City of North Myrtle Beach enacting new rules on short-term rentals

NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WMBF) - Renting a house for a week in one Grand Strand city will come with a few more rules this year.

The City of North Myrtle Beach is working on a series of short-term rental ordinances.

As more and more properties transition to short-term rentals, they bring more cars, more noise and more trash.

The city is hoping some new ordinances will keep those three issues in check.

“That house can be rented out by 20-plus people throughout the entire summer, so it’s basically like a micro-hotel,” said Brian James, who owns a property in the Windy Hill area.

James never got to meet his neighbors behind him, because they change week to week.

It also means he never knows what to expect any given week.

“That noise tends to roll outside at all hours of the day and night, and it’s quite disturbing to neighbors who are used to a quieter single-family type resident neighborhood,” he said.

The City of North Myrtle Beach wants to address the concerns James and other residents are having associated with short-term rentals.

The city recently passed an ordinance that requires all noise that can be heard off the property to stop between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

In order to keep trash from piling up, the city passed another ordinance that requires trash to be picked up an additional two nights a week at all short-term rentals.

The city is working on another ordinance to address parking.

“It is not right to be able to park your car on the street and leave it there all day long and all night long and cause traffic issues for the people who are living in these residential areas,” said North Myrtle Beach Mayor Marilyn Hatley.

Hatley says that ordinance will likely require short-term rentals to document how many cars they can accommodate and also list where they have overflow parking if they intend on having more cars than that.

“There is no room on those roads for you to park your car permanently for a week,” said Hatley. It’s not going to be acceptable this year. We’re making the changes and addressing the issue.”

James’s neighborhood in Windy Hill zoned for single-family residential, but he sees short-term rentals as commercial businesses that never should’ve been able to move in in the first place.

Now that they’re there, he’s afraid it may be too late for the city to remedy the issues.

“Will they be successful,” said James. “I would suspect to some degree they may, but it’s not really addressing the root cause. It’s just putting on Band-Aids.”

Hatley said the parking ordinance will likely be on the agenda for city council next week.

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