Myrtle Beach rent is rising faster than top-growing US cities. It could be a burden.
While the rest of the nation’s housing “pandemic pricing” has vanished, rent in Myrtle Beach continues to rise at alarming rates each month, one report found.
Myrtle Beach average rent increased 4.4% in the last month alone, according to a monthly report from the firm Apartment List, which analyzes rental markets across the nation. That’s almost double the increase of the national average in the last month, Apartment List found.
In pre-pandemic rental markets, rapidly growing cities saw growth in the 1-2% range, meaning Myrtle Beach’s 4.4% jump indicates massive growth.
Since the rental market was still reeling from the initial shock of the pandemic this time last year, Myrtle Beach rent has jumped nearly 15%. The median price of a one-bedroom apartment now lands at $799 per month while a two-bedroom costs around $1,015, Apartment List found.
Of the South Carolina cities studied, Myrtle Beach leads the pack with the highest year-over-year rent increase, tied with Mount Pleasant at 14.7%.
Nationally, rent prices have returned to where analysts predicted if the pandemic had never happened. But with rent still ballooning in Myrtle Beach, that could be cause for concern to renters, according to Rob Warnock, a senior research associate at Apartment List.
“Not only are prices coming up again, but they’re coming up so quickly that the actual prices across the nation have eclipsed what we think prices would have been if they had just followed that typical trajectory,” Warnock said.
Myrtle Beach is in line with other relatively affordable mid-size markets included in the report, like Reno, NV, and Glendale, AZ, which both saw rent increases of 15% or more since last year.
Rising rent in Myrtle Beach may be aligned with these cities, but the service-heavy workforce in Horry County comes with its own challenges. Oftentimes, hourly wages earned by hospitality workers aren’t enough to cover housing prices and a disproportionate percentage end up paying more than 30% of their monthly income on rent.
For many, that burden got even worse under an ever-increasing rent price in the area as people with higher income looked for affordable places to live.
“[There’s] added migration by higher earners that are now looking across the country for places where they can take their dollar further,” Warnock said. “That’s kind of a new thing this year that I think is putting pressure on these housing markets.”
The dollar does go further in Myrtle Beach, when compared to more expensive urban centers. The cost of living in Myrtle Beach falls lower than the national average, but doesn’t necessarily match the average wages of Horry County workers.
The affordable housing crunch in Horry County has many facets, and experts agree that most meaningful solutions are going to happen in the long term. The city of Myrtle Beach last winter approved plans for a workforce housing project meant to house hospitality and government workers, but those units won’t be move-in ready for at least another year.
It’s natural for the rental market to ebb and flow, but Warnock said the rapid growth in Myrtle Beach could buck the trend going forward. It’s possible the decrease in rent prices expected each winter won’t be enough to compensate for the increase seen during the pandemic, Warnock said.
This story was originally published June 1, 2021 at 12:55 PM.
