At 10:13 p.m. on June 26, 2026, North Myrtle Beach police got a wave of 911 calls reporting a fight involving several hundred people near 14th Avenue South and Ocean Boulevard, with fireworks going off in the middle of it. Every available city officer responded, and Horry County police backed them up. By the time it was over, no one had been arrested and no shots had been fired, even though a photo of an officer holding what looked like a shotgun spread across social media before the department could explain it was a less-lethal launcher.
The gun wasn't the story. The crowd was. That block sits in Crescent Beach, the same neighborhood where North Myrtle Beach's new mayor, J.O. Baldwin III, lives. Baldwin took office last December as the city's first new mayor since 2001, after campaigning on public safety and flagging short-term rentals with oversized gatherings as a concern before he was even sworn in. Two years of city council workshops on how to hold rental owners accountable were still sitting unresolved when the crowd showed up a few blocks from his house.
If you're weighing a rental purchase in North Myrtle Beach right now, that gap between what the city has proposed and what it has actually passed is worth more of your attention than the zoning map.
Two rules, and only one of them exists
North Myrtle Beach has been trying to pass a Responsible Local Agent ordinance since a draft first circulated in January 2024. The idea is straightforward: every short-term rental would need a designated local contact, available by phone around the clock and able to reach the property within an hour. Owners living within 30 miles could serve as their own agent. Everyone else would need to hire a licensed property manager or brokerage. The draft also called for an annual permit with a physical inspection, a public registry of licensed rentals, and a "good neighbor" brochure explaining local rules to guests.
City officials have cited the scale of the problem more than once: roughly 5,400 registered short-term rentals in North Myrtle Beach, with about 1,700 of them lacking any designated local responsible party. That means well over a thousand rentals where, if something goes wrong at midnight, there's no guaranteed number for police to call before they're standing on the porch trying to figure out who's in charge.
Elliott Beach Rentals, which manages hundreds of rental properties in the city, helped draft an early version of the ordinance, and Mayor Baldwin's predecessor made clear the city intended to write its own version rather than simply adopt what a rental company proposed. The plan stalled anyway, slowed by pushback from out-of-town owners who saw it as costly and weighted toward the interests of large local management companies. As of this writing, the draft ordinance is still a draft.
What the city did pass, in February 2026, was something narrower. Council unanimously approved a nuisance party ordinance that gives police direct authority to disperse gatherings that get out of hand, remove non-residents who present a safety risk, and clear obstructions blocking streets or emergency access. Police Chief Dana Crowell was blunt about who gets fined: if the owner throws the party, the city goes after the owner; if a tenant throws it, the city goes after the tenant. The ordinance passed unanimously, and it applies year-round even though summer is when it gets used.
So the city now has a tool for punishing bad nights after they happen, but not the registration and accountability layer that was supposed to prevent them.
Why "no special zoning" isn't the perk it sounds like
Myrtle Beach, just south, took the opposite approach. In December 2024 the city adopted a Short-Term Rental Conversion Overlay Zone covering 114 blocks east of Kings Highway, banning any building of more than two units from converting out of short-term rental use once it's been operating that way. It's a strict, mapped rule, and it exists specifically to keep the tourist-facing inventory tourist-facing.
North Myrtle Beach has nothing comparable. The city's own guidance states there is no special zoning or permit process required for short-term rentals beyond standard business licensing. On the surface, that reads as the more rental-friendly market: no overlay district to check, no conversion ban to navigate.
But that permissiveness is exactly why the accountability gap matters more here, not less. In Myrtle Beach, the STR question is answered by a map. In North Myrtle Beach, it's answered by a business license and a set of enforcement ordinances that only activate after a complaint. Today, an owner in North Myrtle Beach needs:
- A city business license before renting, with annual renewal
- Registration to collect and remit accommodations tax to the city, county, and state
- Compliance with existing noise, parking, and trash ordinances
- No permit, no inspection, and no requirement to name a local contact, because that piece is still stuck in draft
That last gap is the one that should give a buyer pause. It's not that the rules are loose. It's that the rule meant to close the loop between "who owns this" and "who answers when it goes wrong" hasn't cleared council in over two years, while the city's appetite for fining owners under the nuisance ordinance is already live.
The HOA doesn't wait for city hall
Even where city rules stay quiet, a homeowners association can be far louder. South Carolina's Horizontal Property Act requires any leasing restrictions, including caps on rental frequency or minimum lease terms, to be spelled out in the recorded master deed. That means the real ceiling on your rental plan often isn't a city ordinance at all. It's whatever the specific sub-association governing your building decided years ago.
Barefoot Resort & Golf is a useful example because it isn't one HOA, it's twenty-six neighborhoods worth of them, spread across condos, townhomes, and single-family sections built around four championship golf courses designed by Pete Dye, Tom Fazio, Davis Love III, and Greg Norman, plus a private oceanfront beach cabana on South Ocean Boulevard. Rental policy inside Barefoot varies by section. Some sub-communities allow short-term rentals outright. Others restrict them. A unit two streets apart from another can have a completely different answer to the question you're actually asking, which is whether you can list it on a rental platform at all.
That variability is a feature for buyers who want it, not a flaw. A golf or waterway property tends to draw longer-stay guests, golf groups, and repeat visitors rather than the dense, fast-turnover crowd that clusters around the Ocean Boulevard corridor, which is also where enforcement attention concentrates. Tilghman Beach & Golf Resort follows a similar pattern, trading direct oceanfront exposure for a lazy river and pool deck that pulls a calmer guest mix.
| Oceanfront tower on Ocean Blvd | Golf/waterway community (e.g. Barefoot) | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical guest | Short stays, beach-focused, higher turnover | Golf groups, longer stays, families |
| Rental rule source | City license + building HOA | Sub-community HOA, varies by section |
| Enforcement exposure | Direct, concentrated where nuisance calls cluster | Lower density, fewer complaint triggers |
| Common local HOA fee range | Roughly $500 to $900+ per month for full-amenity oceanfront towers | Roughly $320 to $450 per month for standard, non-oceanfront condos and townhomes |
Those fee ranges reflect early 2026 figures from local HOA guides and move with insurance and reserve requirements every year, so treat them as a starting point for your own math, not a fixed number to plan around.
What the market looks like while this sits unresolved
North Myrtle Beach's housing market has softened enough this year to give buyers more room to ask these questions before writing an offer instead of after. The median sale price over the three months ending July 2026 was $412,000, down close to 5 percent from the same period a year earlier, with homes typically taking around 100 days to sell. That's a slower market than the frantic pace of a few years back, and it means sellers are generally more willing to leave a due diligence period open long enough for you to actually read the HOA's rental policy and rules before you're locked in.
It's also worth remembering that South Carolina assesses owner-occupied primary residences at 4 percent of value for property tax purposes, while second homes and investment properties are assessed at 6 percent. That gap belongs in your holding-cost math from the start, alongside HOA dues and whatever accommodations tax structure applies once you're operating as a rental.
Three documents to pull before you write an offer
- The specific HOA or sub-association's rental policy and master deed leasing restrictions, not just the community's general marketing page
- The city's current business license and accommodations tax requirements for the exact address, since rules can shift between sections of the same larger resort
- Recent HOA meeting minutes, looking for any discussion of rental restrictions tightening, special assessments, or insurance changes tied to short-term use
None of this requires a lawyer to gather. It requires someone who knows which office to call and which HOA management company handles which section, because in a place like Barefoot Resort, that answer changes block by block.
A couple of quick answers
Does a North Myrtle Beach HOA have to follow the city's rental rules? No. An HOA can be more restrictive than the city allows, and its rules control regardless of what the city permits. Always check the recorded master deed, not just the city's licensing page.
If the Responsible Local Agent ordinance eventually passes, what changes for an owner who already has a management company? Likely very little, since most licensed property managers already meet the residency and licensing requirements the draft describes. The bigger adjustment falls on owners who currently self-manage from out of state without a local contact in place.
Is North Myrtle Beach actually less regulated than Myrtle Beach? On paper, yes, since there's no equivalent to Myrtle Beach's STRC overlay zone. In practice, that gap is precisely why the city has leaned on reactive tools like the nuisance party ordinance instead of the codified rental standard it has been drafting since 2024.
If you're comparing a North Myrtle Beach rental purchase against options elsewhere on the Grand Strand, or trying to figure out which HOA in a resort like Barefoot actually fits your rental plans, Kirk Stalvey has spent his career working these exact streets and can walk the documents with you before you're under contract, not after. Book an appointment and bring your questions.
