If you're pricing a new build around Myrtle Beach, someone will eventually mention the county impact fee — usually as a number that sounds either trivial or alarming, depending on who's telling you.
Before you worry about the amount, check something else first: whether it applies to the lot at all. Horry County's impact fee ordinance covers new development in the unincorporated areas of the county. If you're building inside the city limits of Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Conway, Surfside Beach or any other municipality, this particular county fee isn't part of your number.
That's the ordinance's own language, and it's the single most useful thing to know before you price anything.
First: is the lot in the unincorporated county?
Horry County's fee is authorized by the South Carolina Development Impact Fee Act and sits in the county's zoning code as Article XIII. Its applicability section is short and clear: the article applies to new development in the unincorporated areas of Horry County.
Municipalities can adopt their own impact fees, and some do. But the county schedule below is a county schedule. A house going up inside Conway's city limits isn't paying it.
One wrinkle worth knowing if you're buying into an area that's being absorbed by a growing town: if a fee was already imposed under the county ordinance and the land is later annexed by a municipality, it stays subject to the county article — unless that municipality takes on the obligation the money was meant to cover. Annexation doesn't automatically wipe the slate.
So the first question isn't "how much?" It's "which jurisdiction is this lot in?" Your builder knows. The county's planning office can confirm it. It's worth asking out loud rather than assuming, because Horry County has a lot of land that looks suburban and is not inside any town.
What the fee actually is right now
In July 2026, County Council unanimously passed Ordinance 30-2026, replacing a flat per-home charge with a schedule that scales to the size of the house. Local coverage reported the new tiers when Council adopted them:
Reported residential schedule, by heated square footage
| Home size | Fee |
|---|---|
| 1,000 sq ft or less | $995 |
| 1,001 – 1,500 | $1,615 |
| 1,501 – 2,000 | $2,050 |
| 2,001 – 2,500 | $2,392 |
| 2,501 – 3,000 | $2,668 |
| 3,001 – 3,500 | $2,902 |
| 3,501 and above | $3,104 |
Non-residential was reported at $1,776 per 1,000 sq ft for retail, $797 for office, $236 for industrial, $1,842 for institutional, and $956 per room for lodging.
One caveat worth knowing. These tiers come from local coverage of the Council vote, not from a county document — at the time of writing the online code still carried the older flat schedule, and impact fees don't appear in the planning department's own published fee schedule either, because they're collected later, at building permit. Codification normally trails an ordinance by a supplement or two, so these are very likely the numbers being charged, but confirm the figure with Horry County before you budget around it.
What changed, and who it changed for
The comparison is more interesting than either schedule on its own.
Under the flat schedule it replaced, a single-family home outside the Murrells Inlet–Garden City Fire District paid $479 for parks and recreation, $484 for public safety and $273 for solid waste — $1,236 total, whatever its size. Inside that fire district, where the public safety component is $114, the total was $866.
Set that against the reported tiers and the shape of the change becomes obvious. A modest house — 1,000 square feet or under — would pay less than it used to. Everything above that pays more, and a large home pays roughly two and a half times the old flat fee.
That's a policy choice, and a defensible one: a bigger house generates more demand on parks, public safety and solid waste than a small one. It also explains why the homebuilders' association pushed back publicly on affordability while the county framed it as growth paying its own way. Both arguments are looking at the same chart from different ends.
Who actually pays it, and when
The fee is assessed when the building permit is issued — or a development permit, where no building permit is required. No permit is issued until it's paid in full. If it goes unpaid, the county can attach penalties and a lien on the same basis it would for unpaid property taxes.
In practice, on a production new build, that means the builder pays it, because the builder pulls the permit. It is not a line on your closing statement, and you should not expect to see it there.
What that does not mean is that it costs you nothing. A builder prices a home knowing what the permit will cost. Whether the fee is visible to you or buried in the base price, it's in the number either way — which is exactly why the affordability argument exists.
If you're building custom on your own lot and pulling your own permit, then it's yours directly, and you'll pay it at permit issuance.
What the money funds
The ordinance allows the fee to be collected for three categories of public facility: parks and recreation, public safety, and solid waste. The county describes the same thing in five buckets — parks and recreation, police, fire, emergency operations, and solid waste — which is just public safety broken into its parts.
Two constraints in the ordinance are worth knowing, because they're the answer to "does this money actually come back to my area?"
Money collected for one category can only be spent on that category, and only within the service area it was collected in. For public safety there are two service areas: the Murrells Inlet–Garden City Fire District, and the rest of the unincorporated county. Parks and solid waste each have a single county-wide service area.
And the money has a clock on it. Fees must be spent within three years of the date they're scheduled for in the county's capital plan, and no more than seven years from collection. If they aren't, the owner of record is entitled to a refund, with interest. There's also a refund if a permit is denied, or if the project is cancelled or the permit expires before completion.
The county has said it has collected more than $45 million since collections began in October 2021.
What this fee is not
This is where new-construction costs get muddled, so it's worth being precise.
| What it is | Who sets it | |
|---|---|---|
| Impact fee | A one-time county charge on new development, on a published schedule, for parks, public safety and solid waste | Horry County ordinance |
| Development agreement contribution | A negotiated, project-specific payment or commitment from a developer — roads, signals, land, cash per unit | Negotiated per project |
| Permit and plan review fees | Charges for processing and inspecting the work itself — the county's planning department publishes its own schedule, where a residential variance is $200 and a standard rezoning under five acres is $250 | County or municipality |
| Closing costs | Transaction expenses — lender fees, attorney, recording, title, prepaids | Lender, attorney, insurer |
The first two get confused constantly, partly because both are money a developer hands the county over new houses. They are not the same thing and they are not added together.
If you've been following a rezoning fight locally, you may have seen a figure like "$5,800 per unit" attached to a development agreement. That's a negotiated commitment for that specific project — not the impact fee, and not a number that applies to your build.
The ordinance actually makes the relationship explicit: a project that has already mitigated its impact on public facilities through a development agreement is not subject to the impact fee article. It's one obligation or the other, not both. There's a parallel mechanism called an offset, where a developer who builds qualifying public improvements gets credited against the fees owed — capped at the amount that was due.
Separately, and unrelated to any of this, ongoing property taxes are a different thing again. If that's the number you're really trying to pin down, the property tax guide is the better starting point.
When it doesn't apply at all
The ordinance lists a set of development it doesn't touch. Several matter to ordinary homeowners:
- Alterations to an existing single-family home. Renovating doesn't trigger it.
- An addition that doesn't increase the number of service units. Adding square footage to your own house is not the same as building a new one.
- Rebuilding the same floor area after a fire or other catastrophe.
- Replacing a residential unit, including a manufactured home, on the same lot, where the number of service units doesn't go up.
- Construction trailers and offices during a build, and temporary uses.
- Elementary, middle and secondary schools, and new volunteer fire departments.
- Projects that qualify as affordable housing, where their share is funded another way.
- Projects that have mitigated their impact through a development agreement.
There's also a route most buyers will never use but that developers do: an individual assessment. If someone believes their project's actual demand is lower than the schedule assumes, they can commission a study — at their own expense, on the county's methodology — and argue for a lower figure. And any final decision under the article can be appealed within fifteen days for a $25 filing fee.
What I'd ask before assuming the fee applies
Five questions, in order:
- Is this lot inside a municipality or in the unincorporated county? If it's in a town, the county fee isn't in play. Everything else follows from this.
- Which schedule is the county charging today? Given the code and the news don't currently agree, ask Planning and Zoning for the figure in force, in writing if you can.
- What's the heated square footage the fee will be calculated on? The tiers turn on it, and the difference between the top of one band and the bottom of the next is real money.
- Is the fee already inside the base price, or added at contract? Ask the builder plainly. Either answer is fine; not knowing is not.
- Is this project under a development agreement? If so, the impact fee may not apply to it at all, and the answer changes.
If you're weighing a new build against an existing home, this fee is one input among several — and the broader comparison is covered in new construction vs. resale on the Grand Strand. It belongs in the column with the things a resale simply doesn't have, alongside the rest of what buying here costs.
The bottom line
For most people building in unincorporated Horry County, this is a four-figure cost that the builder pays at permit and prices into the house. It's real, it's not enormous relative to a home price, and since July it scales with how big you build.
The two things worth your attention aren't the amount. They're whether the lot is in the county's jurisdiction at all, and — right now — which of two published schedules is actually being charged. Both are answerable with one phone call, and neither is something to assume.
Questions I get asked
Do I pay this at closing? No. It's assessed at building permit issuance, so on a production build the builder pays it. It's priced into the home rather than itemized to you.
Does it apply if I'm building inside Myrtle Beach or Conway? Not this fee. The county ordinance covers unincorporated Horry County. A municipality may have its own arrangements — ask the city that would issue your permit.
Is the impact fee the same as the per-unit contribution I read about in a rezoning story? No. That's a development agreement contribution, negotiated for one specific project. The ordinance treats them as alternatives — a project that has mitigated its impact through a development agreement isn't subject to the impact fee article.
I'm adding a room. Do I owe it? An addition that doesn't increase the number of service units is listed as not subject, and alterations to an existing single-family home are excluded outright. Confirm with the county for your specific plans.
Can I see exactly what my fee will be before I commit? Ask the builder for the permit-stage figure and ask the county to confirm the current schedule. Given the gap between the code and the reported schedule right now, getting it in writing is worth the extra day.
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