29577 · Horry County
Myrtle Beach
Just under 41,000 people live here year-round, and almost none of their daily life touches the tourist strip.
Just under 41,000 people live here year-round, and the number has climbed almost 15% since 2020 — the wider metro is up 19% in the same stretch, which is why everything feels like it is being built at once. What surprises people who move here is how little of daily life touches the tourist strip. Residents live in Market Common, out toward Carolina Forest, in the older in-town streets. The Boulevard is somewhere you take visitors.
Where people actually eat
- Sea Captain’s House — oceanfront on North Ocean Boulevard, in a building that started life as a 1930 cottage. Breakfast from 7am, every day.
- Big Mike’s Soul Food — Mike Chestnut’s place downtown, open since 2012 and named by Southern Living among its favorite Southern meat-’n’-threes. Chicken bog on Fridays and Saturdays.
- Croissants Bistro & Bakery — thirty years in, and still closed on Sundays. Breakfast and lunch, with a proper bakery attached.
- Tidal Creek Brewhouse — Market Common. Coffee from 8am, small-batch beer later, dog-friendly garden throughout.
- Johnny D’s Waffles and Benedicts — Chef Jamie Daskalis started it in 2014. Order the red velvet waffle once so you know.
- New South Brewing — brewing here since 1998, which makes it the old guard. The nut brown is the one.
What you’ll do on a Saturday
- Myrtle Beach State Park — opened in 1936 as the first park in the South Carolina system, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. It protects a full mile of undeveloped beach in a county that developed everything else. $8 to get in.
- Savannah’s Playground — free, fully inclusive, reopened in March 2026 after a $2.1 million rebuild. It has a swing you ride without leaving your wheelchair.
- Chapin Memorial Library — run by the city rather than the county, which is a quirk locals enjoy. It lends board games, and seeds, from a collection of over 200 varieties.
- Myrtle Beach Pelicans — Low-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, sixty-odd home games, tickets from $18.50 and $2 tacos on Tuesdays.
Where you’d look
Three areas, not nine. Withers Preserve, Emmens Preserve, The Battery, Cresswind and Sweetgrass Square aren’t separate communities — they’re neighborhoods inside Market Common, which is a single master association. See how it breaks down ↓
Houses here are sitting. The median single-family price across Myrtle Beach came in at $525,000 in the second quarter of 2026, down from $539,000 a year earlier, and homes took 137 days to sell with inventory up over 13%. Condos fell harder, to a $205,000 median. If you’re buying, that is in your favor and you should use it. If you’re planning to rent a place out, check the zoning before you write the offer — the city bans short-term rentals in any district starting with “R”, with one narrow exception, and fewer than thirty homes city-wide are grandfathered in.
Neighborhoods
How Myrtle Beach is actually organized
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