Why Now’s the Time to Move from Manhattan to Myrtle Beach
Manhattan’s rental market just did something it has never done before: median rent crossed $5,000 a month in July, and the average rent — pulled up by a wave of ultra-wealthy renters — jumped 15% year-over-year to $6,306. For anyone who owns property in Manhattan and has been thinking about a move to the coast, that number changes the math. It’s a big part of why more owners are choosing to move from Manhattan to Myrtle Beach and rent their New York property out rather than sell it — turning a single apartment into the thing that funds an entirely different life a few states south.
Manhattan Rents Just Hit a Record — Here’s What’s Driving It
The numbers, drawn from Miller Samuel’s market report and reporting from CNBC and The Real Deal, are striking on their own. Median rent hit $5,000 in July, up 6.4% from a year earlier. Average rent — a number wealthy renters skew upward — reached $6,306, up 15%. At the top of the market, luxury units now average $13,750 a month, up 31% year-over-year, and the top 10% of rentals average $17,464, up 35%.
The truly extreme end of the market has exploded. CNBC reported that the number of apartments renting for more than $50,000 a month has more than doubled compared with 2025, and the number renting for more than $100,000 a month is up sevenfold. More than a quarter of leases are now closing after bidding wars, and inventory has become so tight that Manhattan listings fell 39% year-over-year — the sharpest drop in a decade — as more landlords pull units off traditional listing portals entirely and lease them privately.
Part of what’s fueling this is New York’s pied-à-terre tax on high-value second homes, which has pushed a meaningful share of would-be buyers toward renting instead of purchasing, since renting sidesteps the tax exposure that comes with owning a non-primary residence in the city. Corcoran Group CEO Pam Liebman has pointed to that tax as a direct driver of the shift toward renting among prospective second-home buyers, and Bespoke Real Estate’s Laura Klein put the scale of it plainly: at the very top of the market, “the $100,000-a-month number is almost normal now.” Combine that dynamic with genuinely tight inventory at the high end, and landlords are sitting on properties that can command rents most owners wouldn’t have believed possible even two or three years ago.
The Landlord Math That’s Never Worked Better
Here’s where it gets interesting for anyone who already owns in Manhattan. That same $6,306 average rent check — collected from a tenant rather than paid as one — goes a very long way once it’s funding a life in coastal South Carolina instead of covering your own rent or mortgage in New York.
The cost-of-living gap between the two markets is enormous. Living expenses in New York run roughly 157% higher than in Myrtle Beach overall. The average home purchase price in Myrtle Beach sits around $379,600, compared with roughly $2,991,695 in New York — a gap of nearly 700%. Rental comparisons tell the same story: a typical house rents for about $1,264 a month in Myrtle Beach versus $2,440 in New York, and a typical apartment runs about $1,378 versus $4,195. Put plainly, a single Manhattan rent check today can cover the cost of living in Myrtle Beach several times over.
Run a simple, illustrative version of the math and it holds up well. A Manhattan property renting near the current $6,306 average brings in roughly $75,700 a year before expenses. A mortgage on a median-priced $379,600 Myrtle Beach home — principal, interest, taxes, and insurance combined — typically runs somewhere in the $2,000 to $2,500 a month range depending on your down payment and rate, or well under half of that incoming rent check. The exact numbers obviously depend on your specific property, loan terms, and tax situation, but the gap between what a Manhattan unit can bring in and what it costs to live well on the Grand Strand is the entire reason this math has shifted so far in owners’ favor.
The Financial Case to Move from Manhattan to Myrtle Beach
Stack those two trends on top of each other and the case writes itself. Renting out a Manhattan property at today’s record rates, rather than selling it outright, means keeping a foothold in one of the most valuable rental markets in the country while your own cost of living drops by more than half. That rental income can realistically cover a mortgage on a home in Myrtle Beach with room to spare, fund the move itself, or simply provide a cushion while you get settled.
It’s worth pairing that with South Carolina’s broader tax picture, too. There’s no state estate or inheritance tax here, and no tax on Social Security income — both of which matter more the longer you plan to stay. Our full breakdown of South Carolina’s tax advantages covers the rest of what that means for a household relocating from a high-tax state like New York.
What Being an Out-of-State Landlord Actually Involves
None of this works well without a plan for managing the property you’re leaving behind. New York’s tenant protections are among the strictest in the country, covering everything from lease renewal rights to how quickly repairs have to be addressed, and tenant screening still has to happen carefully even in a landlord’s market like this one. A local property manager typically charges somewhere around 8-10% of monthly rent to handle leasing, maintenance calls, and tenant issues — a real cost, but a small one relative to what today’s rents bring in, and it’s usually the difference between a smooth arrangement and a stressful one when you’re three states away. Landlord insurance is also worth budgeting for separately from a standard homeowner’s policy, since it covers liability and lost-rent scenarios a typical policy won’t.
Most owners in this position lean on a property manager rather than trying to run a New York rental remotely from a beach town in South Carolina.
It’s also worth having a conversation with a tax professional before finalizing anything — converting a primary residence into a rental property changes how it’s treated, both for New York tax purposes and for capital gains down the road if you ever decide to sell. Our guide to owning a second home or rental investment walks through more of what that looks like in practice once South Carolina becomes your primary address instead.
Why Myrtle Beach Specifically
Part of what makes this work emotionally, not just financially, is that Myrtle Beach doesn’t actually cut you off from New York. It sits almost exactly halfway between New York City and Miami, with Myrtle Beach International Airport serving roughly 60 destinations on ten airlines and a runway long enough to handle private and heavy commercial jets alike — for anyone flying privately, it’s roughly 90 minutes from Teterboro. Our guide to Myrtle Beach’s position between New York and Miami covers why that geography matters for owners who still need to get back to the city regularly for business or family.
For anyone making the move from a Northeast state more broadly, not just Manhattan, our relocation guide built specifically for that transition covers the parts of the move — schools, timing, what to expect in the first few months — that go beyond the financial case alone.
Getting Started
The first real step is figuring out what your specific property could realistically rent for and what that income would actually support here. Browse the communities along the Grand Strand to get a sense of where you’d want to land, and get a home valuation if you’re weighing whether to sell a different property to help fund the move rather than rent it out.
Reach out to our team when you’re ready to run the actual numbers on your situation — your property, your mortgage, your timeline. Manhattan’s rental market may not stay this strong forever, but right now, it’s about as good a reason as there’s been in years to make the move from Manhattan to Myrtle Beach instead of just talking about it.