Bluffton vs. Beaufort?

[Michael Keffer]

South Carolina, friends. With aging parents I've been looking at SC as a STR location until they are ready to fully make the move south.
I’d love to monitor the location more so please share resources and add me to your newsletters. Both areas seem lovely. Also interested in the North Myrtle Beach area for anyone with connections there. Thank you! 

[Mark H. Porter]

Hi Michael - I live in North Myrtle Beach now in an area called Barefoot Resort.  25 years ago, one individual, who happened to own a small, 7 shop strip mall on the beach-side of the intercoastal waterway known as Barefoot Shoppes, crossed the waterway to acquire 2600 acres of, well, nothing.

He brought in Dye, Norman, Fazio, and Love to build four golf courses, and we now have 4000 residences between single-family homes, typical 3-level multi-family, and three towers overlooking the waterway.  It’s a great story.

I lived here the first time from ‘86 to ‘89, right at the beginning of the golf “boom” that resulted in dozens of golf courses being built over the next decade of so.

My first property here was a townhouse here in Barefoot in 2015 that I rented long-term. My 2nd and 3rd investments were large properties on Ocean Blvd that I bought using 1031 monies for STR under great local management. All three properties did very well financially.

I’m now retired and in all honesty we could not be happier.  There’s still 80-plus golf courses, I pay $2600 in property taxes on a 4br house with a pool, most people are kind and generous, weather is wonderful (but still lows in the 30’s in February!), restaurants are plentiful, and traffic is comparatively light even in summer.

I’m an investor, not a realtor.  Mike Thompson (above) can steer you in the right direction.