Myrtle Beach Oceanfront Condos

What the HOA fee
actually costs you.

Every closed sale the MLS recorded at 49 Myrtle Beach oceanfront resorts, read the way an owner reads it — not one listing at a time.

Free, and none of it is gated. Nobody has assembled this before, in this market or any other.

01 What you are looking at

This does not exist anywhere
in the world.

Not because the data is secret. Because nobody has assembled it.

Search a condo online and you see one unit. Rental income shows only while it is listed. Once it sells, the number disappears — and closed sales are where the honest numbers are. 18,854 of them are here.

Searching one listing at a time

  • One unit per search
  • Rental income only on active listings
  • The HOA fee, with no idea what it covers
  • No comparison between buildings
  • No way to tell a fair fee from a heavy one
  • Asking price only — never what it sold for

What this study holds

  • 194 building-and-unit-type combinations, side by side
  • Income from 2,000 owner reports on closed sales
  • What each HOA fee includes, read off the listing disclosures
  • Every building measured against every other
  • The HOA fee as a share of the rent it eats
  • What buyers actually paid, against what sellers first asked

A resort is not one number.

194 combinations, not 49 resorts. A one-bedroom and a three-bedroom in the same tower are different investments. Averaging them hides the thing you are buying.

What follows, in order.

Two ideas. Then the ranking they produce. Then the tables underneath it. Then where every figure came from.

02 The first idea

An HOA fee only means something
next to what the unit earns.

An $800 HOA fee is cheap on a unit earning $60,000 and brutal on one earning $20,000.

The math

Step 1 — Annual HOA fee = Monthly HOA fee × 12
Step 2 — HOA burden = Annual HOA fee ÷ highest reported income

$5,112
HOA burden18.9%

Real figures: a Camelot by the Sea efficiency. Type any HOA fee, any income.

How to read it

Against this study's own spread.

25% or lessStrong. The HOA fee is a small slice of the highest reported income. Ranked a Real deal.
25% – 35%Normal for this market. Ranked Middling.
Over 35%Heavy. Ranked Fee eats it — look hard before buying.

Why this matters. Buyers sort by HOA fee, lowest first, and assume cheapest is best. That comparison ignores what the unit earns.

03 The second idea

A price cut is not a bargain.
It is a message about the asset.

The deepest discounts in this market are on the condos people most want to get out of.

The math

Off asking = (Sold price − first asking price) ÷ first asking price.
Negative means it sold below what they asked.

0% to −3%Firm. Sellers are getting close to what they ask.
−3% to −6%Normal negotiating room for this market.
−6% to −10%Soft. Ask why before you celebrate.
Worse than −10%Owners are trying to leave. Find out what they know.

The trap, in one row

Cheap because owners are trying to get out. A price cut on an asset that loses money every month is not a discount.

One more thing. These prices already sold, so the discount is inside them. Off asking is negotiating room — not extra return on top.

04 Where the two ideas meet

Every resort ranked on what
the unit can actually do.

Highest reported income, minus the annual HOA fee, over the price paid. One number holding the rent, the HOA fee and the price together.

Highest reported income is exactly that: the largest gross rental figure anyone has reported for that building and unit type since 2022 — the historical ceiling. Typical is the midpoint of the same reports. The gap between them is the operator, not the building.

The finding.

05 The underlying table

The HOA fee as a share of the
Highest Reported Gross Rental Income.

The annual HOA fee measured against the Highest Reported Gross Rental Income — the largest gross rental figure anyone has reported for that building and unit type, and the ceiling wherever a column is too narrow to say it in full. What the HOA fee costs a unit that is run well. Figures a listing phrased as a projection are excluded; hover any figure to read the words it came from.

Not every number carries the same confidence.

06 The other table

How far below asking units actually sell.

Closed sales from 2022 on. Sorted by discount depth. This is not a ranking of quality. Read it against the burden column.

% Off Asking vs. HOA Burden

One building & unit type Trend

07 The tool itself

Now look up the one you are
actually buying.

Everything above is the market. This is the part where you check a specific building.

Every resort has its own page: what each building charges, what its units report earning, what the HOA fee actually buys, and whether it appreciated for the people who bought when you are buying.

Start here All 49 resorts The directory. Search it, or sort by what the HOA fee takes. Open the directory Side by side Compare every building All 194 building-and-unit-type combinations in one table, plus what the fee includes at each. Open the comparison

Or go straight to one of the buildings this page has been talking about:

The next step

Have this run on the building
you are actually considering.

Everything on this page is the market. If you have a building in mind — or a budget and no building yet — we will run these same numbers against what is listed today and tell you what they say.

We use the numbers on this page to answer you specifically. No list, no drip sequence — a person reads it.

08 Where the numbers come from

Where the numbers come from.

01
MLS closed sales Every recorded sale at 49 oceanfront resorts, 2006 to 2026.
02
Clean and standardise Fees, prices, dates and reported income parsed from each listing.
03
Build cohorts Grouped by building × unit type. Never pooled across unit types.
04
Compare economics Fee against income, sold against asked, each cohort against the market.
05
Mark the limits Thin samples flagged. Where the data cannot support a claim, none is made.
Required MLS notice