Inside Myrtle Beach city limits, a short-term rental is any stay under 90 continuous days, it’s classified as a commercial use, and it’s prohibited in every district starting with “R” except one. If your property sits in one of those, you can’t rent it short-term — and there’s no application that changes that.
That’s a harder answer than most owners expect, especially the ones who bought specifically for rental income.
I’m Adam Seguin. My business partner Jeremy Resmer and I run Myrtle Beach Home Buyers, and together we’ve bought more than 400 properties across Horry and Georgetown Counties. Here’s how the rule actually reads and what your options are.
The 90-day line, and the phrase that decides everything
Under the City of Myrtle Beach Code of Ordinances, Appendix A, § 203, a visitor accommodation is any living unit rented, leased, subleased, or otherwise furnished to someone for less than 90 continuous days. The definition also picks up timesharing, fractional ownership, and tenancy-in-common arrangements.
Two things about that are worth pausing on.
First, 90 days is stricter than South Carolina’s state definition of 30. People who researched SC rules generally, rather than Myrtle Beach rules specifically, often get this wrong.
Second — and this is the clause that does all the work — a visitor accommodation is considered a commercial use. Not a residential use with conditions. Commercial. And a commercial use has to be permitted in the district where the property sits.
So the real question was never “can I Airbnb in Myrtle Beach.” It’s “what district is this parcel in.”
The districts where it’s allowed
Short-term rentals are permitted in a short list of districts: RMV (Residential Multifamily Visitor), MU-H (Mixed-Use High Density), C6 (Urban Village), A (Amusement), E (Entertainment), and HC1 and HC2 (Highway Commercial). IR (Interim Redevelopment) allows it by special exception only.
RMV is the only residential district on that list. Every other R district — R-1, R-2, R-3 and the rest — prohibits short-term rental use.
The city publishes a zoning map with the permitted short-term rental zones shaded. If your parcel isn’t inside a shaded area, it isn’t eligible — there’s no interpretation involved.
The city’s Zoning Division will confirm a specific parcel at 843-918-1179, and that call is worth making before you take anyone’s word for it, including a seller’s or an agent’s.
There is no variance path
This is the part owners most want to be wrong about.
The city’s position is direct: if the property isn’t already in a zone that allows short-term rentals, it cannot be converted to or approved for that use. There’s no permit to apply for, no hardship variance, no rezoning path that’s realistically available to a single homeowner.
That’s different from most regulatory problems in this cluster. A condo building’s financing status sometimes has a fix. This generally doesn’t.
The grandfathering myth
Nearly everyone in this situation asks about grandfathering, so here’s the number.
The city’s Planning and Zoning page states that 24 houses citywide in traditional residential zones are grandfathered for short-term rental use. Twenty-four. They’ve been operated that way consistently since before the current zoning took effect.
If your property were one of them, you’d almost certainly know, and the documentation would have come up at purchase. Assume it isn’t.
Worth knowing too: nonconforming uses are generally lost after an extended period of disuse — commonly twelve months. If you own one of the grandfathered houses and it sat idle, confirm with Zoning that the status survived before you rely on it in a listing.
What enforcement actually costs
Violations of the zoning code and the business license ordinance are misdemeanors, punishable by fines up to $500 and/or 30 days, per occurrence, upon conviction.
“Per occurrence” is the phrase to notice. This isn’t a single fine you absorb as a cost of doing business.
Enforcement here is largely complaint-driven, and the complaints come from neighbors — the turnover, the parking, and the trash are what people notice. A property can operate quietly for a season and then draw attention the week someone gets fed up.
Where short-term rental use is allowed, you still need a business license, and the fee is based on gross receipts. Accommodations taxes and hospitality fees apply on top, combining to roughly 10%. Operating without the license is its own violation, separate from the zoning one.
Not sure where your property stands? Call (843) 507-5058 and we’ll pull the zoning before you make any decisions.
The real math: convert to long-term or sell
A worked example, not a specific property. Say a three-bedroom house bought for $340,000 on the expectation of roughly $45,000 a year in gross short-term rental revenue.
Scenario A — Convert to long-term. Market rent might be $2,200 a month, so about $26,400 gross. Take out property tax at the 6% non-owner-occupied ratio, coastal insurance, management, and maintenance, and compare what’s left against a mortgage that was underwritten on the $45,000 figure. For a lot of owners, that’s the whole problem in one line.
Scenario B — Sell. You’re selling a house, not a rental business, so price it as a house. Buyers in an R district can’t operate it short-term either, and the ones shopping for STR income already know that.
The honest read: if long-term rent covers the carry, convert and hold. A Myrtle Beach house is still a Myrtle Beach house, and long-term tenants are less work than turnover. Selling makes sense when the loan was sized to short-term revenue that can’t legally be earned — because that gap doesn’t close on its own.
How we buy rentals that lost their use case
Step 1 — Send us the address. We check the zoning district ourselves.
Step 2 — Tell us what you were told when you bought. If someone represented that it was rentable, that may matter for you separately, and we’ll say so.
Step 3 — We show our math, valuing it as a residential property rather than an income property.
Step 4 — You pick the closing date. We can take it with a tenant in place if you’ve already converted to long-term.
FAQ
Q: Can I Airbnb my house in Myrtle Beach? A: Only if it sits in a district that permits short-term rentals — RMV, MU-H, C6, A, E, HC1, HC2, or IR by special exception. Most residential districts prohibit it.
Q: What counts as a short-term rental in Myrtle Beach? A: Any stay under 90 continuous days. That’s stricter than South Carolina’s 30-day state definition, so city rules control inside city limits.
Q: Why does it matter that it’s called a commercial use? A: Because a commercial use must be permitted in the zoning district. Classifying visitor accommodations as commercial is what excludes them from residential districts, even when the building itself is a house.
Q: Is my house grandfathered for short-term rental use? A: Almost certainly not. The city reports that 24 houses citywide in traditional residential zones hold grandfathered status, based on continuous use predating current zoning.
Q: Can I apply for permission or a variance? A: No. The city’s position is that a property not already in a zone allowing short-term rentals cannot be converted to or approved for that use.
Q: What happens if I rent short-term anyway? A: Zoning and business license violations are misdemeanors carrying fines up to $500 and/or 30 days per occurrence upon conviction, and the penalties apply per violation rather than once.
The bottom line
This is a zoning problem, not a paperwork problem, and that distinction matters because zoning problems don’t get solved by trying harder.
Start by confirming the district with the Zoning Division. If it permits short-term rentals, get the business license and operate properly. If it doesn’t, run the long-term rent number against your actual carrying cost and find out whether the property still works as what it legally is.
Plenty of them do. Some don’t, and those are worth selling before another season of carrying a plan that can’t be executed.
Bought for rental income you can’t legally earn? Get a cash offer or call (843) 507-5058. If converting to long-term nets you more, we’ll tell you that.