Surfside Beach, South Carolina.
Typical home $360,202 (+2.6% in a year), asking rent $1,612 (+3.7%). Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, SC-NC metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,073 (+131%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $9,178 +3%
- $351,025$360,202 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $71,424 +25%
- $288,778$360,202 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Surfside Beach$1,891
- South Carolina$1,597
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 16 years.
Typical home values in Surfside Beach, SC rose 2.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Surfside Beach, SC rose 3.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Surfside Beach runs $763/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $896 in May 2024.
That is $2,375 a month against $1,612 rent: a $1,891 mortgage payment, plus $98 property tax and $386 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Surfside Beach
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$2,375
- Renting$1,612
- Mortgage only$1,891
Property tax · $98/mo 0.33% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Horry County, SC
Insurance & upkeep · $386/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Surfside Beach, Horry County, South Carolina
Surfside Beach is a town of 4,155 people in Horry County. Half its households earn more than $70,106 a year and half less, against $66,880 across Horry County; 17% of its people live below the poverty line. 68% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 32% are rented. Unemployment in Horry County was 4.8% in August 2026, and the county had 1.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in restaurants and hotels, then schools and health care.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Surfside Beach is a small coastal town in Horry County, South Carolina, and its residents are older than in most American towns. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and household incomes run a little above the county's. Winters are mild and cool rather than cold, summers are hot, and the year brings a fair amount of rain.
Work. Many residents work in restaurants, hotels and entertainment, in schools, hospitals and social care, in professional and business services, or in shops. Across Horry County, some of the largest workplaces are Horry County Schools, Coastal Carolina University and Conway Hospital. A good share of adults hold a four-year degree, and a typical commute is fairly short.
Things to do. The Grand Strand, the long stretch of beach the town sits on, is a short drive away. Myrtle Beach State Park, a protected area, and Brookgreen Gardens, which is run as a museum, are also a short drive from town. Family Kingdom Amusement Park is another short drive away for a more lively day out.
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- 2,034households
- 40%of adults have a degree
- 17%below the poverty line
- 20 mintypical commute
- 13%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Horry County had 146,160 jobs in 2025, 1.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 57° and lows near 37°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 72°. About 55 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Brookgreen Gardens weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Horry County
- Horry 01 SchoolsSchool district6,830FTE
- Horry County GovernmentGeneral services departments, government3,040
- Coastal Carolina UniversityUniversity or college1,767
- Grand Strand Regional MED CTRGeneral hospital1,616FTE
- Conway HospitalGeneral hospital1,497FTE
- Mcleod-seacoast Medical CTRHospitals, general medical and surgical1,082
- Mcleod Loris Seacoast HospitalGeneral hospital1,056FTE
- Palmetto Corp of ConwaySurfacing, highway, road, street, bridge or airport runway879
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 284 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 35,738 people in all across the county; Surfside Beach has two of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- HurricanesVery high
- EarthquakesRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Surfside Beach’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Horry County and the Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, SC-NC metro.
Surfside Beach home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Surfside Beach$360,202
- South Carolina$304,319
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Surfside Beach listings, and the typical home goes pending in 43 days — the market is heating up.
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Surfside Beach25.84%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Surfside Beach43
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Surfside Beach435
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Surfside Beach81
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Surfside Beach$338,179
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Surfside Beach96.16%
Zip codes with a Surfside Beach address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Surfside Beach — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.