If you're weighing a move to the Grand Strand, the headlines about coastal living, golf, and beach sunsets only tell half the story. The other half is economics — and right now, South Carolina is one of the strongest state economies in the country, with Horry County riding that momentum in a way that directly protects and grows your investment in Myrtle Beach real estate.
Here's a closer look at what's driving South Carolina's growth, and why Horry County's own unique economic engine keeps this market healthy without hammering homeowners with rising property taxes.
South Carolina Is Becoming an Automotive Powerhouse
Few states can match what's happening in South Carolina's manufacturing corridor right now, and two names lead the way: BMW and Scout Motors.
BMW recently completed a $1.7 billion investment across its Spartanburg campus and its new Plant Woodruff facility. Spartanburg is already BMW's largest production plant in the world, having assembled more than 412,000 X-Series SUVs in 2025 alone, and it's about to make history again: the all-electric BMW iX5 will be the first fully electric BMW ever assembled in the United States, with production beginning in late 2026. I saw the next generation of these SUVs firsthand on a recent trip to BMW's home base in Germany — it's genuinely exciting to know the vehicles I was looking at overseas will soon roll off the line less than two hours from Myrtle Beach (BMW South Carolina investment coverage).
IMAGE: Photo from Phil's trip to BMW in Munich, Germany July 2026 showing the new BMW x5 SUV model set for South Carolina production.
Meanwhile, Scout Motors is building an entirely new American brand from the ground up in Blythewood, just outside Columbia. The all-electric truck and SUV maker is investing roughly $2 billion in its South Carolina plant, with plans to create more than 4,000 permanent jobs and eventually produce over 200,000 vehicles a year, with production targeted to begin by the end of 2026 (Scout Motors South Carolina).
Between BMW and Scout, South Carolina is quickly becoming a hub for both traditional and electric SUV manufacturing — the kind of durable, high-wage industrial base that supports population growth, migration, and housing demand across the entire state, including the coast.
Energy Infrastructure: GE Vernova's Greenville Footprint
South Carolina's industrial strength isn't limited to automobiles. In Greenville, GE Vernova — the energy-focused spinoff of GE — is investing more than $160 million to expand gas turbine manufacturing at a facility that has been building turbines since 1968. The expansion is expected to create more than 650 new engineering and factory jobs and is described by GE Vernova leadership as key to keeping Greenville "the world's center of gas turbine manufacturing," supplying energy infrastructure both domestically and globally (GE Vernova Greenville announcement).
This matters well beyond Greenville. As global demand for electricity and grid infrastructure surges — driven in large part by data centers and electrification — South Carolina is positioning itself as a supplier to that demand, not just a consumer of it.
No Warehouses, No Data Centers — And That's By Design
If you look at a map of South Carolina's massive logistics and data infrastructure boom, you'll notice something: almost none of it is in Myrtle Beach. That's not an oversight — it's geography working exactly as it should.
South Carolina's warehouse and distribution centers are concentrated along the I-95 corridor, near Florence, Dillon, and the ports of Charleston and Georgetown, because that's where interstate access, rail, and port connectivity converge. Myrtle Beach, by contrast, sits off the interstate grid on a peninsula built for tourism and residential life, not eighteen-wheelers and industrial parks. That's a feature for homeowners, not a gap in the local economy — it's exactly why the Grand Strand has stayed a place people want to live and vacation rather than a logistics hub.
The same logic applies to large-scale data centers, which have become a major economic story elsewhere in the Southeast. You won't find hyperscale data campuses drawing power and water resources in Myrtle Beach. Yet Myrtle Beach remains genuinely important to internet infrastructure for a different reason entirely: it's one of the few landing points on the entire U.S. East Coast for transatlantic undersea fiber cables. DC BLOX's cable landing station in Myrtle Beach connects subsea cables running directly to Europe and beyond, chosen specifically because of its position between existing cable landings in Florida and Virginia and its access to the Southeast's fast-growing data center corridor inland (DC BLOX Myrtle Beach cable landing station). In other words, Myrtle Beach plays a quietly critical role in national digital infrastructure — without hosting the industrial footprint that typically comes with it.
Tourism Keeps Horry County's Tax Base Healthy — Without Taxing Homeowners
Here's the piece of the puzzle that matters most if you're buying a home here: Horry County doesn't need to lean on rising property taxes to fund itself, because tourism already does the heavy lifting.
In 2025, 17.8 million visitors spent $13.3 billion directly in the Myrtle Beach area, with a total economic impact — including indirect and induced spending — of more than $26 billion. Horry County's hospitality fee alone collected roughly $59.3 million in 2024, and local accommodations taxes brought in over $31 million, representing nearly a third of all accommodations tax revenue collected statewide. Visitor spending accounts for close to 60% of all sales tax revenue collected in the county, and a dedicated penny sales tax funded largely by tourists helps support local schools and infrastructure (Grand Strand tourism economic impact data).
The takeaway for buyers: every summer beach season and every winter golf season, millions of visitors are effectively subsidizing the public services and infrastructure that homeowners rely on year-round — schools, roads, public safety — while keeping over 82,000 people employed locally, most in year-round positions. That's a tax base built on tourism dollars, not escalating property assessments.
The Wealth Signal Most Buyers Miss: Private Jet Traffic
One trend I track closely as a local agent is private aviation activity at the Grand Strand's three general aviation airports — Myrtle Beach International, Grand Strand Airport in North Myrtle Beach, and Georgetown County Airport near Pawleys Island. Based on my own ongoing review of private jet traffic at these three FBOs, ultra-high-net-worth presence along the Myrtle Beach and Pawleys Island coastline is notably strong and growing. That kind of activity tends to be a leading indicator, not a lagging one — it shows up in flight logs before it shows up in closed sale prices, and it points to sustained high-end demand along this stretch of coast.
What This Means If You're Buying in Myrtle Beach or Pawleys Island
Put it all together, and the Grand Strand isn't just riding South Carolina's economic wave — it's benefiting from it while staying insulated from the parts of that growth (heavy industry, warehousing, data center power draw) that can strain a residential market. You get the upside of a state adding manufacturing jobs, energy investment, and population growth, paired with a local tax structure propped up by tourism rather than homeowners, and a luxury market with real, verifiable staying power.
If you'd like to talk through what any of this means for your specific buying or selling timeline, reach out anytime.
Call Phil Riola with Real Brokerage Inc. and Phil Riola Homes today to discuss more about why we love South Carolina! 📞 Cell: 610-428-6730 ✉️ [email protected]
