Sell High, Buy Low – the Dramatic Growth of the Grand Strand

And now he does. Retired after a long career in teaching and then television production, Connelly got the idea to move when a friend mentioned how affordable the cost of living was in Myrtle Beach. Hilton Head and Charleston were too rich for his blood and Florida was never a consideration, so he did reconnaissance work on Myrtle Beach, found a builder who came highly recommended and persuaded his wife, Charlotte, to leave family and friends behind to embark on a new adventure. After a decade in Philly and another 38 years in lower Bucks County, the Connellys and their two Labrador retrievers relocated in the spring of 2013. They moved into a three-bedroom, two-bath house in Little River, in farm country about eight miles from the North Carolina border.

“What’s not to like?” Kyran asks. “You have great weather, the cost of living is incredibly low compared to where we were before. And there are plenty of golf courses, that’s for sure.”

Likewise, Connelly found all kinds of affordable options when he was shopping for a new home. That’s the beauty of the Myrtle Beach real-estate market. Want to live on the beach in a single-family residence? That will run you seven figures and up. But for $250,000, you can find a beachfront condo. Some prefer to be close to if not in Myrtle Beach and take advantage of everything that the town has to offer. Bucolic settings abound north and south of the city limits. According to the Council for Community and Economic Research, the average price of a home in Myrtle Beach is $227,487. Compare that with Charleston ($282,284) and Hilton Head ($361,575), and it’s no wonder the Grand Strand has become such a popular destination for snowbirds.

“You can spend the same amount of money and be in the heart of Myrtle Beach,” says Hampton Peace, the owner­broker of Peace Sotheby’s International Realty, in Georgetown. “There really is something for everyone.”

The Connellys paid $170,000 for a 1,700-square-foot house that sits on a quarter-acre lot. They took advantage of the builder’s wealth of custom upgrades, adding a sunroom and a screened-in porch, among other things. That pushed the price north of $200,000. The homeowners’ association assessment is a mere $20 a month, but the most staggering figure is the amount they pay in property taxes.

“My real estate taxes now that I’m over 65 and a permanent resident—are you ready for this?—are $348,” Connelly says. “Somebody said, ‘You mean per month?’ I said, ‘No, per year.’ ”

He can get to the beach in 20 minutes and to Myrtle in 30. He tees it up at every opportunity, but he nixed the notion of living on a course—that drives up the sticker price on the home, the taxes and any association fees—but he’s within 10 miles of no fewer that a half-dozen tracks. What’s not to like?

Since moving from California in 1976, Jim Fraiser has heard much the same story time and again. “Myrtle Beach is now what Florida was like in the ’70s and ’80s,” says Fraiser, a broker professional at Grande Dunes. “People like to live where they vacation, and a lot of families started vacationing here and forgoing heading all the way down to Florida. A lot of the folks will say, ‘I came down here on a golf trip, and then I brought my family down and we fell in love with Myrtle Beach.’ ”

Because people like to follow their own, someone who vacations in the area might end up purchasing a home with an eye toward retirement. Others invest in a second home with the idea of eventually relocating. “It’s what we used to see in Florida,” says Fraiser. “People followed their families to Florida. Myrtle Beach became the better alternative.”

Peace will tell you the same thing. He moved to the area with his family in 1971 and never left. A one-time fishing-tackle salesman who got into real estate in 1992, he has seen dramatic change over the years. On this day he is behind the wheel of his extended-cab truck, taking a visitor on a whirlwind tour through communities and developments in Georgetown County, on the southern end of the Grand Strand. The ocean is never far away, but venture inland and glimpse the large, shadowy southern oaks draped in Spanish moss, and you would never know you’re a couple of miles from white-sand beaches. Peace weaves through quiet neighborhoods, some with single-family residences and townhouses that back up to greens and tee boxes, others that are just around the corner from championship courses. “Just because these guys don’t live in a golf community, don’t think there aren’t a lot of golf clubs in their garages,” he says as he winds down one residential street.

Clients are predominantly retirees or those who are close to retirement. The average age of residents at Grande Dunes, for example, is 57½. Tourism and all of the things that go into that industry drive the economy. And, of course, health care is important in an area that caters to the older set. That’s not to say Myrtle is without young professionals. Peace sees the Grand Strand not only as a vacation locale and retirement destination, but also as a place to relocate a business. And you know what they say about being as old as you feel. Many of Peace’s older clients welcomed the opportunity to live in a neighborhood with the younger generation. “When we sell, we sell the area,” he says. “I want to sit down and talk to you before we jump in the car. It’s much more important to find the right community rather than the right house.”

And fear not, golf widows. As he drives through Murrells Inlet, a quaint fishing village on the Atlantic’s edge, Peace is quick to note, “Half of these people couldn’t give a rip about golf.” Bike paths are everywhere. Parasailing and scuba diving and deep-sea fishing are popular activities. Hungry? The main drag in Murrells Inlet features a row of seafood restaurants and fresh-fish markets.

But make no mistake: Golf remains the biggest draw, and Myrtle Beach isn’t short on options, both in terms of courses and access. “I play in a group of about 35 guys,” says Connelly. “They’re all from someplace else, and a lot of them are from the Northeast. They’ve all moved into this area for the same reasons I have.”

The elephant in the room is hurricane season, which stretches from the spring to November. Evacuation-route signs are hard to miss along the Highway 17 corridor, the main north-south artery. It’s a fact of life, but everyone knows what they’re signing up for when they move here. The Grand Strand is situated between the Atlantic and the Intracoastal Waterway—the bodies of water are separated by anywhere from three to 10 miles—and the farther south you travel, the lower the elevation. Houses close to the ocean have been designed to brace for hurricanes and the flooding that typically ensues, with garages on the ground floor and living quarters above.

As these storms go, Myrtle Beach has been relatively lucky. Hurricane Hugo, in 1989, was the most destructive; it resulted in 27 deaths and $10 billion in damage. More recently, Hurricane Matthew in 2016 caused widespread flooding. Meteorologists are reluctant to speculate why the Grand Strand has been spared, but Fraiser, who admits to being called a one-man chamber of commerce, suggests that it’s because the Carolina coast sits somewhat inland and is therefore more protected compared with its neighbors to the south, in the middle of a catcher’s mitt, if you will.

Coincidentally, it was a mid-20th century storm that both devastated Myrtle Beach and essentially put the city on the map. Hurricane Hazel, a Category 4 storm, made a direct hit in October 1954, claiming 95 lives in the U.S. Jim Harper was a teen who lived through the catastrophe. Writing 50 years later for The State Port Pilot, he called Hazel “the most transforming event of the 20th century for this community.”

Fraiser agrees. “A lot of people didn’t even know that Myrtle Beach was here at that time,” he says. “They rebuilt, bigger and better. From ’54 on, that’s when the growth really started. It didn’t accelerate until probably the late ’70s. And we’ve never looked back.”

Thanks to a penny sales tax in both Georgetown and Horry counties, officials have been aggressive about updating the infrastructure in a burgeoning area. Growth is steady but controlled. Developers, Peace says, “are really trying to think it all the way through. Don’t build the same product over and over.” The Market Common has become popular. Shopping, health care, dining and entertainment options and places of worship are minutes away. One needs only look at the Grande Dunes blueprint, a sprawling 2,200-acre community of 18 neighborhoods that has a Mediterranean feel. Fraiser calls Myrtle Beach a melting pot, and nowhere is that more on display than at Grande Dunes, which counts former residents from 46 states and eight foreign countries on its rolls.

“Hollywood found us and Broadway found us,” Fraiser says of the Grand Strand.

As did retired snowbirds like Kyran and Charlotte Connelly. Almost five years later, has the couple had any second thoughts about moving to the Strand?

“No regrets,” Kyran says. “None whatsoever.”

This article is part of the @MyrtleBeach Lifestyle series. If you’d like to get a FREE copy of our magazine mailed to you click here!