A version of this story keeps repeating itself in North Myrtle Beach neighborhoods: a family buys a quiet home on a residential street, and within a year or two, the house next door becomes a revolving door of weekend renters — pool parties, late-night noise, strangers in the driveway. When they call the city, they’re often told the same thing: it’s legal. For residents who assumed their R-1 or R-2 zoning designation meant “no short-term rentals,” that answer doesn’t add up. The truth is more complicated, and arguably more troubling — the zoning code itself may never have closed the door in the first place.
A City That Never Wrote the Rule
North Myrtle Beach’s short-term rental guidance points to Resort Residential and Limited Industrial zones as the intended home for vacation rentals, and city officials have said as much publicly. But that’s guidance, not necessarily an enforceable prohibition. As far back as 2020, roughly 550 short-term rentals were already operating inside residential neighborhoods like Windy Hill, and one resident who circulated a petition against them was blunt about the legal reality: turning a single-family R-1 home into what he called an unregulated motel was, at the time, perfectly legal [myhorrynews.com, 2020]. That petition — asking the city to ban short-term rentals in R-1 and R-2 zones outright, with no grandfather clauses or exceptions — gathered signatures but never became law [Change.org, 2020].
Compare that to Myrtle Beach, next door, where every residential zoning district beginning with “R” explicitly prohibits short-term rentals except for one carve-out zone [STR Profit Map, 2026]. North Myrtle Beach never adopted that kind of explicit ban. That absence is the real story here — not a city ignoring its own law, but a city whose law may never have addressed the use to begin with.
The Grandfather Clause Nobody Explained
Some of the oldest short-term rentals in NMB’s residential neighborhoods trace back to before the city’s first zoning ordinance was adopted in 1947. City officials have confirmed that units operating continuously since before that ordinance are grandfathered in under the code’s nonconforming-use provisions [myhorrynews.com, 2020]. That protection is legitimate and well-established in zoning law generally. The problem for today’s buyers is that it’s nearly invisible at the point of sale — nothing in a standard real estate closing flags whether a neighboring property carries decades-old grandfathered rental rights, and a newer rental operating nearby may or may not fall under that same protection. Distinguishing a lawfully grandfathered rental from one operating in a genuine gray area requires pulling zoning and business license history most buyers never think to request.
Years of Workshops, No Ordinance
This isn’t a new concern for city council. NMB considered a moratorium on large short-term rentals back in 2018 — it failed. Council held a workshop on a possible ordinance in 2020 — nothing was adopted. The conversation resumed in November 2024 and continued into January 2025, and by June 2025 more than 200 residents turned out to a city-hosted session specifically to air concerns about short-term rentals in their neighborhoods [City of North Myrtle Beach, 2026]. As of the most recent public record, no ordinance addressing short-term rentals in residential zones had passed. City Manager Ryan Fabbri has acknowledged the challenge publicly, noting that meaningful enforcement — a dedicated compliance unit — could cost close to $1 million, funded potentially through a proposed $250 annual permit fee [Yahoo News/WBTW, 2026].
What the City Can Actually Do Right Now
Without a zoning-based prohibition, the city’s enforcement options run almost entirely through business licensing rather than land use law. Violations there currently top out at fines around $500 per occurrence — a penalty critics say is too small to change behavior for a property generating thousands of dollars a week during peak season. That mismatch — a low fine against high rental income — is part of why residents describe enforcement as toothless even when a rental is causing real problems.
Where This Leaves Homeowners
If you bought property in an R-1 or R-2 neighborhood in North Myrtle Beach believing the zoning designation itself protected you from short-term rentals moving in next door, the uncomfortable truth is that protection may never have existed in writing. The city’s own definitions and use tables for those districts are the place to look for a definitive answer — not the general assumption that “residential” means “no rentals.” Until — or unless — city council passes an explicit ordinance addressing short-term rentals in residential zones, the burden of finding out what’s actually enforceable falls on individual homeowners, one records request at a time.
Further Reading
- City of North Myrtle Beach, Short-Term Rentals: https://nmbpark.com/833/Short-term-Rentals
- “North Myrtle Beach discusses short-term rental regulation,” myhorrynews.com: https://www.myhorrynews.com/news/local/north_myrtle_beach/north-myrtle-beach-discusses-short-term-rental-regulation/article_d07b0b48-e331-11ea-83db-1f2272b86519.html
- Change.org Petition, “No Short-Term Rentals in North Myrtle Beach areas zoned R-1 or R-2”: https://www.change.org/p/north-myrtle-beach-city-council-no-short-term-rentals-str-in-north-myrtle-beach-areas-zoned-r-1-or-r-2
- Myrtle Beach Short-Term Rental Regulations Guide, STR Profit Map: https://www.strprofitmap.com/regulations/SC/myrtle-beach
- “North Myrtle Beach discusses toughening short-term rental rules in workshop,” WBTW/Yahoo News: https://www.yahoo.com/news/north-myrtle-beach-discusses-toughening-202028872.html
- North Myrtle Beach Code of Ordinances, Chapter 23 (Zoning), Municode: https://library.municode.com/sc/north_myrtle_beach/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=COOR_CH23ZO
