North Myrtle Beach's short-term rental market runs on two different sets of rules right now. One set is settled: licensing and tax requirements apply. The other set, the part that actually determines your risk as an owner, remains unresolved, and a recent ruling involving another South Carolina coastal city has raised a legal question for North Myrtle Beach.
If you're comparing North Myrtle Beach to other Grand Strand towns as a place to buy an income property, that gap between settled and unsettled is worth more attention than the median price.
What's actually locked in
Start with what you can rely on today. Short-term rentals are subject to licensing and tax requirements. Beyond that baseline, the city's own page on short-term rentals states there is currently no special zoning or permit process required.
That last point matters more than it sounds like it should, because it's where North Myrtle Beach and the city just south of it went in opposite directions. Myrtle Beach handled its short-term rental question through zoning. The City of Myrtle Beach says traditional residential districts don't allow visitor accommodations at all, with one exception carved into the zoning code itself, the RMV district, built specifically to permit them. In December 2024, Myrtle Beach went further and passed a zoning overlay covering 114 city blocks between Kings Highway and the ocean, banning the conversion of short-term rental buildings into long-term ones in that zone. The vote was unanimous. It took effect immediately.
North Myrtle Beach chose a harder path: instead of drawing a map, it set out to regulate behavior, requiring a live, reachable human being attached to every rental. Eight years later, that ordinance still doesn't exist.
An eight-year loop
The timeline is worth laying out plainly, because the pattern is the story:
- July 2018: according to the city's short-term-rental page, council considered a four-month moratorium on renting out units with eight or more sleeping areas as short-term rentals. It failed.
- August 2020: a council workshop discussed a possible ordinance. Not adopted.
- November 2024: WMBF News reported that the conversation restarted, city staff presented a draft requiring an annual permit and a designated local contact, and roughly 1,700 of the city's 5,400 known short-term rentals had no local responsible party on file.
- January 2025: another workshop, with acting city manager Ryan Fabbri saying he'd like to see the ordinance pass by early summer.
- May 2025: no ordinance was introduced. The city's own statement said council "has not yet reached a decision on an ordinance regarding short-term rentals."
- Summer and fall 2025: the city held two public information sessions, one for residents in June, one for STR owners and operators in September, still gathering input rather than voting.
Early summer 2025 came and went. So did the rest of the year.
What the draft actually asks for
The city's January 2025 agenda packet describes a draft centered on a Responsible Local Agent, or RLA, someone who can be reached around the clock and physically reach the property within one hour if something goes wrong. An owner can serve as their own RLA if their primary residence sits within 30 miles of the city. If not, the RLA has to be a South Carolina-licensed real estate brokerage or a licensed property manager. Violations would fall into major administrative, major operational, and minor categories, with fines escalating up to $2,000 by a third offense for the most serious violations.
As WMBF News reported, Fabbri said at a 2024 workshop:
"It's a privilege to do business, to use your house as a rental property, but you've got to do it the right way, otherwise that luxury is taken away from you."
Elliott Beach Rentals, a property management company that manages hundreds of rentals in the city, presented its own version of the ordinance to council. Mayor Marilyn Hatley said the city wouldn't simply adopt that draft as written.
Revenue and community impacts
Tourism revenue is one part of the context. One estimate cited in local reporting found that converting just 1,000 short-term units to long-term use in neighboring Myrtle Beach would cost that city roughly $7.6 million in lost public revenue, with about $2.5 million of that coming directly from accommodations taxes, food and beverage taxes, and business license fees. North Myrtle Beach also relies on the same tourism economy. The city taxes rentals and licenses them, while noise complaints, parking disputes, and calls to the police department affect residents and city staff.
As MyrtleBeachSC.com reported, on the night of June 26, 2026, officers responded to numerous 911 calls reporting a fight involving several hundred people and fireworks at 14th Avenue South and Ocean Boulevard in Crescent Beach. Every available city officer responded. No shots were fired and no arrests were made, but a photo of an officer readying a firearm as a precaution spread across social media over the weekend, alarming people who had no context for what they were looking at.
Mayor J.O. Baldwin III, the city's first new mayor since 2001, was sworn in that December. He had campaigned on public safety and had flagged short-term rentals with large gatherings as a concern before he took office. The incident took place during his first summer in office.
A related legal question
This week, that unresolved timeline picked up a new complication that has nothing to do with North Myrtle Beach directly. City council received a closed-session legal briefing on a lawsuit out of Charleston County, Park Lane Partners LLC and Elizabeth Spratt Cooper v. City of Folly Beach. According to MyrtleBeachSC.com, a circuit judge there ruled that Folly Beach's cap on short-term rental permits and its revenue-based fee on rental operators were adopted illegally under South Carolina law. Folly Beach's council has voted to appeal.
North Myrtle Beach isn't a party to that case. But a city that has spent eight years trying to write an enforceable STR ordinance just got briefed, in a closed session, on a ruling that struck down core mechanisms, a cap and a fee structure, in a similar coastal city's version of the same rule. The city hasn't explained publicly why council needed that briefing now, which leaves residents and owners alike to reasonably ask whether it changes what North Myrtle Beach can legally do once it does write its own ordinance.
What this means if you're buying to rent
None of this means North Myrtle Beach is a bad place to buy an investment property. It means the two halves of the equation carry different levels of certainty. The basic licensing and tax requirements are stable and knowable today. The operational risk—whether you'll need a paid local agent on retainer, what a violation will actually cost you, and whether the rules that exist next year look like the draft that's circulated since 2024—remains open, and now has a live legal question hanging over it from another South Carolina beach town.
If a rental cash flow projection matters to your purchase decision here, that uncertainty belongs in the model, not as an afterthought after closing. Confirm current licensing requirements directly with the city, ask whether the specific unit or building carries any HOA restrictions layered on top of whatever the city eventually settles on, and treat the next council vote as a live variable rather than a formality.
If you're weighing North Myrtle Beach against a nearby market where this question is already answered, or you just want a clear read on what today's rules mean for a specific address, Robin Shomaker can walk through it with you property by property. That's the kind of groundwork worth doing before you fall for a view. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
