Myrtle Beach ~ most expensive S.C. city for renters

Myrtle Beach is still the most expensive city in South Carolina for renters - a ranking the Grand Strand reached in 2005, a report released Tuesday says.

Renters must make $13.69 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment at the Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach metropolitan area’s fair market rent of $712 in 2006 - up from $684 last year, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

• That’s higher than the $690 fair market rent for a two-bedroom in Charleston and $707 monthly rent in Charlotte.

• Yet wages in Myrtle Beach are much lower. The mean renter wage is $8.94, while it’s $9.89 in Columbia, $10.25 in Charlotte and $10.57 in Charleston.

“The bottom line is that this problem still exists. It’s been a year and the report still shows [the same ranking]. The problem needs to be addressed by the county and local governments,” said Tom Maeser, market analyst and president of the Fortune Academy of Real Estate.

• On the Grand Strand, a host of apartment conversions took two complexes off the rental market, creating higher demand for apartments and raising rental rates.

But even a slower housing market won’t lower rates, experts say, mostly because owners will be passing along the increases they’re seeing from their insurance premiums onto renters.

“As we keep increasing the price to the renter because of insurance and the cost of building, we’re causing the marketplace to be out of proportion because our incomes are not going up in direct relationship to what our rents are going up,” Maeser said.

Source: Jenny Burns, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, SC