Second Home Loans in North Myrtle Beach, SC: The Oceanfront Condo Towers, the City's Rental License and the Wind Line Down US 17

Through August of this year, condos outsold single-family homes in North Myrtle Beach's ZIP code, 598 closings to 529, and the typical condo closed at $310,000, by the Coastal Carolinas Association of REALTORS' September report. Two of those units can be on the same floor of the same tower on Ocean Boulevard, with the same view of the same water. One can be financed as a second home with 10% down, and the other cannot. The difference is on paper, in who controls the unit's calendar.

In North Myrtle Beach, a second home can be financed with a conventional loan and as little as 10% down. That works when the home is for your own use, stays under your control and is not run as a rental business, and that last part is where the City's rental license comes into the file. I'm Jeff Moran, NMLS #483943, a mortgage broker licensed in South Carolina through C2 Financial Corporation, and I have been in the mortgage business since 1996. I work from Bluffton, at the other end of the state's coast.

My North Myrtle Beach page tells the story of the four beaches that became one city in 1968, Hurricane Hazel coming ashore at Ocean Drive, and the shag on Main Street. My Myrtle Beach area page covers Horry County, and the South Carolina page explains attorney closings. This page is about one thing: buying a home here that you will use part of the year and lock up the rest, and financing it as the second home it is.

The second-home rules on a North Myrtle Beach loan

Fannie Mae's Selling Guide, in section B2-1.1-01, lists what makes a home a second home for its purposes. I translate each one as we talk through the home you have in mind.

• You stay in it yourself for some part of the year.
• It is a one-unit home, and a condo unit counts as one unit.
• It is suitable for living in all year, not only in beach season.
• You keep exclusive control over it.
• It is not a rental property and not a timeshare.
• No agreement gives a management firm control over when the home is occupied.

Your application goes through Desktop Underwriter, Fannie Mae's automated underwriting system, and it needs to come back with an Approve/Eligible recommendation, which is the system's finding that the file fits Fannie Mae's rules as submitted. Fannie Mae also applies its own price adjustment to certain second-home loans, so the rate options you see for this home can differ from the ones you would see on the home you live in. Freddie Mac writes its own guide, and some files fit it better, so I look at both.

The same section has a footnote that matters on this coast. If the lender sees rental income from the home, the loan can still be a second-home loan as long as that income is not used to qualify you and every other item above still holds. So a few rented weeks in July do not by themselves turn your second home into an investment property. Counting on that rent to carry the payment does.

The City's rental license, the 72-day line and which loan this is

The City of North Myrtle Beach's short-term rental page says every short-term rental inside the City has to have a business license, renewed each year, and that there is currently no special zoning or permit process beyond that licensing. A short-term rental property has to collect and send in accommodations tax to the city, the county and the state, and it has to follow the City's rules on trash, parking, noise and occupancy. The page also lists the City's attempts at a rental ordinance. A moratorium failed in July 2018, council discussed rentals in November 2024 and January 2025, and more than 200 residents came to a session in June 2025. It names no ordinance as adopted, so please ask the City what applies on the day you buy, because that history is still being written.

That business license is the plainest signal there is of how a home is used. A home with an active rental license in its name, a listing on a rental site and a manager collecting the money is a rental business, and I would finance it as an investment property. A home you keep for yourself, lend to family and rent for a week or two when you are not using it can be a second home under the footnote above. Your answer to "how will you use it" is the one that goes on the application, and I would rather we settle it together at the start than have an underwriter settle it for us.

South Carolina draws a second line through the same question, and it is a tax line. Title 12, Chapter 43 of the state code assesses a legal residence at 4% of its value, and only if the home is not rented for more than 72 days in a calendar year. A second home is assessed at 6% whether you rent it or not, because it is not your legal residence. I come back to that below, because it changes your payment more than most clients expect.

If your plan for the home is nightly rent and a manager, the loan you want is probably a DSCR loan, which qualifies on what the home itself earns. My DSCR page for North Myrtle Beach walks through how one of my lenders counts nightly rent against the City's license, and the second home versus investment property article covers the difference in general.

Oceanfront condos, rental programs and the project review

More than half of what sold in the ZIP code this year was a condo, and a unit in an oceanfront tower can come with a rental program attached. For a second-home loan, the item in Fannie Mae's list that needs the closest look is the one about a management firm controlling when the home is occupied. A unit in a program where the front desk decides which weeks are yours is a unit you do not control, and that fails the rule no matter how you plan to use it. A program you can step out of, or one that leaves your own weeks alone in writing, is a different conversation. So before you write an offer on a unit in a tower, I would like to read the rental agreement and the association's rental rules with you.

The project itself gets reviewed too. Fannie Mae's Eligibility Matrix notes that a condo can carry a lower maximum loan-to-value, which is the loan as a share of the home's value, depending on the type of project review the lender performs. That review is Fannie Mae's look at the building itself rather than at you, and my article on condo warrantability explains what it covers in plain words.

My North Myrtle Beach page already asks you to gather the association's budget, its reserve study, the recent board minutes and any special assessments. It also explains that South Carolina has no statewide rule requiring a condo association to keep a reserve study. For a second home I add the rental agreement and the association's rental rules to that stack, because they decide which loan this is.

Ten percent down, two months of reserves and the Horry County limit

On a one-unit second-home purchase, the Eligibility Matrix caps the loan at 90% of the price or the appraised value, whichever is lower, which leaves at least 10% for you to put down. Desktop Underwriter's findings and your credit can call for more, so I price your actual scenario before you plan around that figure. The arithmetic below runs on an invented price, so you can swap in your own.

Illustration: invented $450,000 condo purchase
Price (invented)	$450,000
Largest loan at 90%	$405,000
Smallest down payment at 10%	$45,000

Reserves are the money still in your accounts after closing, measured in months of the full payment, and on a second home Fannie Mae's Selling Guide has Desktop Underwriter ask for two months of it. If you own other financed properties beyond the home you live in and this one, the guide adds reserves for those too, figured as a share of what you still owe on them, starting at 2%. Reserves are counted after your down payment and closing costs come out, and a gift from family can cover them. So when I plan your cash with you, the down payment, the closing costs and the reserves all go on one sheet.

The price also sets which loan type you are in. The Federal Housing Finance Agency sets the 2026 conforming limit, the largest loan Fannie Mae will buy, for a one-unit home in Horry County at $832,750. The whole City is in Horry County, so that is the limit at every North Myrtle Beach address, east or west of the Waterway. The medians in the report above are well under it, and above it you are in a jumbo loan, a loan larger than that limit, which I would price by phone.

Your payment here and your payment at home, in one ratio

Your payment on this home has more in it than principal and interest. Fannie Mae's guide on the monthly housing expense counts property and flood insurance, real estate taxes, special assessments and owners' association dues as part of it. On a purchase it tells the lender to estimate the taxes on what the home is worth, not on the seller's old bill. That is the full payment I qualify you on, which the guide calls PITIA: principal, interest, taxes, insurance and association dues and assessments.

Then that payment joins the one on the home you live in. The guide's debt-to-income rules add the housing payment on your main home and the full payment on the second home into the same total, along with your car and card payments. Your debt-to-income ratio is that total divided by your monthly income before taxes. So a second home at the beach is qualified against two housing payments at once. That is why I want the condo dues, the tax bill and the insurance quotes on the specific unit before you decide what you are comfortable paying.

The 6% assessment and the City's 50 mills

A second home's tax bill is figured differently from the bill on your own home. A mill is one dollar of tax for every $1,000 of assessed value, and the assessed value on a second home is 6% of what it is worth, against 4% on a legal residence. On an invented $450,000 value, the difference looks like this.

Illustration: invented $450,000 value	Assessed value	Tax for each mill
Second home, 6%	$27,000	$27
Legal residence, 4%	$18,000	$18

The City's own line on that bill went up this year. For fiscal year 2027, MyHorryNews reported, City Council raised the City's millage from 45 to 50 and raised water and sewer fees, in a budget that took effect July 1, 2026. On the invented $450,000 second home above, the City's 50 mills alone come to $1,350 a year, against $900 on a legal residence of the same value, and the county and the schools add their own mills on top. A second home also pays the school operating mills that a legal residence is exempt from, and my article on the second-home tax bill in South Carolina works a full example.

That is why I do not lean on the seller's tax bill. If the seller lived there, the bill was written at 4%, and yours will not be. I build your payment at 6% on your price, and the Horry County Assessor confirms what applies to the parcel you choose. Atlantic Beach and Briarcliffe Acres are separate towns on this same stretch of coast with their own millage, and a North Myrtle Beach ZIP code can carry an Atlantic Beach address. The parcel's tax district on the county record settles which town line you pay.

Cherry Grove's channel assessment goes in the payment

A home inside the Cherry Grove improvement district carries one more yearly charge. The City dredges the canals there through an improvement district, and in 2024 WMBF reported the assessment at $1,725 for a single-family home and $1,190 for a condo owner for the year. I have not confirmed the current year's amount, so the county property record and the seller's closing papers are where to look.

On a second-home loan that charge counts. Fannie Mae's housing expense includes special assessments, which are charges levied on a parcel beyond the regular tax bill. So on a second home in that district I put the channel assessment into the payment I qualify you on, beside the taxes, the insurance and any dues. On a tower unit in Crescent Beach or Windy Hill it does not apply, which is one more way two homes at the same price can carry different payments here.

Wind east of US 17, flood on any address

South Carolina's wind and hail pool, the South Carolina Wind and Hail Underwriting Association, covers wind in a coastal area that Title 38, Chapter 75 of the state code defines county by county. In Horry County the line is US 17, or By-Pass 17 where that runs farther west, and the coastal area is everything east of it. In North Myrtle Beach that puts the oceanfront in Cherry Grove, Ocean Drive, Crescent Beach and Windy Hill in the coastal area, while Barefoot Resort is on the far bank of the Waterway, west of US 17. A wind policy from the pool may come into the picture for a home on the beach side, and an insurance agent confirms the territory for your address and quotes it. Either way the wind premium is part of the payment I run.

Flood is the other quote I ask for, and it depends on the lot, not the side of the road. I pull the FEMA flood zone for the address before you write an offer, since a required flood premium lands in the payment. FEMA's high-risk zones include VE, its coastal zone where waves add to the flooding, and AE, and X marks its moderate- and lower-risk areas. I could not confirm how much of the city is in each zone, so I have not printed a share. A marsh-side lot in Cherry Grove and a tower unit on Ocean Boulevard can carry different zones a few blocks apart.

Papers I would ask for on a North Myrtle Beach home

Once you have a home in mind, a few documents settle which loan this is and what the payment will be, and I go through each one with you.

1. When you are ready, please provide the parcel's tax district from the Horry County property record, so we know whether the home is inside the City of North Myrtle Beach, in Atlantic Beach or in Briarcliffe Acres.
2. For a condo, please provide the association's budget, its reserve study, the recent board minutes, any special assessments and the master insurance policy, all pages.
3. Please provide the association's rental rules and any rental program or management agreement tied to the unit, all pages, so I can read who controls the calendar.
4. Please provide any City business license in the home's name. I will also check with the City on rental permit rules the week you write an offer, since the ordinance had not been decided on the pages I read.
5. On a parcel in the Cherry Grove improvement district, please provide the current channel assessment from the seller's papers or the county record.
6. Please provide a flood, homeowner's and wind quote from your insurance agent for the address.

Choosing a rate option for a North Myrtle Beach second home

From there I run the payment with the unit's dues, its tax bill at 6% and its insurance in it, beside the payment on the home you live in. You'll see pricing for your scenario, choose a rate option, which you can change later, and the application opens from there. Getting pre-approved in South Carolina lists what I will ask you for. You are also welcome to call me and talk the home through first, whether you have an address or only a beach in mind.

Nothing on this page is a loan approval, a denial or a commitment to lend, and none of it is tax or insurance advice. Fannie Mae revises its guide and matrix, and your credit, the unit, the project and the appraisal decide where a file lands under them. The Horry County Assessor sets the tax class on a specific parcel, and an insurance agent confirms the wind territory and the flood zone for a specific address.

Common questions

Can I buy a second home in North Myrtle Beach with 10% down?

Yes, on a conventional loan when the home meets Fannie Mae's second-home rules. The Eligibility Matrix sets the maximum loan-to-value for a one-unit second-home purchase at 90 percent of the price or appraised value, which means at least 10 percent down. The file also has to come back from Desktop Underwriter with an Approve/Eligible recommendation. On a condo, the type of project review the lender performs can lower that maximum.

Does renting out my North Myrtle Beach condo make it an investment property?

Not by itself. Fannie Mae's guide allows a second-home loan when rental income is identified, as long as that income is not used to qualify you and the home still meets every other second-home rule. Those rules include using it yourself part of the year and keeping control of it. A home run as a rental business, with a manager controlling the calendar or rent counted to carry the payment, is an investment property.

Do I need a business license to rent out a second home in North Myrtle Beach?

Yes, if you rent it short-term. The City's short-term rental page says every short-term rental inside the City needs a business license, renewed each year, with no special zoning or permit beyond that licensing, and that rentals collect and remit accommodations tax. The City has discussed rental rules since 2018 and its page names no new ordinance as adopted, so please check with the City before you buy.

Is property tax higher on a second home in North Myrtle Beach?

Yes. South Carolina assesses a second home at 6 percent of its value and a legal residence at 4 percent, and the 4 percent rate also ends if a home is rented more than 72 days in a calendar year. The City of North Myrtle Beach raised its millage from 45 to 50 for fiscal year 2027, and the county and the schools add their own mills on top of the City's.

Can an oceanfront condo in North Myrtle Beach be a second home?

It can, when the unit is a one-unit dwelling you control and the project passes the lender's review. A unit in a rental program that gives a management firm control over when it is occupied does not meet Fannie Mae's second-home rule. The project review can also lower the maximum loan-to-value on a condo, so the rental agreement and the association's documents decide it before the appraisal does.

Does a second home in North Myrtle Beach need wind insurance?

The state's wind and hail pool covers a coastal area that in Horry County is everything east of US 17, and that includes the North Myrtle Beach oceanfront. Barefoot Resort is west of the Waterway and outside that area. An insurance agent confirms the territory for a specific address and quotes any wind policy, and the premium goes into the payment the lender qualifies you on.