A new Q1 2026 Housing Cost Index, built from the C2ER Cost of Living Index via the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, just put a number on something a lot of relocating buyers already suspect: South Carolina housing costs are meaningfully lower than what they’re used to paying. The index scores every state against a national average of 100, and South Carolina came in at 79.8 — putting housing costs here roughly 20% below the national baseline, in a data set that runs all the way from Oklahoma’s low of 66.9 up to Hawaii’s 302.4 at the top.
It’s worth understanding what this particular index isolates. The C2ER Cost of Living Index that underlies it normally blends housing together with groceries, utilities, transportation, healthcare, and other everyday expenses into one composite number. This index pulls the housing component out on its own, drawing on relative pricing across participating urban areas in every state, which makes it a cleaner tool for a very specific question: if you’re comparing where you live now to South Carolina, how much of a gap is housing specifically responsible for?
Where South Carolina Housing Costs Rank Nationally
South Carolina’s 79.8 score doesn’t make it the single cheapest state in the country — Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, and a handful of others score even lower — but it puts South Carolina firmly in the affordable tier nationally, and notably cheaper than two of its biggest competitors for relocating buyers. Florida scored 101.1, essentially dead-on the national average, while North Carolina came in at 91.7. That means South Carolina housing costs run below both of the neighboring states most often cross-shopped against it by people planning a move to the Southeast coast.
Georgia (77.6) and Tennessee (80.3) land in the same range as South Carolina, which tracks with the broader pattern in this data: the interior Southeast and much of the Midwest score well below 100, while land-constrained coastal states carry the highest numbers by a wide margin.
How This Compares to Where Buyers Are Actually Coming From
The more useful comparison for understanding what this index actually means for a relocation decision isn’t state-to-state within the Southeast — it’s comparing South Carolina to the states so many Grand Strand buyers are moving from. New York scored 172.3, meaning New York housing runs 72.3% above the national average by this measure. New Jersey came in at 144.3 (44.3% above average), Connecticut at 123.5 (23.5% above), and Massachusetts at a striking 217.5 — more than double the national baseline. California and the D.C. area scored even higher, at 189.5 and 190.4 respectively.
The rest of the Northeast tells a similarly one-sided story. Vermont scored 127.5, New Hampshire 116.5, Maine 134.8, Rhode Island 114.4, Maryland 149.1, and Delaware 101.3. Virginia, at 99.1, is one of the few Northeast-adjacent states to land almost exactly at the national average rather than well above it. Every one of these numbers sits above South Carolina’s 79.8, several of them by a wide margin, which is a big part of why so many households from these states are willing to make a long-distance move rather than relocate somewhere closer to home.
Pennsylvania, notably, scored 84.1 statewide — only modestly above South Carolina’s 79.8. That statewide number is worth a caveat, though: it blends together Pennsylvania’s more affordable rural counties with pricier metro areas, and the Lehigh Valley specifically tends to run above the state’s blended average given its proximity to both Philadelphia and the New York metro commuter belt. Our detailed look at what Lehigh Valley families actually save by relocating to Myrtle Beach digs into that comparison at the metro level rather than the statewide one, which is the more accurate way to think about it if that’s where you’re coming from.
What This Actually Means for Buyers and Sellers
It’s worth being precise about what this index measures and what it doesn’t. A cost index built at 100 for the national average captures relative pricing across participating urban areas — it’s a directional signal, not a guarantee about what any specific home will cost. South Carolina’s 79.8 doesn’t mean every property here is 20% cheaper than its equivalent elsewhere; it means that, in aggregate, housing costs across the state’s participating markets run well below the national norm.
For buyers, that’s genuinely useful context when weighing a relocation decision purely on the numbers: a household moving from New York, New Jersey, or Massachusetts isn’t just trading snow for sand, they’re moving from some of the most expensive housing markets in the country to one of the more affordable ones, even before accounting for South Carolina’s lack of a state estate tax or tax on Social Security income. Run it as a simple illustration: a household whose housing costs currently sit at the Massachusetts index level of 217.5 and relocates to a market at South Carolina’s 79.8 is moving from roughly double the national average to roughly 20% below it — a gap of well over 100 points on the same scale, which is the kind of difference that shows up directly in a monthly budget, not just on a chart.
For sellers and current owners, an index like this is also a quiet vote of confidence — a state that remains meaningfully underpriced relative to the markets sending it new residents tends to have more room to appreciate than one already priced at or above the national average. It’s also worth understanding why that gap exists in the first place: coastal Northeast states and places like Hawaii are largely land-constrained, with little room left to add new supply, while South Carolina and much of the interior Southeast still have room to build. That’s a structural reason the gap has persisted for years, not a temporary pricing quirk likely to close overnight.
The Myrtle Beach Angle
This kind of statewide data is a useful starting point, but it’s exactly that — a starting point. A statewide average of 79.8 says nothing about the difference between a golf-course home in Carolina Forest, an oceanfront condo in Grande Dunes, or a quieter inland lot near Conway — and those differences matter enormously once you’re actually comparing specific properties rather than state averages. The real number that matters is what a specific property in a specific Myrtle Beach, Pawleys Island, or Grande Dunes neighborhood is actually worth today, and that requires someone who watches this market closely rather than a national index.
Browsing current listings across Myrtle Beach and the surrounding communities is a good way to see how this affordability advantage is actually showing up in what’s on the market right now, across price points from starter homes to oceanfront estates. And a bit more about the 15 years and 210-plus closed sales I’ve put together in this exact market is available if you want the background on who’s helping you interpret numbers like these before you act on them.
Talk Through the Numbers for Your Situation
A statewide index is a helpful signal, but it can’t tell you what your specific move actually looks like financially. It doesn’t account for the specific neighborhood you’re considering, the size and condition of the home you’d be replacing, or how your own budget compares once property taxes, insurance, and day-to-day cost of living are added back into the picture alongside housing itself. Our team at Coastal South Carolina Real Estate can walk through the real comparison between where you live now and what a move to the Grand Strand would actually cost, and our broader relocation resources cover more of what that transition involves beyond housing costs alone. If you’re specifically further along and ready to talk specifics, reach out here and we’ll go through it together. Indexes like this one are a nice validation of a decision a lot of people have already made — the real value is in knowing exactly what it means for your own numbers before you make it.