Apartment Revenue Loss Deeper Than 5% in Myrtle Beach

After logging some of the best revenue growth nationwide throughout much of 2021 and 2022, the Myrtle Beach apartment market is now losing returns at some of the worst rates in the country. The small Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, SC-NC market lost 5.6% in revenue in the year-ending November, according to data from RealPage Market Analytics. That was much worse than the revenue loss of 0.8% seen in the nation overall during the past year and it was a far cry from the annual gains near 24% Myrtle Beach was recording in February 2022. Much of the market’s recent revenue decline was seen on the rent side of the equation, with the market logging annual same-store effective asking rent cuts of 4% in the year-ending November, while the occupancy decline was softer at 160 basis points. This is a common theme in the small boomtown markets that saw increased demand during the work-from-home phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking at longer-term trends, nearly 20% of this market’s existing inventory base of about 47,400 units were built in the past five years. While employment growth has also been significant in that time frame – with an increase of 13.9% in total employment – that wasn’t quite enough to keep up with new apartment deliveries. The impact of new supply may continue to hurt the market in the near term, but once those deliveries burn off, fundamentals are expected to moderate at a healthy pace.