Is North Myrtle Beach really getting bigger — and busier? It may not be your imagination

Yes, North Myrtle Beach is getting bigger and busier. It’s not your imagination.

The current estimated population of the city is 20,500, according to city spokesperson Ryan Fabbri. However, city senior planner and urban designer Suzanne Pritchard puts the number at almost 19,000.

Either way, the city has seen a more than 5% increase in population since 2020, when the U.S. Census put the city’s population at 18,790.

The U.S. Census estimated the population of North Myrtle Beach in July 2022 to be 19,836.

Pritchard said she has never seen this much growth happen in North Myrtle Beach. To deal with anticipated growth, 14 new developments are being built, with nine north of the Intracoastal Waterway and four to the south, Pritchard said.

Combining these developments brings the number of new homes to 6,200.

North Myrtle Beach Mayor Marilyn Hatley said growth in the city is “inevitable.” She said that the city is becoming popular because it’s safe and affordable.

Why the sudden influx?

Pritchard attributes retirement, nostalgia and lower cost of land to North Myrtle Beach’s fast growth.

“They may have vacationed here when they were growing up, so they always just wanted to retire here,” she said.

Despite the quickening growth in the area, Pritchard said she thinks the city can “meet the challenge.”

“It can be scary when you look at the pace of growth, but I think we can still do it well,” Pritchard said, “and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.”

North Myrtle Beach city leaders are aware of how fast the city is growing, as evidenced by last week’s approval of a $12 million new fire station and emergency operations center near most of the new developments. The money was part of the city’s 2024 budget.

Pritchard said that despite development, there are still green spaces and conservation areas to balance out the building.

Hatley said that when the city plans new developments, they make sure the developments are sustainable and are in line with the existing population density, so that they don’t overcrowd North Myrtle Beach.

Real estate agents see retirees and investors coming to city

Real estate agents live in the weeds of vast population growth, spending their days selling homes to future North Myrtle Beach and South Carolina residents and witnessing cities expand in real time.

People 65 years old and older, who tend to be retirees, are still a very common demographic for new residents — making up 37.6% of North Myrtle Beach residents, according to the U.S. Census.

But Thomas Harrison, general manager of Jeff Cook Real Estates, said he also sees investors piling into the city to buy property they will later rent out short-term. He says the two demographics are about half and half.

Real estate agent Anna Marie Kozel from Coldwell Banker said that so many people — especially from the Northeastern region of the U.S. — tend to retire in North Myrtle Beach because it’s more cost-effective.

The median value of homes in North Myrtle Beach is $293,500, 42.51% lower than the median value of homes in the northeast state of Massachusetts, which is $510,500. Lower taxes, lower cost of living and lower home prices all pull in people from the cold of the North, retirees and remote workers from COVID-19 included.

“If I’m going to work at home, why live up there in the Northeast where it’s so expensive?” Kozel said, “I can do that in the south.”

The pandemic of COVID-19 set the housing market “on fire,” Harrison said.

The value of money decreased in 2020 due to dropping interest rates and money being “flooded” into the economy. With that, the value of homes increased by 20%, rather than the usual 7% to 10%.

“Because money was cheap, a lot of people were able to afford homes, and people were taking the equity and they’re able to now go and get something else or they were able to move here or there or wherever they wanted to go,” he said. “And the competition really was what caused all these home prices to go crazy.”

Eventually, the market calmed down, and as of 2023, homes being sold has slowed slightly. But Harrison said it was due to a lack of inventory from when the market boomed. Harrison still sees many people relocating to North Myrtle Beach though.

“COVID changed a lot of how people think about where they want to live,” Harrison said.

Kozel agrees with Pritchard and Harrison in that she has never seen this much growth since 2005, when housing prices were low right before the 2007-08 economic recession.

While COVID-19 caused a boom in the housing market and shifted how people view work, Harrison said the number of people he sees who move to North Myrtle Beach in order to work remotely from the beach isn’t as large as others make it out to be.

“We see them here,” Harrison said, “and they’re the people who have that mobility to move to places where they want to be.”

But, Harrison is happy to see the thousands of new developments so that the buyers he meets can actually have inventory to look through as population of North Myrtle Beach continues to grow.

“Until there’s more inventory, I don’t personally see it slowing down drastically until there’s more inventory and more choices for buyers and homes are sitting on the market longer, where they have to drop their prices to be competitive and to get people to buy their properties,” Harrison said, “That’s the biggest dynamic.”