MYRTLE BEACH – If your dream is to build a beach house on the sandy shores of the Grand Strand, you may want to consider picking up a few of those $1 billion Power Ball tickets.
Maybe buy a bulldozer too because there are currently no vacant residential lots on the direct beachfront listed for sale in Horry and Georgetown counties, according to the Multiple Listing System (MLS). Sort through the AI fakes and there are zero on Zillow, too.
In 2018-19, the median price to live in an oceanfront home in Horry and Georgetown counties was $1 million, with the highest property selling for $3.5 million, said Will Davis, president and CEO of the Litchfield Company and 2026 president of the Coastal Carolinas Association of Realtors. But in the post-COVID era (2022-present) the median price has more than doubled to $2.1 million, with the highest selling for $6 million.
And those figures are tempered by homes that are being demolished or undergoing extreme makeovers.
“We’re definitely seeing a lot more tear-downs and rebuilds,” Davis said. “People who want to live on the beach and build have no other choice because there are no more residential oceanfront lots.”
The last vacant beachfront residential lot listed for sale along the 50-mile stretch of coastline from the Cherry Grove section of North Myrtle Beach to DeBordieu Colony south of Pawleys Island officially closed on Dec. 3, when less than one acre of divided land in the Dunes Club section of Myrtle Beach sold for $3.3 million.
That same 0.9-acre lot, located at 8800 N. Ocean Blvd., went for nearly half as much ($1.85 million) just four years ago. The sales price for the property has risen 600 percent since it was first developed and sold for $550,000 in 1997 by Myrtle Beach Farms Company.
Those numbers come as no surprise to those familiar with the local oceanfront real estate market, which continues to defy gravity despite a recent slip in overall Grand Strand property prices. It’s a simple matter of depleting supply and unrelenting demand.
“Everything east of (U.S. Highway) 17 has held its value pretty well, but they’re not making any more oceanfront property,” said Century 21 Boling & Associates Realtor Traci Miles, who has specialized in Grand Strand beachfront real estate for over 25 years.
“There’s very limited inventory so you have to take down another house, which can cost another $25,000 just to get to build grade … But the oceanfront is the stage of Myrtle Beach, and there are people willing to spend a lot of money to be on the front row.”
Turning ‘dirt’ into dollars
The 2025 market is a far cry from the turn of the 20th century when the Burroughs & Collins Company (now Burroughs & Chapin Inc. and its modern derivation Myrtle Beach Farms Co.), purchased over 100,000 acres of land on the Grand Strand, with the primary objective of harvesting its timber but with an eye toward the future.
In 1900, the Burroughs family completed the railroad connecting Conway to “New Town,” as it was called at the time. The next year they opened the Seaside Inn, Myrtle Beach’s first beachfront hotel, and the area was on its way to becoming a resort.
But few shared the vision at the time as the oceanfront’s sandy soil was deemed virtually worthless in the agriculture-driven local economy. However, savvy investors could obtain a seaside lot for only $25 – and it was buy one, get one, recalled former B&C Chairman Egerton Burroughs.
“They tried to sell acres of it but no one wanted to buy land that wouldn’t grow crops or anything,” Burroughs said at Chapin Memorial Library’s “Through the Lens of Time” local history lecture series in January. “Who wanted to buy it? Nobody.”
B&C offered incentives to “sell dirt” on the oceanfront, including deals for those who agreed to build guests houses.
“In the early days, if you bought a lot at the beach they would give you the lot beside it, and the lumber,” Burroughs said. “Imagine that, and it was tough trying to sell that.”
B&C adopted a strategy of leasing land and building value by growing a community around it. Surrounding seaside towns followed suit, and investors like the Woodside brothers and big landholders like International Paper also got in on the real-estate game, a driving force in the area’s tourism industry. That’s why much of the Strand’s oceanfront is zoned for short-term rentals, like hotels, condominiums and condotels.
Oceanfront multi-family units have had their heyday, but the availability of inventory has kept the market in check, according to Innovate Realtor Mark Loomis. Beachfront condo prices peaked in the COVID pandemic aftermath but have since cooled, unlike residential beachfront lots and homes. which remain at a premium.
“It’s all supply and demand,” said Loomis, who has specialized in oceanfront property on the Strand for 30 years. “So many people want to live on the oceanfront but there are only so many places available.”
It’s a shore thing
The shortage of available oceanfront residential land is about to change after the Myrtle Beach Planning Commission approved a request on Dec. 8 to subdivide a 1.66-acre lot at 63rd Avenue North and Ocean Boulevard into three separate lots.
That site sold for $3.283 million in 2024, and the old home and guest house were razed. Miles estimates the entire lot will list for about $10 million, or $3.4 million each – more than last year’s total purchase price.
“Land like this doesn’t come on the market very often so it probably won’t last long,” said Miles, who is involved in the deal to sell the site. “These are extra-large lots, 90 feet wide (instead of the standard 75), and they’re in an X flood zone, which means no flood insurance required. It’s a rare opportunity to build on the beachfront.”
Examples of skyrocketing prices also can be found on the South Strand. A Pawleys Island lot of 0.17 acres that has another house situated between it and the beach sold earlier this year for $900,000. Another 0.32-acre, direct-beachfront lot in Pawleys Island sold for $2.050 million in 2023, five months after the same lot went for $1.45 million. A similarly small lot in Garden City sold for $995,000 in 2023.
But pricing on the North Strand is difficult due to the limited availability of undeveloped oceanfront land. No oceanfront residential lots have sold in the North Myrtle Beach section of the Grand Strand since 2021, when a 0.29-acre parcel in Atlantic Beach sold for $625,000. A similar-sized lot sold for $775,000 in Crescent Beach in 2020, and a 1.46-acre lot in Cherry Grove sold for $3 million in 2021. The next previous purchase was in 2015.
Those trending numbers, coupled with rising construction and insurance costs, have priced most residential buyers out of the oceanfront market, Davis said, with the exception of “the top 1 or 2 percent” in wealth.
"People show up at the office all the time asking, ‘How much to live on the oceanfront?’ " Davis said. “I tell them the median price is $2.1 million, then it’s how much is second row? How much is deep water (access)? Can I afford to live in Pawleys Island? Murrells Inlet? Myrtle Beach? In all my time of selling real estate, the oceanfront has always been prime location and it’s always going to be that way.”
Many of these properties have been double-, triple-, and quadruple-flipped over the past decade, and the prices just keep going up. In fact, the Dunes Club lot that recently sold for $3.3 million will soon go back on the market for $3.5 million, Miles said, more signs that the beachfront market is anticipated to continue trending upward.
Golden Mile gold mine
While there are pockets of oceanfront single-family residences scattered throughout the Grand Strand, the majority of the recent real-estate activity centers around Myrtle Beach’s Golden Mile, which in real estate terms refers to a five-mile stretch of beach homes extending roughly from 32nd to 89th Avenues North Ocean Boulevard.
It includes the prestigious Ocean Forest and Dunes neighborhoods and is interrupted by a few high-rise hotels, but it is the hot spot of the oceanfront residential home market, Miles said. Unlike other sections of the Strand that allow short-term rentals, including popular services Airbnb and VRBO that have attracted more investors to the nationwide beachfront market, the city of Myrtle Beach closely enforces zoning codes against the practice.
“There are no (homeowners associations) on the Golden Mile, and no short-term rentals, which is hard to find,” Miles said. “You have all these great oceanfront homes in North Myrtle Beach and Garden City, but there might be a fraternity party next door. There are only 19 short-term rental beach homes left (within the Myrtle Beach city limits) and they are grandfathered in. Every time one sells or gets knocked down, it’s over.”
Two older homes in the neighborhood, 3602 and 3604 N. Ocean Blvd., one under renovation and the other slated for demolition, are towered over by a massive new four-story construction next door at 3600. The property at 3602 sold earlier this year for $2.243 million after going for almost half as much in 2019; 3604 sold for $1.9 million in 2025 after going for $482,500 in 2018, since undergoing multiple flips but no new construction.
There is another option to own a small slice of the seashore by purchasing a beachfront cabana, but with a catch – you can’t live in it. The small beach bungalows, located along Myrtle Beach’s Cabana Shores district (from 53rd to 59th Avenue North), date back to the old Ocean Forest Hotel in the 1930s, and are for day-use only. The half-acre lot listed for sale at 5732 N. Ocean Blvd. offers two 240-square-foot units for $799,000, or about $1,600 per square foot, but you will just need to find a place to sleep.
The lack of residential availability on the oceanfront has pushed beachfront wannabes to condos, second-row housing, and even farther inland for more affordable alternatives. But for those with deep pockets who want to wake up in their dream home to the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean, there is one bit of good news – the Grand Strand is more affordable than most neighboring coastal markets.
“As high as they seem, more people are coming here because the prices are better,” Miles said. "Try buying in the Charleston area or Kiawah Island, you’re talking $15 million. “And in Florida, the Palm Beach area, forget it. Myrtle Beach is still reasonably priced compared to other markets, and the taxes are lower. Your dollar goes a lot farther here.”
But with oceanfront demand surging as more people move to the Grand Strand, newcomers will have to shell out some serious sand dollars to live by the seashore.
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