a $50,000 homestead exemption under SC Code § 12-37-250 for qualifying owners who are 65 or older, totally and permanently disabled, or legally blind, applied on top of the 4% owner-occupied assessment ratio. This session confirmed the exemption's existence and dollar amount from a specific, dated secondary source but could not independently fetch Horry County's own specific filing-deadline mechanics -- confirm the exact current-year figure and deadline directly with the Horry County Assessor before relying on it.

On sales tax: Horry County's baseline combined rate is 8% (6% state plus a 2% county special-district surtax), but the City of Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach both add their own additional 1% municipal levy, bringing the in-city combined sales tax rate to 9% -- a real, city-specific distinction from the county-wide baseline that generic sales-tax lookups tend to miss. All of this sits against a median household income of $60,394 (southcarolina-demographics.com, 2024 estimate) -- below both the South Carolina state median and the national median, a real affordability backdrop for a resident workforce concentrated in the area's lower-wage, seasonal tourism and hospitality sector even as visitors and second-home buyers drive the pricing above.

Adding It Up: A Range, Not a Single Number, With Named Gaps

There's no single verified "true cost of ownership" figure for Myrtle Beach, and several of the biggest inputs are either contested between real sources or simply missing from anything found this session. Purchase price runs roughly $274,000-$323,000 for a typical home depending on source and exact metric (Zillow's $274,357 median sale price and $323,460 ZHVI as the two most current anchors), against a third, $315,047 figure from housingdata.report -- with oceanfront HPR condos priced separately, and higher, at roughly $340 per square foot. Property tax depends heavily on whether a specific parcel qualifies for the 4% owner-occupied assessment ratio or defaults to 6%, and the county-wide 216.2-mill compilation used here is a disclosed stand-in for a still-unconfirmed City of Myrtle Beach municipal rate. And the single biggest current risk item is HPR-specific: 40-80% wind/hail premium increases and building master policies that have roughly doubled in a few years, without any single named building's own current quote to cite.

What we could not find, stated plainly rather than filled with an invented number: an independently quantified HPR/condo-versus-single-family price or inventory split; the exact current-year City of Myrtle Beach municipal millage rate, broken out from Horry County's unincorporated baseline; Horry County's specific homestead-exemption filing deadline; and a named building's own current insurance premium or HOA regime-fee schedule. Before making an offer, get current numbers from the real sources: the Horry County Assessor and Auditor for the parcel's millage, assessed value, and homestead-exemption eligibility; a South Carolina-licensed property-and-casualty insurance agent for a bound quote tied to the exact address or building; the HOA or regime association for its current fee schedule, master insurance policy, and reserve funding if the property is an HPR unit; and a local Coastal Carolinas buyer's agent for closed comparables. Nothing on this page is legal, tax, insurance, or financial advice.