Living in Myrtle Beach got more expensive over the last decade. Here’s how much
Myrtle Beach is getting more expensive.
As one of the fastest-growing areas in the country, cost of living in Myrtle Beach shot up 13.5% in the 2010s, a new report from the company Filterbuy shows. The increase is in line with other larger metros like the Raleigh-Durham area and Salt Lake City, which both saw a 13.9% increase in that decade, the report shows.
The Myrtle Beach area, which also includes Conway and North Myrtle Beach, is ranked 62nd among mid-size metros studied in the report. That puts it on par with Trenton-Princeton in New Jersey and Davenport-Moline-Rock Island in Illinois.
The overall cost of living in Myrtle Beach is far below the national average, which could contribute to the migration to the area from more expensive regions like the Northeast. But minimum wage in Horry County has stayed stagnant at $7.25 per hour since 2010, leaving people working in the hospitality and tourism sectors with a disparity between income and living costs.
Housing costs are 14.5% below the national average, the report says, but the pandemic and other factors have caused rent and home building costs to jump in the last few years. Some renters in the area saw as much as a 20% increase last summer when resigning their leases.
The cost of utilities in the Myrtle Beach area falls 3.7% above the national average, the only measure in the report where the area was more expensive than the national metric.
The report uses figures from the December 2021 U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities Dataset, the Consumer Price Index and the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.
This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 11:51 AM.
