The National Association of REALTORS just published data that deserves more attention than a single trade headline usually gets. Out of every state in the country, South Carolina posted the highest average score on NAR’s new Commercial Real Estate Demand Index. Not a top-five finish. Not top ten. First. For agents working residential deals along the Grand Strand and across the Upstate, this commercial real estate boom isn’t background noise — it’s the same growth showing up on the other side of the ledger from the buyers and sellers already sitting across the table.
A New Index, a Clear Signal
NAR launched the Commercial Real Estate Demand Index in August 2026, and it’s built differently than the reports most agents are used to skimming. Rather than tracking closed transactions after the fact, it scores more than 300 U.S. metro areas on prospective demand by combining employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics with population and migration figures from the Census Bureau. Four sectors get weighted into a single score: industrial and multifamily each count for 28%, with office and retail at 22% apiece. A reading of 100 represents the national average, and the index’s methodology treats every 15 points above or below that baseline as a full standard deviation — meaning the gaps between states aren’t small rounding differences, they’re meaningfully different growth trajectories.
That forward-looking design is the point. Residential agents already have plenty of backward-looking data — closed sales, days on market, list-to-sale ratios. What’s harder to get a read on is where demand is building before it fully shows up in home prices. A commercial index built on jobs and migration data is effectively an early-warning system for exactly that, which is part of why it’s worth a residential agent’s attention even though “commercial” is in the name.
What’s Fueling South Carolina’s Commercial Real Estate Boom
South Carolina’s statewide average came in at 110 points, the highest of any state in the country. Nationally, no single metro beat St. George, Utah’s score of 128, with Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Arkansas and Huntsville, Alabama tied just behind at 125. What makes South Carolina’s showing notable isn’t one standout city — it’s consistency. Myrtle Beach and Spartanburg both climbed the rankings on the strength of sustained population and migration inflows, and Greenville has landed among the top metro areas nationally for population growth and net migration as well. Multifamily demand, driven directly by people actually moving in, is doing a lot of that lifting.
The bigger story is which markets are losing ground while South Carolina gains it. Austin, long treated as the poster child for Sun Belt growth, has slid from a score of 132 in 2022 down to 116 today. Florida’s statewide average has cooled from 115 to 110 — putting the entire state of Florida, still widely assumed to be the default retirement and relocation destination, at the same level South Carolina now sits at statewide. As NAR economist Nadia Evangelou put it, “when a metro adds jobs and residents, demand for housing rises, rents climb, and property values follow.” That’s a commercial real estate economist describing, almost word for word, what residential agents watch happen in their own pipelines every quarter.
Why This Isn’t Just a Commercial Story
It’s tempting for a residential agent to see “commercial real estate index” and assume it’s someone else’s data set. It isn’t. The four sectors NAR measures — office, industrial, retail, and multifamily — are really just different lenses on the same underlying force: are jobs and people showing up in a market, and is capital following them there. A new distribution center or manufacturing plant means new jobs, and new jobs mean new households looking for homes near them. A retail corridor expanding means a neighborhood is filling in around it. A wave of new apartment construction, which is what the multifamily weighting captures, is often the earliest visible sign that a submarket is about to see single-family demand follow right behind it.
Put plainly: a buyer relocating to the Grand Strand right now is very likely riding the tailwind of a business expansion or job relocation that shows up in this same data. A seller in Spartanburg getting multiple offers is benefiting from the same population growth NAR is measuring at the metro level. An emerging neighborhood that seems to be gaining buyer interest out of nowhere usually isn’t random — a developer or employer typically saw the fundamentals shift before it became obvious on a home search site.
How Agents Can Actually Use This
Understanding that the connection exists is one thing; using it day to day is another. A few practical habits go a long way here. Watching local announcements about new employers, distribution centers, or manufacturing expansions gives an agent a head start on which zip codes are about to see fresh buyer demand, often months before it shows up in showing requests. Multifamily construction permits are worth tracking too — a wave of new apartment development is frequently the earliest visible sign that a submarket is about to see single-family demand follow right behind it, since renters in a growing area are tomorrow’s buyers. Building a relationship with even one or two commercial brokers in a market also pays off, since they’re often the first to know about a deal that will eventually bring hundreds of new households into an area.
None of this requires becoming a commercial specialist. It just means treating a state topping a national commercial demand index as a genuinely useful data point rather than a headline to skim past, especially when it lines up this closely with what’s already happening in residential pipelines across the Grand Strand and the Upstate alike.
What This Means for Myrtle Beach Specifically
Myrtle Beach’s showing in this index lines up with what’s already visible on the ground here. The area was recently named the #17 fastest-growing place in the U.S. for 2026-2027, and that growth has real industrial and manufacturing backing behind it — BMW’s continued expansion in Spartanburg, Scout Motors building an entirely new EV plant near Columbia, and GE Vernova’s turbine manufacturing investment in Greenville are all part of the same statewide economic engine this index is picking up on. None of those projects sit directly on the coast, but they’re a meaningful part of why people keep moving toward it. Browsing what’s currently available across Myrtle Beach, Pawleys Island, and Grande Dunes gives a pretty direct read on how that demand is showing up in listings and pricing today.
What This Means If You’re Buying, Selling, or Relocating Here
If you’re a seller, this is one more piece of evidence that the fundamentals under this market are broader than beach tourism alone — job and population growth are doing real work here too. If you’re a buyer, especially one relocating from out of state, it’s worth knowing you’re not making a purely lifestyle-driven bet; you’re moving toward a state posting the strongest commercial demand numbers in the country, which tends to support home values over the years you actually own the property. Our relocation resources for people moving from the Northeast and our breakdown of South Carolina’s tax advantages cover more of what that decision looks like in practice, beyond just this one data point.
For agents reading this as a fellow practitioner rather than a client: understanding where commercial capital and job growth are heading is quickly becoming table stakes, not a specialty niche. It’s showing up in continuing education requirements for a reason — the agents who can speak intelligently about why a market is moving, not just that it is, are the ones relocating buyers and local sellers alike tend to trust with a harder decision.
Talk Through What This Means for Your Situation
Whether you’re weighing a purchase, a sale, or just trying to understand why the Grand Strand keeps showing up on national growth lists, reach out to our team and we’ll walk through what this data actually means for your specific plans. A commercial real estate boom driven by real jobs and real population growth is a very different story than a market running on speculation alone — and right now, South Carolina’s numbers are telling the first story, not the second.